Actually, cut flowers of Proteas, Leucospermums and Leucadendrons are not all that hard to find at higher end florists, or go to the Flower Mart in San Francisco. Flora Grubb nursery in the Bayview District of San Francisco always has a great selection of Proteas, Banksias, Leucadendrons, Leucospermums, etc, with many of them already in full bloom in one or five or even 15 gallons sizes. Annie Hayes of Annie's Annuals is a personal friend of mine,(as is Richard Ward of the Dry Garden), and you're right, she does have a great selection of South African plants, with nursery prices being cheaper than mail order. She typically doesn't have the widest selection of Proteaceous species from seed, but does sometimes have some juicy things propagated now from cuttings of stock plants at the nursery, such as Mimetes cuculatus. If you do make the drive up from the south bay, you can easily hit all the nurseries here in Berkeley, Oakland, Annie's in Richmond, and Flora Grubb in one day. The Dry Garden Nursery in Oakland often carries smaller one gallon specialty proteas grown from seed by local backyard growers, but the prices are likely to be a bit higher than one gallon sized plants from Sierra Azul Nursery in Watsonville. Sierra Azul Nursery in Watsonville has a very good selection of Proteacea plants, all grown right next door at Rosendale Wholesale Nursery, and their acres of display gardens are well worth a browse as well, Another source of Proteas would be the annual spring/fall sales at UC Santa Cruz Botanic Garden, or browse what they have at the book store/nursery near the entry/parking lot. In southern California, there is also Jo O'Connell's nursery that does mail order, and she has a good selection of Australian and South African Proteacea plants. She is located in Ventura, and her website is www.australianplants.com If you would like to get tapped in to the local horticultural scene and get better inside sources for plants, I would suggest joining either the Western Horticultural Society at www.westernhort.org and based in Los Altos, or the California Horticultural Society at www.calhortsociety.org and based in San Francisco. Joining either gets you a subscription to Pacific Horticulture Magazine, as well as monthly meetings, field trips to gardens, local wholesale nurseries, etc. You may find you get bitten badly by the bug/interest in South African plants, I know I have, and love designing gardens with Fynbos plants such as Proteas, Restios and succulents. UC Santa Cruz Botanic Garden and the demonstration gardens at Sierra Azul Nursery in Watsonville are both great local to you examples of what one can do in their own garden.

Thank you everyone for all the recipes and tips. The guests of honor will be my little granddaughter and a little boy from our church and they are both turning one year old within four days of each other. The theme of the party is princess and prince. Their Mothers and aunt will be doing the decorating. I only will be baking them. They are planning a lunch right after church along with the party things. I will be busy preparing a lot of the food that will be served. I really enjoyed seeing the pictures of the pretty cookies you have posted. If you have any more ideas please post them. Thank you all. Sue

This is as authentic a recipe for the old-school Italian water ice as you'd want to find. For strawberry, just follow the recipe for the peach one and use the berries, although for raspberry or black cherry, it's better with just the strained juice from the fruits. LEMON WATER ICE 1 quart water 2 cups sugar 3/4 cup lemon juice Grated rind of 1 lemon (no white part) Boil water and sugar together for 5 minutes. Cool. Stir in juice and peel. Pour into shallow bowl and put in freezer. As it starts to freeze, keep stirring the outside crystals into the center and mix in peel. Do this about every half hour. When really slushy, stop and freeze overnight. To serve, you must scrape very thin layers of the slush off the top. I use a big spoon with sharp edges moving it sideways. My notes: This won't turn out right unless you do both the stirring thing and the scraping thing. It really is all about the technique, not the ingredients, which is why you won't get the same results in an ice cream freezer, even though we've tried it. Depending on how many you'll be serving and when, you can divide the ingredients in half for a smaller batch because the syrup starts to congeal after about 2 or 3 days. For all of these, follow the same method as the Lemon Ice, boiling water and sugar together, add other ingredients, then freezing as directed: LEMON-LIME WATER ICE (my personal favorite) Make as above but use 1/2 lemon juice and 1/2 lime juice and equal amounts of lemon and lime peel LIME ICE Make as above using lime juice and peel instead of the lemon. FRESH PEACH WATER ICE 1 cup sugar 2 1/2 cups water 1 1/2 cups peeled and sliced ripe peaches 1 1/2 to 2 tsp. lemon juice Puree peaches in blender with lemon juice. ORANGE WATER ICE 2 cups water 1 cup sugar 1 cup fresh orange juice 1 grated orange rind (no white part) 2 Tbs. fresh lemon juice GRAPE WATER ICE 2/3 cup sugar 1 1/2 cups water 1 cup grape juice 1/4 cup orange juice 2 Tbs. lemon juice

Welcome to the forum Elizabeth! As you can see, we have a wealth of knowledge here. I would take a look at one of the sites on the internet to see what type of roses make your heart go pitter patter. For me, it us usually the David Austin (DA) roses. I love the full old-fashioned look. However, this year, singles and semi-doubles seem to make my heart skip a beat. David Austin has a site on the internet so you can see the color and form of rose. Heirloom also had a great site on the internet to look at pictures of roses as well. These sites will give you an idea as to whether or not the rose will do well in your area. That is important info to have from the get go. I too would start over and get something that will look pretty, do well in your area and that you love. Let me see if I can post some of my pictures on here of my DA roses. Munstead Wood Princess Alexandra of Kent Brother Cadfael (he gets very tall) Ambridge Rose