Hi Everyone! We had a nice Easter. Everyone came over for dinner, and then we had the egg hunt and played Trivial Pursuit. We have one old and one new game, and we play in teams. Skip knows all the science, geography and history, but absolutely nothing about pop culture, so we had to mixt them together. We take turns asking questions from each box. That way everyone knows some sort of an answer. Devin had his birthday party Saturday night at the Fitness Center. We played dodge ball and swam in the pool. Yesterday I ordered Dahlias from Swan Island. I just started by getting a collection. LOW GROWING COLLECTION These varieites work great as borders. This collection contains: All Triumph (white), Bitsy (lavender), Firepot (Orange/Yellow), Mary Jo (peach), Matilda Huston (red), Park Princess (pink), Sisa (yellow). The varieties have blooms from 3" to 4" and the bush heights of under 3'. Then I ordered separately, CHILSON'S PRIDE (BBID) Introduced in 1984. 4" blooms of pure pink with white center. Bush height is 5'. and the other one was LADY LIBERTY (BFD) Introduced in 2003. An excellent exhibition flower, 6" blooms are pristine white with petals that fold all the way back to the stem. I really wanted to buy some lilies, but I have some of those already, and don't really have many Dahlias, except the ones I bought at Sam's Club last year, and I enjoyed them so much at the end of the season. I got an email from picture trail telling me the stats on my photo viewing, and they said 706 people viewed Bab's birthday card. Could there possibly be that many lurkers here? Maybe Babs just has loads of friends who she sent to look at it? V- Congratulations to your Daughter! How exciting! I hope your wrist is better. Sue, are you putting down a concrete pad for the hot tub, or a deck? Ours is on a deck, and it sort of settled a little crooked, so the water level wasn't straight across. I was pretty easy for Skip to fix. We have soft sandy soil. GB, I love that song. Deanne, hope you are feeling better. Mary, nice pulsatilla shot. Glad to hear you are recouperating. Marian, can you paint ticks with nail polish? Or is that chiggers? I know when we went up to the Upper Peninsula last year a couple of us got chigger bites. Taryn, I loved the video. I hope you sell your house this weekend. It's that time of year. Did I tell you guys I sold another one a couple of weeks ago? I really like doing real estate. Cindy, those are really nice photos. I have always wanted to go to DC when the cherry blossoms are blooming. That's about it for me. Hope you all have a great sunshiney day! D.

Undeniably, clematis is quite lovely and refined; however, we all must remember the task at hand. Our nannerbelle is faced with the daunting task of screening out the trailer trash who, like a band of Gypsies, have descended upon the adjoining postage stamp of land. Lovely, delicate, refined vines may simply not serve the purpose. An industrial strength vine is what's needed. And esh ga, I must add yet another couple of virtues to my earlier praise of _Wisteria sinensis_. One is that Chinese wisteria will flower sporadically throughout the summer and early fall--a faint, though much appreciated, echo of its grand spring performance. And two-- nannerbelle will certainly appreciate this--the seed pods of Chinese wisteria explode with loud popping sounds in the late fall when hit by a hard frost. Pop! Pop! Pop! they go--sending those annoying little urchins from next door a-skedaddlin.' _Wisteria sinensis_: truly a vine for all seasons. While the Chinese wisteria is taking all those years to lay its abundant floral offerings at nannerbelle's feet, the Castor Oil Plant (_Ricinus communis_) could well be used as a quick, exotic, summer screen. It grows fast and furiously, and if planted in mid-April, will be a towering giant by the end of August. Huge leaves shaped like star-fish, maroon stems and petioles, other-worldly flowers followed by mace-like seedpods create a sheer vision of tropical loveliness. The problem, however, with _Ricinus communis_ is like the problem with _Nerium oleander_: they're both exceedingly poisonous. The seeds of the Castor Oil Plant contain the deadly poison ricin. But hey, didn't your parents teach you not to eat the horticulture? Besides, Mother Nature tends to protect the innocent. The seeds will be so high up in the top of the Castor Oil Plant that an innocent child should not be able to reach them unless that babe is airborne. Some people call the Castor Oil Plant the Mole Plant. Years ago, gardeners planted the Mole Plant, or Castor Oil Plant, around the perimeter of their vegetable gardens with the belief that the Mole Plant warded off moles, voles, and other root-devouring, subterranean varmints. [In the Antebellum Era, Floride Bonneau (Calhoon) Calhoun had a similar idea at Fort Hill, Floride and John Caldwell Calhoun's plantation home, now the centerpiece of the Clemson University campus. She had a mortal fear of malarial mosquitoes, which were largely confined to her native Low Country home in the swamps of South Carolina. This terror led her to plant Eastern Red Cedars around the perimeter of her Up Country South Carolina home, with the belief that the fragrance of the cedars warded off mosquito infestations.] One of the many good things about _Ricinus communis_ is that a gardener doesn't have to cultivate the ground in order to grow a splendid specimen. Just gently push the seed into the ground, and Mother Nature takes care of the rest. Stand back and enjoy. But, remember, not to ingest the seeds, unless you have a sincere death wish. Ricin is that infamous poison that was used at the height of the Cold War by the KGB. You will probably recall the international headlines of the murder of a British spy on a London street sometime in the late 1960's. A KGB agent pricked the British spy with a ricin-encrusted stilletto concealed in the tip of an umbrella, dispatching the spy to his Eternal Reward. I just ordered three packets of _Ricinis communis_ seeds from a seed vendor in Florida--one packet will contain seeds of the solid-green leafed form; the second will contain seeds of the maroon-leafed form form; and the third will contain seeds of 'Carmencita,' a named cultivar of _Ricinus communis_. I can't wait for them to arrive.

Thanks, Kim, for starting a new thread! I promise to not blind people on the new one! LOL I included a link below to the new thread. I sure hope you're doing better, Kim... You're still very much in my thoughts and prayers. Dorothy, I'll shoot you an email on the fonts later after I finish the file for the WOW swap. In short, for bigger font, use everything between the quotes, but replace the two quote symbols with a ""font size=4>Type whatever you want in here between the HTML codes."/font> If this isn't clear, I'll send more later by email.... I hope I don't forget... If I do, just email me! LOL Blessings, Angela

Hi Amazin , sorry I'm new at this web stuff ( mostly just a lurker) and couldn't find were I wrote to you the 1st time ... me feel so dumb with this puter stuff... but yes I have 9 begonias and 6 are from Logee's, some are named and other are ( pass a along's ) ..... Named ones= Begonia " Richardsiana" B." Snow Capped " B. "Tea Rose" B. "Hot Tamale" B. "Good and Plenty " B, "Tiny Gem " B. " Silver Queen " The Richardsiana has in pass week took a big flop , and so not sure whats up with it , taken it back into house , hope it was just heat stroking from 100 + daze we have been in for pass couple of weeks here in nastyville , so not sure about it. Two other's unknown named ones but pretty just the same and last one I think mite be B. " Sophia Cecile " not sure. I see you have " My Special Angel " have been looking at it in the catalogs . sorry I'm so long winded.... but sure there must be something in your long list that we can work with . P.s. I wont make it to any plant swap so..... not sure how we would do this if we've a mind to ???? But thanks for your time and effort if thats the only way .