Ok, nothing like waiting until the last day to dig stuff, especially when one is retired...anywho, this is what I have lined out to dig and bring. I'll be doing the 'specific' stuff first and then if time and energy allows dig or take cuttings of some other things. Tina(Kilngod) Native Jeffersonia diphylla-aka Twin Leaf -- YES a start or 2 of Wild Ginger -- (YES if you have time) a start of Ajuga Burgundy Glow -- YES a start of Metallic Ajuga -- YES a start of Bronze Beauty ajuga -- YES yarrow Terra Cotta -- YES yarrow-Cerise Queen -- (YES if you have time) yarrow Papricka -- YES Lilac-no id, but is not the regular lavender old fashioned one...this one might be a short variety. -- (YES if you have time) Sedum cuttings-Black Jack -- YES Sedum cuttings-Xenox -- YES cuttings of Lady in Red Hydrangea? -- YES (way cool!) Marcia Twinleaf Firepink-Silene Virginica-shade blooming native?-awaiting word on this Jen Monarda 2 butterfly bushes Stellas Hostas Shade bed stuff-Twin Leaf-Solomon's Seal Iris daffs Misc Dreamspirit shade plants- bright sun bed sun/shade bed Misc Jennyfoo Hibiscus-Hardy anything-Misc Please look my list over and post or email me if you see anything of interest. Not listed on my trade list are yarrow-papricka yarrow-Cerise Queen yarrow-Terra Cotta Fire Pinks maybe more There are numerous things (sedums and shrubs) that I can easily bring cuttings of. Sue Here is a link that might be useful: My trade list

Wow, June went by sooo fast, I can't believe July is just around the corner! I really enjoyed Jan's early birthday intro, and was able to prepare the box a little better just because of it. So, I'm going to do the same! My real birthday is December 17. Getting to celebrate my birthday during the summer for the first time is a real treat! I would never be able to receive any plants in December! I'm still working on my moon garden, and would appreciate anything that I could add to it (plants, seeds, small statues, etc). I also adore sunflowers, glass suncatchers, homemade soaps. Anything with a sunflower motiff is perfect. Candles (any scent), things for the garden, garden related items. I collect birdhouse items (any) especially crafted items by Marjolein Bastin (Hallmark). I love feeding the birds, and basically just love anything that has to do with nature! I also collect african violets, hoyas- (would love a piece of a 'crinkle' hoya, rope hoya (regular or variegated, or any unusual hoya, I already have Publicalyx, Silver pink, Phillipine black. I would love a few indoor ferns (don't have any), regular, rabbit's foot fern, or a division of an outdoor fern, that can tolerate cold temperatures. More indoor plants that I'm looking for are- a chunk of monstera, variegated monstera cutting/small plant. Variegated plants are my favorite, and am always wanting to try something new! I also appreciate vegetable/herb seeds. I have a huge garden that I'm constantly still trying to complete! Herbs grow really fast anyways! ;) I love Heirloom seeds too. I'm sooo excited to be the July birthday person! I'll be happy with ANYTHING, I love hand crafted items too! I make crafts occasionally, and know how much work goes into making something! Deb Debbya

I received my shipment of Miele detergent (for whites, colors, delicates, and fabric softener) in mid December and compared it against PERSIL MEGAPERLS (for whites and colors. I have used PERSIL since 2003 when I first purchased my machine, but have tried other brands during this time. As I mentioned in my previous post I looked up the Kreussler Company on the web, which is the maker of this detergent. Kreussler is the private company Miele uses to manufacture their commercial detergents which are sold to laundries under the brand name of Trebon. Powder Detergent Product Consistency: Persil consists of small beads. The Miele detergent is similar to fine grain sugar. Fragrance: Persil is scented when you sniff the product in the container but does not leave a scent on clothes. The Miele product is described as the smell of flowers and there is a scent when in the container. No scent is left in the clothes and since my washer drains into the sink I have to say that there is no trace of a scent in the discharged water. If anything it smells rather acrid. Dosage: I purchased my current boxes of PERSIL in the early spring of 2007. I compared those boxes to my previous box from 2006 and found that the recommended dosage had been increased by 1 ML. This doesnt matter since I ignore recommended dosages, and use amounts I have found to be right for my soil levels and water conditions. The Miele detergent comes with a cup which does not match the dosage lines on the PERSIL cup and does not match a standard USA cup either. I compared the recommended amounts by following the PERSIL dosage using the PERSIL cup, then pouring that amount into the Miele cup. The Miele recommended amounts for each soil level are slightly less than the PERSIL amounts. The Miele box contains recommended amounts for small and larger washers. Even though I dont use recommended amounts I found that I could decrease the dosage amount when using the Miele detergent, so I can use slightly less of it for each soil level. Cleaning in temps of 85F, 104F, and 120F: I did not do any scientific-like comparisons or do any strip tests. I have the same type of typical or heavy (ground in, body, oily) soil in most loads. I got very good results in warm watereverything was cleaned. I did do a load of white cleaning clothes in warm water instead of hot(190F) and got very good results. Oily dirt was handled well in warm water. Rinsing: One reason I use PERSIL MEGAPERLS is because it rinses well in my water. The