Becki, I hope you and your daughter are feeling better and the seeds cheered you up and served as a reminder that spring will eventually come. I had a sinus cold for a month, then our son brought another one home from work which I caught and am just now getting over. I've decided that someday I will have a winter home in Florida to escape the germ-infested climate in Ohio. Can't wait until spring and have been kept going with seed swaps and seed catalogs - LOL!

Howdee there Awesome time off with the hubby. We had a lovely well deserved vacation on the coast. My mom has a house in Crescent city and she is always wanted me to come and use it but hubby and I just love Gold beach. I am so happy all the mailers are getting back home and with such speed. I only host these two swaps and they are more fun each year. With this being the 10th year for the Acres Edible swap I really wanted it to be out standing. In past years there has been trivia and awards and such fun. Perhaps next year :) Now its off to sort seeds from my seed orders for my garden season. I will start my tomatoes and peppers, eggplant etc. next month. I grow about 200 extra plants each year and sell them locally. With the 100 assorted plants I start each year for my self for my garden it sure becomes a jungle in the green house. Happy gardening Acres

See phylis's link above for some wonderful stuff. Through houzz/gardenweb and another site, I have been SO blown out of the water by tormato's swaps! The main swap is Mostly Mystery 'Mater Mailing (MMMM), with some pepper seeds, misc. veggies, flowers, etc. In one year, I got so very many tomato seed varieties that I almost groan about participating again. But...if he's going to include "everything but the kitchen sink", there are still some pepper and various bean and pea varieties I would enjoy trying. You can send in your spare commercial seed if it's not too old, as well as seed you may have saved, with reasonable effort to avoid much crossing. Also, there are people with a super-abundance of seed who might be able to sponsor you, in one or all categories, if you are very seed-challenged. If nothing else, you can purchase a seed variety or 2 (preferably not very common, if you can find it) and send some of that in to the swap. Recently, not as many peas came in to the swap as people wanted to get back - hint, hint... One of the "mysterious" parts of Gary's swaps is the rules (or lack thereof). In the link noted above by phylis, Post #170 might get you started. However, reading through the entire roughly 300 posts might get you a few laughs...your mileage may vary. In previous years, the legume swap was separate, but I'm not sure it will be this time; part of the mystery. Gary's online access will likely be curtailed until October 3 or so; if you have a question for him, Patience is a Virtue. Since I do have a vested self-interest, I will especially invite people to participate if they have any of the following seeds to share. Pepper -Cayenne, Sweet -Corbaci aka Sari Tatli Sivri -Chimayo -Kaleidoskop -Melrose -Orosko aka Orozco -Ot Chi Thien -Santa Fee Grande aka Caribe aka Guero Bean, Common -Carr Virginia -Florence -Fowler -Lazy Wife (roundish, not oblong, seeds) -Red Eye Greasy -Robert's Royalty -Seay Cut-short -Sequoia -Tennessee Green Pod -Waterloo County Mennonite aka Mennonite Purple Stripe -Zuni Shalako/Four Corners Gold Pea -Green Beauty -Minnesota Sweet (not a "sweetpea") -Sugar Magnolia There may well be 100+ participants in this swap, and some of them are quite generous. Whether you have much to contribute or not, you might be able to jump in and participate. The deadline to have seeds arrive at his end is November 10th (or November 1st if you are a procrastinator). Thank you, houzz/gardenweb, for introducing me to tormato and his swaps.

The "Totally Tomatoes" part of the Incredible Edibles swap is back, with me as host. It goes by a different name now, "Mostly Mystery 'Mater Mailing". It will be run here, and at two other sites. It will be mostly tomatoes, some peppers and beans, along with any other veggie/fruit/flower seed that shows up.