Hi Rick: I buy from 3 suppliers: Vesey's (PEI) has a fairly good selection - nothing unusual but well priced and guaranteed Breck's Canada - large variety - from Holland and a little more expensive The Lily Garden (Vancouver) - a very large selection and a bit more expensive; guaranteed and reliable These all have online catalogues and some will send you a paper catalogue if requested. Occasionally I pick up a few packages of 'sales' items from Canadian Tire. For example, a 5-pack of Orientals (Dizzy) bought this spring, started indoors, blooming now. If you know how to verify the condition of the bulbs through the packaging, you can pick up a number of deals. Hope this helps.

Jeanette, I am going to assume that you live in the Indianapolis area. It might be good if you could visit some in your area. Sometimes the daylilies on the websites can look quite a bit different than in person, and it also gives you an idea of what the foliage and branching habits look like if you're into that sort of thing. I have never ordered or been to any other place except the one here in southern Indiana called Lakeside Daylilies, so I don't have any experience with any other place. Daylily Connection: http://www.daylilyconnection.com/howtogethere.html Soules Garden Website: http://soulesgarden.com/ZenCart/ Soules Garden Map: http://www.soulesgarden.com/maptogarden.htm Hope this helps. You will be hooked on daylilies in no time after you visit one of these places:) Vickie

I haven't used the Iris Patch (new to me) but I have ordered from BlueJ and Aitken's Salmon Creek. Both sent nice looking rhizomes but more importantly they were as marked! The size of the rhizome does not predict a healthier plant. I used to order from a place in the midwest that sent rhizomes the size of your little finger and they were great. He's now retired. Any of these sellers on the AIS site are going to be reliable. http://www.irises.org/Resources/Commercial_Ref.html

This interesting topic led me to do some looking around for more information. I learned that what I'd always thought of as the "machine readable" bank routing and account numbers at the bottom of the check came into use in the late 1950s. This system is called MICR, micro ink character recognition. Magnetic readers were all that was available at that time for this task so the numbers were printed on checks with magnetic ink. Reading that reminded me of yesteryear when returned checks had that the check amount printed at the bottom right of the check. This was presumably added by a machine operated manually by a bank employee actually reading the check. The banks and clearing houses then used mag reader machines (as described before in use at retailers) to process checks. Anyway, turn to today. It's not exactly as gardengirl described. The Check Clearing Act for the 21st Century, a federal law passed in 2003, provides that an image of a check IS a legal check and that the physical original check need not be passed through the system at all if an image is used in its place. That's why you can deposit a check using a smart phone or scanner, and why the bank doesn't return cancelled checks but rather makes an image available to a customer (readily obtained online). Bank records (also available online) can be used in place of actual checks for legal and tax purposes. When a bank receives a physical check as a deposit, it takes an image of the check (as well as the deposit slip, if the deposit took place in person) and destroys the pieces of paper. These images are what's available to see online when you access your account. So, to TG's information - stores using MICR readers are using technology that's over 50 years old. Checks DO NOT need to have magnetically readable ink. Yes, they're doing that to cut down on check handling but it's not their only alternative. Apple and Android Pay, other proximity (non-contact) cards are also available for use. Optical readers with OCR capability can also be used, just like every smart phone can do with a bank app. It will get to a point when retailers and other businesses won't accept checks.