Miele detergent rinses a bit better. The wash discharge water is milky and contains no suds. During the first rinse water will be clear with slight bubbles on the top. As the spins and rinses continue these dissipate. Liquid detergent for Delicates: Persil for Delicates is a creamy thick liquid. The Miele Delicates is like a creamy water. I understand there may be an issue with the W11XX or W12XX dispenser and I guess it is different than the dispenser on my W1986 because it will hold back water. This consistency is good for me because I have trouble with the thicker products in the winter. I think this is because my incoming cold water is about 40 degrees and it cannot flush thick products as well. With the dispenser I had to add hot water to it to get it to flush. I dont even use the dispenser anymore even with the Miele product. If I am not going to do a prewash I just move the clothes away from one of the fins in the tub, pour the product onto and into the fin, close the door and start the machine - works fine. Delicates come out clean. Fabric Softener: The Consistency is like water and it easily flushes from the dispenser leaving nothing behind. Clothes are left soft. There is no scent that I recognize and I dont smell anything in the clothes hours or days later, although clothes smell clean, fresh and good.

If ever there was anything that would drive me back to the city, it would be the annual onslaught of venomous snakes....and I am NEVER, EVER, EVER going back to the city. Living in the country is 1 million times more fun than living in the city and I'm never going to stop feeling that way. I do not mean any disrespect for cities by saying that either, but just that I've lived in a big city and in a very rural location and, for our family, the rural location wins hands-down. We moved here when our son was a teenager and he was not overwhelmingly happy about it. He couldn't wait to grow up, move away and never come back. Of course, he grew up and he did give city living a try, and he loved it for a month or two, and then tolerated it for a couple more years. Now he's back here, building his own home with his own two hands, so he can live here in the country right beside us. City living wasn't all that wonderful after all, once he'd lived in the country for a few years. I want to emphasize that we live in an extraordinarily wild area because we are surrounded on three sides (although the southern side isn't as wild as the east and west) by the Red River flood plain lands (aka river bottom lands) that are heavily inhabited by wildlife of all kinds. The average person living in an average rural setting likely won't see 1/10th as many snakes as we see. My brother lived in the country south of Ft. Worth in what I'd consider a pretty wild area in the 1980s and 1990s and probably didn't see but maybe 3 snakes, a few armadillos, and a bobcat a year. It is all about location. If you don't want wildlife, stay away from rivers, bottom lands and wildlife management areas. : ) Seeing a snake will not kill you. I kinda felt that way before we moved here, but I have gotten used to them. That doesn't mean I am happy to see them, but just that I have done my best to make peace with having them around. I even like the rough green tree snakes. They are the color of canna leaves in the springtime and are very gentle and slow moving. They like to hang out on the asparagus plants, canna lilies and on top of shade cloth (to sun themselves) in the garden in the summer. Since they are not venomous, I tread lightly around them and try not to scare them off. Don't get me wrong. Any venomous snake in our yard, driveway or garden is considered a threat to our safety and is shot and killed. We have 14.4 acres and they can freely roam about 11 or 12 acres and we'll never see them and they'll never see us, but if they come up on the couple of acres closest to the house, they are history. While many people like black rat snakes and like to have them around (many people here who do not have poultry like to have one or two living in their garage, shed, shop building or barns) to kill rodents, but we shoot them when we find them in any building of ours, and especially in the chicken coops. They will eat eggs and chicks, and I don't just mean tiny chicks----they wrap themselves around half-grown chickens and guineas, squeeze them to death (like a boa constrictor) and eat them too. So, any rat snake (or chicken snake, which we rarely see) gets shot. We are raising poultry for ourselves, not to provide fast food for snakes. As long as you are careful and vigilant about watching where you put your hands and feet (I walk looking down at the ground around me as I take each step, even (lol) when we are at a mall in a parking lot or something....and I've never been bitten. Sometimes I think it is just that the Good Lord is looking after me....I have stepped on snakes, stepped right over them in the garden path without even seeing them, and have had a rattlesnake a couple of inches away from my hand on a particularly memorable occasion in which I did a backwards summersault from a sitting position to get away from it before it could strike me. Luckily, there was no one around to witness that! Our first 6 or 8 years here, when I was working so hard to turn dense, concrete-like red clay into decent soil, I was outside 12-16 hours per day 364 days per year. I never have been bitten by a snake. Could it happen? Sure it could. But, it hasn't happened yet, and I think that is largely because I never let my guard down. If you are really nervous about snakes, you can buy snake-proof boots and snake-proof pants (I believe they are made for