Part one I have a friend whose parents were among the founding members of the botanical society here, her name is Martina and she loves all growing things. Her mother passed away in 1996 and the botanical names of many of the plants she inherited are unknown to her although she grew up with them. Her parents are Austrian and called their plants by their Austrian names, sometimes translating the Austrian to English. When I first met her 4 years ago when she was dating my friend Charles. He brought her over one late afternoon for a visit, she'd brought a staggeringly beautiful plant with her that had been on my want list for a long time. Charles had it with him, he took her to the backyard and came to the door with one of it's flowers in his hand. I couldn't believe it when I saw him standing there, and tried to take the bloom, he was holding it out. He pulled it back and asked me what it was in a kind of challenging way. I thought he knew what it was and was testing me, lol, I said "It's a Gloriosa "Rothschildiana" of course!" Welllll, it wasn't a test, Martina really wanted to know and was such a warm, adorable, lovely person that we bonded almost instantly. Down through the years we've just gotten closer and closer. I love her to pieces. I wish I'd known her mother, she sounds like a rather wonderful humanbeing. I did meet their mutual friend, Nell, who is another wonderful and unique individual. Martina's a hero for introducing us. Her plants are amazing and she is passionate about them, and about life in general. She's 73 years young and can outwork most men I know. She's tough and knowledgeable and compassionate all at the same time. I think the world of this lady. Part two About the same time I met Nell I found Gardenweb and hooked up with a member in Mobile. We hit it off instantly, we had a lot in common and each was doing things that complimented the other. She's so wonderful, I don't know how to tell you how much I think of her. She's beautiful and smart, frank and earnest, honorable and ingenious. Our first meeting was at the botanical gardens' fall sale, we had a great time because we were kind of kept busy answering the questions of the other shoppers there, we didn't get much shopping done, lol. She went back on the last day of the sale, she knew the left-over plants would be marked down. One of the plants that hadn't sold, marked at $8 a gallon, was a bunch of Clivia miniata, it was marked at $2. a gallon. Ginny already had plenty of clivias, including some nice yellows, but she was knowledgeable enough to know that she shouldn't pass up an opportunity like that so she bought a couple to give as gifts, one was for an old friend, the other was for me! I couldn't believe it, I had wanted one for sooooo long, it was such a sweet, thoughtful thing to do and I hope she knows how much she means to me. I've had this clivia ever since, it's such a nice plant, such lovely long, orchid-like foliage. The whole growth...

I'm posting the following information from W. George Schmid: "The short answer is that all hostas are rhizomatous plants. A rhizome is a horizontal stem of a plant found underground, sending out roots and shoots from its nodes. Rhizomes may also be referred to as creeping rootstalks. If a rhizome is composed of several rhizomatous, interconnected creeping roots, each piece may be able to give rise to new plants. This is a process known as vegetative reproduction and is used by gardeners to propagate hostas because the resulting plants are clones of the original plant. This process is called root (or rhizome) division. When digging different cultivars, the rhizome is often one contiguous mass, but it may also be a mass of smaller interconnected tubular rhizomes that look like a mass of stolons, but these are not stolons in the strict sense. A stolon is similar to a rhizome, but, unlike a rhizome which is the main stem of the plant, a stolon is a branch that sprouts from an existing stem, has long internodes, and generates new shoots at the end. In general, rhizomes have short internodes; they send out roots from the bottom of the nodes and new upward-growing shoots from the top of the nodes. It is also a method of reproduction for plants. Stolons, on the other hand, are branches of the plant which grow at the soil surface or below ground and can form new plants at the ends or at the nodes. Stolons are often called runners. Imprecisely, they are stems that run atop or just under the ground; more specifically, a stolon is a horizontal shoot from a plant that grows on top of or below the soil surface with the ability to produce new clones of the same plant from buds at the tip. Some hostas have differently shaped rhizomes depending on which parent species is involved. In the case of 'Golden Tiara', H. nakaiana was the parent. This species has a rhizome that has a fast growth rate and quickly makes spreading interconnected runners, forming one rhizome. This is still called a rhizome, but one that is sending out smaller, usually elongated parts of stem roots and shoots. H. sieboldii is another example, which has a non-contiguous looking, spreading rhizome connected together. Looking like stolons, they are not, but are elongated rhizomes that produce plants from the nodes. Such spreading rhizomes seen in hostas often have a fast growth rate. Rhizomes often grow into very large contiguous masses and the center part of such rhizomes dies, while the still living parts of the rhizome form a ring-shaped plant. Gardeners often replace the dead center part with a living rhizome to maintain the huge plant as a single clump. Eventually the ring-shaped rhizome breaks up and forms a ring on non-connected plants, all with their own rhizome. Only one hosta species I know of has a stoloniferous habit: H. clausa var. stolonifera. I named it that way because plants with stolons or stolon-like rhizomes are called stoloniferous. This species variety is a special form that occurs in the dense cover of native willows (Salix) and never develops flower stalks in the dense cover. Its method of propagation is solely vegetative by way of creeping rhizomes. This form is also grown in Western gardens and has been called provisionally H. clausa var. stolonifera. According to Chung (1990), this form is biologically one and the same species, but shows local adaptation to an ecology that prevents propagation by seeds." Thanks, George

