Thanks very much for sharing your experience and advice. I had a bad day of harping with "why are you growing more plants?" and "why do you need all this 'stuff'?"...meaning seedlings inside and out, potting soil, amendments, containers, tools, lights, heat mat, etc., etc. etc.! I decided to stop worrying about whether my father will sell his house and convert from mostly annuals to many more perennials this year. It's been a lot of work growing some myself and ordering starts of others. I took over the basement to start first year blooming perennials (and lots of salvia) which has become another bone of contention. This brings me joy and I'm trying to ignore the nongardener's wrath. Good news on the Lychnis. CMK, I'll welcome volunteers next year if I get them. This year I'm using some very nice home made leaf mold/compost for mulch instead of hardwood or cedar bark. I don't think I see more than 1 Cleome seedling from where I scattered lots of seed but that could change as the season moves on. There's a good long narrow "bladed" step on shovel in the garage which we just used to clear the way for sprinkler heads. Looks good for digging deeply around the Echinops rosettes. I'm surprised the groundhogs haven't eaten them yet as they did last year. Luckily the rosettes are still only about 6" high with no prickly stem growth yet. This is the first window of moderate temps and clouds/rain to both plant things out and transplant. I'm so excited it seems silly to nongardeners. Ken, I've already killed a few things so I'm not a newbie at that! That's why I've got over 20 seedlings each of Salvia Lady in Red & Coral Nymph, Agastache Rupestris, Agastache Apricot Sprite, Agastache Purple Pygmy and beautiful Monarda Bergamo among others...LOL. Don't have room for all of them but I'll share some color by planting any extras at a neighbor's and one sister neither of whom have flowers. It'll feel so good to share the beauty and colors. Hopefully they'll get to see Hummingbirds nectaring the way I did last year. Thanks again. I knew I had to move them but wanted to get some experienced voices for support and advice. Last average frost date is May 15th and then there's the big push to plant out. If I get half the bloom I'm expecting I'm going to be one ecstatic camper! Leslie PS...Cameron, I'm keeping track of your deer resistant garden. Thanks for sharing it on your blog.

Columbus, Lol, I had no idea Columbus was full of fine volcanic soil : ) That photo is funny, I didn't even notice the slug when I took the pic. I've had slugs everywhere this year! ProudGM, Thanks! I really love the Symphandra. Well, I love any type of bellflower. It blooms for a very long time too. Angie, Thanks also! You know I'm always on the hunt for interesting things to grow. With Wsing it has gotten so easy and cheap to try new plants. Bakemom, They look great, and honest I really didn't do much for them. I like how the stems are so strong also. They survived Ike rolling through the other night as if nothing happened. Rosepetal, I got the seeds for the variegated columbine from a trader. The seeds were from their garden, so they do grow true. I planted them away from my other columbines and on the opposite side of my garage, so they will have some distance away from the others, and hopefully, they might bloom at a slightly different time to lessen the chance of cross pollination. I'm glad you found my photo album helpful! Fran, We may have a match! I went and checked and the seeds are small. The blooms are about 2 inches. I think mine looks more blue in general than the photo I took. I'm pretty sure my pic was taken early in the morning so that would account for the deep looking color in my photo. I don't know about pinking later in the day since I have them growing on my porch posts and that area faces east and is out of direct sun after morning. Remy

wisconsitom Oklahoma City has been replacing the (blah) import stuff and going all native in their plantings downtown, along medians and the landscaping around government buildings. I know people like flowers but here they are doing mass plantings of mostly native grasses with other plants as accents which makes me very happy. We are a prairie state so I think its a matter of state pride being shown and focused on along with watering issues and lower maintenance. They also added a lot of large life sized cast-bronze buffalo's and they place them among the grasses, like a mother with two calves or as singles. Isn't that cool? The grass is very decorative when massed planted in drifts and people seem to be liking it a lot down here. The new bridges and underpasses have locally native animals like Scissor Tail Flycatchers and Native American designs as reliefs in the concrete. I've been adding a lot more prairie grasses to my own property too. I want it to be predominantly grasses with flowering or textural plants as accents. I feel the grasses tie everything together and makes the flowers look better than when its all flowering plants. At the History Museum there was some beautiful solidago planted in front of a thicket of Three Leaf Sumacs. I googled it and found that they are a type called 'Fireworks', low growing with arching branches. I collected a few seeds. They also have a tall mass of Azure Salvia along with other natives like liatris, hibiscus, gaillardia, rudbeckia and several others but the grasses are the main event. They have massed in prairie grasses with a huge area of little bluestem, big bluestem and another of all Indian Grass planted in a swale, these all sway in the wind which we usually have lot of. There is a large hill of big rocks encrusted with 4 types of prairie grass (muhlenbergia riverchonnii, sideoats grama, blue grama and purple three awn) and the seeds literally glow with light in late afternoon. There is a huge planting all done in switchgrass with two smaller types around the perimeter with several buffalo in the midst of it. The bluestem is a mass of blue leaves that turns purple with seeds in fall. It looks good in winter too. I asked one of the guys who was working down there about the grasses etc and he said "Oh, you mean them weeds?". Oh well, there are some people who really will never 'get it'. Personally, I think its fabulous and its particularly stunning when seen at a distance from the highway. Grasses planted in mass just make a big bold statement.

Lesson from one who ate without ID. I purchased Amaranth seeds so we could eat the leaves in salads and enjoy the flowers. Up comes this HUGE plant that looked exactly like an Amaranth... well, like the photo on the seed pack. So I took a small leaf and ate it. Delicious. After many days of eating one leaf as a test, I cooked up a ton of it like spinach. Sauteed with garlic in butter. Served it for dinner. DELICIOUS! Exactly one hour after dinner, I began having blurry eyesight, as did hubby. Then we started getting jerky muscle spasms. We thought it would stop, but now we couldn't walk, so 911. Spent the night and morning on IV's at emergency. We had eaten a neuro-poison! Common name is Indian Tobacco. You can smoke it, but you can't eat it!