and marketed to hunters) or snake chaps. As nervous as snakes make me, I've never been upset enough by close encounters with them to buy the snake-proof clothing, but I do wear really heavy duty (meaning ugly) high-top leather boots with steel toes, and I gave up wearing sandals and open-toed or open-heeled shoes over a decade ago. I SO agree with every word Stockergal said. I cannot even begin to describe how awesome it is to live here in what we jokingly call the Oklahoma Outback. I've seen bald eagles perched on top of pole barn roofs, I've had golden eagles fly overhead....hummingbirds circling me in the garden visiting flowers we planted specifically for them. There's all the many songbirds almost year-round, purple martins in spring and summer, ducks and geese flying overhead in fall....does bringing their fawns to my garden to teach them how to nibble at the bean plants climbing the fence. One old doe who lived here when we bought the land used to bring her brand new fawns to the meadow beside my garden and leave them there for me to babysit while she left for a couple of hours. It was bizarre, but she did it often enough that I felt sure she was leaving them there near me on purpose. How often is that going to happen in the city? How often will you hear a knock at your window and pull back the curtain to see two young coons trying to get you to give them a handout? (I suspect someone else near us was feeding them.) It still amuses me to walk out the door at night and have a possum spot me and fall over on the ground, seemingly dead and drooling, though I know it is only "playing possum" to make me go away. Can you see that in the city? I think not. We have wildflowers in bloom almost year-round if you know where to look for them in late fall through late winter. We get to watch all kinds of wild animals raise their young. We get to enjoy seeing lambs, kids, colts and calves in the fields and we get to watch them grow up. We get to watch the endless changing of the seasons, up close and personal, day in and day out, year-round. I love it, love it, love it. I'm never in the garden alone. There's always tons of butterflies, bees dragonflies, lacewings, lady bugs, wheel bugs, soldier bugs, frogs, toads, non-venomous snakes, birds of all types, moths, etc. in there with me. I love that too. Who wouldn't want to live this way? Snakes are especially bad this year because we have had three big rounds of Red River flooding, including it getting higher here than it ever has before. Although this likely didn't make the news there in central OK, the Red River got so high here that it damaged roads 2 MILES from the river. That blows my mind. It washed away a few homes. It cut a new channel (fairly common in flooding) and destroyed some folks' property by carrying away a lot of it. It has been a horrible year. It flooded the Falconhead Airport, with water getting at least 6' high inside the aircraft hangars. That was unprecedented flooding, and it pushed wild animals up out of the river bottom lands, including Wildlife Management Areas, and onto higher ground, like the place where we live. That's what has happened here. Usually snakes aren't this bad. They probably won't be this bad again for another decade. I'll just be extra careful until the cold weather arrives and we'll get through this snakey period. So what if I have to hibernate indoors in August while the snakes are especially active? August is no great prize anyhow, and indoors is the place to be, based solely on the high temperatures and heat index numbers. Although my parents were city folks, they both grew up in the country, and I had many relatives who lived in the country. Some of them ranched and farmed. I knew what country living was all about and we haven't run into anything here that I didn't expect (well, except maybe the cougars, but they are rare and I can go years in between seeing them). If I had to do it all again, knowing what I know about all the nervous, hair-raising moments some wild animals can cause you, I'd move here again in a heartbeat. We were around 40 years old when we moved here. I wish we'd done it when we were 25 years old. I hate that we missed so many years of county living that we could have had. We are living the dream! I am so very happy and so very grateful to live here, snakes and all, and wouldn't trade it for anything else anywhere else ever. Don't let the inconvenience of a few snake encounters a year keep you from moving the country. Friends of ours who live about 2 miles up the road from us may see 1 or 2 snakes a year because they are further away from the river and the bottom lands than we are. It is all about location. I know you can find a location less snakey than mine. Go for it! You will not regret it. You live in Oklahoma. You deal with crazy weather. No snake encounter I've ever had since moving here has been 1/10th as scary as sitting in the tornado shelter, under a tornado warning, while family and friends in Texas are texting me images of a tornado filmed by storm chasers in our own county (though, thankfully, not over our own property). You don't let Oklahoma's tornadoes, microbursts, ice storms, dust storms, heat waves, baseball or softball-sized hail, derechoes, etc., chase you away from Oklahoma, and I bet more people are injured by weather events annually in this state than are injured by snakebites. Why let a few serpents steal your joy and keep you from moving to the country? I encourage you to let go of the fear of snakes and move to the country anyway. They haven't got me yet, and they've certainly had plenty of opportunity. There's bad things everywhere. You just learn to live with them.