Hi Krista: Your bouquets made my day. Thank you! They look like paintings that lift my spirit. I love Jacques Cartier with the button-hole. I enjoy your pics. very much. My sister in Southern CA informed me that a contagious disease wiped out her garden, including Annie L. McDowell. I think it's downy mildew. She lives near the coast. My heavy clay retains salt well, so I keep track of salt-index of fertilizers. CA dry climate with saline water is worse, that can shoot up one's blood pressure, plus wreck havoc on plants. I put too much Jobes organic fertilizer NPK 2-7-4 (bone meal, sulfate of potash, etc) into the planting hole of Gruss an Teplitz. It broke out in mildew instantly. So I put soluble gypsum on Gruss. That took away 80% of the mildew, amazing. Gypsum is used to de-salt saline soil or water. Gypsum salt-index is 8, so I gave Gruss "banana water" made by soaking chopped up banana peels NPK 0-3-42, very high in potassium and no salt. I let it soak for a few days, and watered Gruss with that. That helped! My husband is a marathon runner .. I don't run, but read his running magazines. In one study, volunteers were divided into 3 groups: fed low-salt diet, and low-potassium, fed high-salt diet, and high-potassium with lots of bananas, and a control group. Surprisingly, the group with high-salt and high-potassium had better blood-pressure than the group with low-salt and low-potassium diet. That's why they always feed runners bananas after the race .... This post was edited by Strawberryhill on Mon, Jul 29, 13 at 12:45

James Galway gets over 20 feet tall in late fall as 7th-year-own-root in my zone 5a. James' Blooms has amazing carnation scent when aged in the vase. It lasts 5+ days in the vase. Below bouquet was taken mid-July, showing pink Comte de Chambord, and bright-red L.D. Braithwaite at center (lasts long in the vase, but not much scent). Left yellow is Golden Celebration (form is bad in hot & dry). Dark reds are W.S. 2000, it's a continuous bloomer as 12th-year-own-root. Lavender Crush is good for the vase, it used to be deep ugly purple, I don't like the color so I dug out the top 1 foot of clay and mixed pelletized lime to soften the color, and it has been 100% healthy with zero blackspots, plus the color is lighter & prettier: Below pic. showing Lavender Crush with zero blackspots as 7th-year grafted-on-Dr.Huey. Pic. taken this August 11, 2022. It's over 5 feet tall and blooms at the top:

Hi everyone, Well day 1 went well for me diet wise. I really cut back on the junk and was feeling really god about myself and then........ My left arm has been giving me a little trouble over the last few weeks. I 've figured it to be just a little tendonitis so I've been taking a couple of aspirin at night. Last night the pain became unbearable and seemed to be radiating from my shoulder. I actually cried out and I'm pretty stoic usually. Ended up driving myself to the ER at 5:00 AM. Yep. Torn rotator cuff of the shoulder. I'm loopy on Vicodene (hate hate hate the stuff) and taking anti-inflammatories. See my regular doc tomorrow. So there goes any exercise for the time being. I hurts to roll over, it hurts to move anyhing. But I intend to stay on course with eating right. Of course all the meds are "take with food" :0( I'm happy to hear everyone is off to a good start. We can do gals! Pam, Glad to see you're better. Stay warm and dry. Soup is good. Tikanas, I will call soon. Drinking water is hard for me in the winter too. I really have to work at it. Take care, eat well and and keep moving on fellow losers.

Very cute,Kentucky_rose. I'm always on the lookout for cute containers that I don't mind not getting back. Sometimes I use veggie cans, coffee cans etc. I've never heard of Ale 8. Is it beer? Must be, I guess. Lisa