I am certainly looking forward to NE growing up a bit after seeing your pictures. Moc-The Northern foundation line is along 36' of house and 24 feet of garage with an offset where the garage mandoor is and air cond. The original Noopeming garden Les had begun is the house foundation. The Lilac is at the offset and there is room for a 12 foot diameter garden under it. The semicircle towards the house is where I plan the mini-garden. Then following around towards the garage going to larger hostas. It is going to take me a while since this gal doesn't do to well with shovels anymore. I like the Lilac. I have't found much in the way of surface roots and the digging is easy. The part behind the garage is the furthest away from the miserable maple trees. As soon as I get the computer worked on later into this month I will get some pictures of the gardens. It is leap year for many of the hostas Les put in. Blue Angels, Parhelion, Krossa Regal, Regal Splendor, Whirlwind and Sagae have turned out awesome. :o) I still can't get the line dancers in mctavish's 3-gardens photos out of my hear. And now the music from the Mikado - "Three Little Girls at School" is accompanying it. I am looking forward to visiting Wilmingtons many 2nd hand shops looking for mini-garden decorations. Since it is in the Ojibwe Noopeming garden perhaps a native American theme could be nice. Theresa

Mine is always bluish green, here is a pic taken today w/ some sun damaged from 90+ degrees way too early in the season. And a picture from last year, must been taken during different time of the day with different lighting.

JAYK I feel (from my experience in local rose clubs and as the former internet consulting ARS rosarian for scientific studies (or some such title) that gardeners have had problems but they were not in a position to question "no underground spread" and had to assume that it must of been drift in spite of whatever precautions they took (I doublt if most knew about the possibilty of weed root to desired plant root transmission). Apparently Monsanto knew: earlier in this thread I quoted the following from another thread (the You was not you nor I): "You mentioned roses. This has been disputed before on GW but roses have many fine surface roots and weeds with similar roots mixed together with the rose roots, the roots are in contact with each other and translocation of the herbicide can take place. Glyphosate kills roots and all so it can kill the rose. This info was quoted to me a few years ago by a Monsanto representative." The scientific reviewed papers that I cited did not "all" agree that it only happened in exceptional purposes. For example I cited a 2006 paper: "There is a common understanding that the widely used herbicide glyphosate is easily degraded and adsorbed in soils and thus, harmless for use in agriculture. We can demonstrate, however, that this conclusion is wrong and dangerous for farmers because in former risk assessments the behaviour of glyphosate in the rhizosphere was not properly considered." Notice that the scientists, editor, and reviewers approved "wrong and dangerous". In my experience as a scientist I expect that the producers of farm glyphosate products would have immediately assigned their in house scientists and/or commissioned paid research to see if they could produce scientific evidence to disprove the paper. The paper was in 2006, I could not find any such disputing paper (apparently you were not able to either); instead I found a November 2007 published paper that supported it. Yes, there are conditions that favor spread and condition that will inhibit spread. Nature is complex. But to attempt to lump all conditions that favor spread into (the following is a quote from a statement that JAYK made in this thread): "unusual circumstances to create this movement, circumstances that are almost never seen in typical gardens." is in my mind the opposite of the actual situation, home gardens with acidic sandy loam soil are very common (even desired - "In general the best pH value range for soil is approximately 6 or 7 as this is the range in which most nutrients can be readily available" - http://www.gardenstew.com/blog/e3-9-soil-ph-and-its-effect-on-your-garden.html . Home gardens with high phosphate concentration (and acidic pH) are also very common - http://searchwarp.com/swa290149.htm. When scientists talk about sandy loam soil they are not talking about "very, very sandy soil situation" - see JAYK's first post, they are actually talking about a common soil: "Sandy loam topsoil is a material that most farmers are familiar with. Although unusual in urban Houston, it can be found north of town. It can be purchased or trucked in from a sight you are familiar with." It is common for gardeners to use a sandy loam soil mixed with compost" "Most experts find the best soil combines compost with a sandy loam topsoil." The quote is from the same link. H. Kuska comment - please note - compost has an acid increasing effect.

My cymbidiums have bloomed best after the rainiest winters - but maybe that is simply because I didn't fertilize, and the salts got washed out. I haven't tested that out. I have an L anceps thread on another orchid board and a guy from Mexico says over and over, they stay completely dry in winter in their natural habitat. There's a guy in Sausalito who has really good results with L anceps, and he doesn't water them at all in winter, and they are bone dry under a cover. In other seasons he waters them once/week on an automatic system. I met some people from San Mateo County who grow L anceps in greenhouses, they water straight through winter and some of their plants are monster sized with hundreds of blooms. I guess that's why these three categories of orchids are considered easy to grow! Different things work for different people.