Thanks for taking a look, everyone. Jim - you have the anticipation of spring still and I envy you cold zoners that ! A lot of my roses are nearing the end of their flush. Kathy, Sara-Ann - thank you for your comments. I always enjoy looking at the pictures you post. Inga - I think my family are getting sick of pizza. I'll order Mexican next time :-) Iris_gal - Strawberry Hill ranges in color from peach to pink to lilac depending on weather and the age of the bloom. The fragrance is strong. The growth habit is awkward - pencil thin canes that can't hold up the trusses of blooms. After growing it as shrub where it insisted on laying its blooms face down in the mud, I decided to fan it out against the fence and grow it as a small climber. It certainly is better grown this way. However I continue to struggle with it, as it throws up a large number of thin canes and these have to be continually tied or cut back. A pain, not just because of the frequency at which I need to do this, but because this rose has numerous small wickedly sharp thorns. The biggest issue with it is that it gets rust. I haven't had to deal with rust in my garden before I got Strawberry Hill and this spring several of my roses are showing it. It also gets powdery mildew. I will give it another year and then decide what to do. The reason it isn't gone yet is because it is a prolific bloomer. Now, Wollerton Old Hall. It just completed a year in my garden. I love it. A good bloomer and I find the fragrance intoxicating. It will be best grown with some support. It has good sized canes but when it blooms the canes do arch over. So far, disease resistance has been good. It ranges in color from apricot to butter yellow to cream at different times of the year. I haven't found any of the colors unattractive. An obvious question would be how WOH compares against Jude the Obscure. Unfortunately, I haven't grown JTO (in fact I have never seen it in person) so can't offer any comparisons between the two. I don't know the name of the daffodil. I am disappointed this year - I got only 4 blooms. The elderly lady I got them from grew them in her garden and they (and a yellow she gave me) cam back year after year. Mine have dwindled in flower count since planting... lot of leaves; no flowers. Jo

I got it bad, too. I started a bunch of seeds about a month ago, and i'm starting more now. Hopefully when(if?) this winter ends I will have some pretty substantial veggies started. The ones from a month ago are starting to take over the space under my light and a couple potted bamboos are taking up the rest. As soon as the weather heats up enough to move those outside there will be plenty of room for more veggies, but for that to happen we need at least SOME days above freezing!

Fabulous photos, Isde! I love that fat Pachypodium (photo #4). Is that eburneum? Looks a little tall for brevicaule. Also love the Dorstenia gigas... and all the others for that matter :-)

I'm sorry for everyone who lost vegetation from the winter storms. Much of that will take years to replace and grow back to what it was. I'm in Chicago, and so we could very well have another blizzard before it's all over. People are buying up gardening stock... yet everyone has in the back of their minds we could be shoveling snow one more time this season. I'm frantically finishing up indoor projects in my new home, because I will be spending the next several months digging dirt and planting in my backyard. I love to garden, and my new yard is the perfect size. I'm having a new patio installed first. But in the meantime, I'm following where the sun hits around the yard during the day, and jotting down tentative plans. Tina Marie, I'm going to pick up a few Kimberly Queens later today for hanging baskets, even though they're more upright. I'm done with messy Boston ferns.