Ah, one picture is worth a thousand words. . .but I've got another question, rhetorical, of course - WHY would anyone cut out trees and expose themselves like that? I'm sure you ask yourself that every day. . . George better have an iron-clad copyright on his "multi- layered screening border" 'cause it's perilously close to a lot of my layering techniques. . .:) I particularly like the Sambucus 'Sutherland Gold layered on the Acer palmatum 'Bloodgood'. . .might just accidentally "borrow" that concept. . .although I'd like to mix in some other good understory trees like sassafras and native dogwoods, along with some of the taller Viburnums. DTD is spot-on with her 2x4 technique; it's really simple and hugely effective. Start by picking YOUR spot you most want screened - kitchen window view, patio table, etc. Say it's the patio table. . .you sit there, and have your accomplice (wearing camouflage, of course) parade back and forth along the edge of the woods - put some kind of flag on top of the 2x4 and the neighbor will think you're doing miltary exercises, especially if you're wearing a helmet and waving a sword - when the 2x4 reaches the left and right extremes of their deck, call out to your parader and have them mark those spots. Now you know the epicenter of any screening device you're going to create. And here's an expansion of my earlier suggestion about running arbors: if the distance between the two markers isn't greater than, say, ten feet, you could create a free-standing square arbor of the desired height. . .you now have your privacy (at the patio), a stunning new focal point in the lower garden, and there's STILL plenty of room for George's copyrighted creation. . . By the way, I'm actually serious about the arbor: today, I was working on one in my own back yard (for different reasons), which will be 6-foot square and 16-foot tall (the vertical posts rise 8 feet, then it tapers another 8 feet to a point - yes, with a wind-sock holder!) - it looks like a tower, with a platform inside at the 5-foot level, but it's really an arbor and will be covered with climbing roses, wisteria, gelsemium and grapes! Carl P.S. Of course, you could just invite George and I and anyone else who's interested, over for coffee, and we could solve this whole thing in an afternoon.

Ginger, thanks for your interesting questions. Sort of farm--During my growing-up years when my father ran it (I was born in '51), it was basically a hog and grain farm. He grew lots of corn for the pigs and to sell, plus some oats, but started growing soybeans in the sixties as a cash crop as well. We had a few chickens early on, but found it more convenient to buy at the store. (I think even store-bought chicken used to taste better back then.) My mother was a city girl from 200 miles away and hadn't inherited the gardening genes of her father. She did like to grow yellow wax beans and freeze them, which we all enjoyed. During my father's growing up it was much more diversified. At present, having retained about a third of the acreage, 122 acres, our renter/manager/neighbor specializes in grain--soybeans and corn. Organic veggies?--I've gradually gone to organic and permacultural gardening for fun. I really love fruit, and since my husband and I can be on the farm only three months of the year (we teach up in Alaska and fly our Cessna down every year), time is at a premium. Therefore, perennial edibles are my priority, with maybe a few yellow wax beans. So I've planted fruit trees and small-fruit shrubs, asparagus, rhubarb, hardneck garlic (not really perennial, of course), garlic chives, and (my namesake) Egyptian onions, plus many other kinds of herbs. All of these are just jumbled together for a permacultureal type of system, though I do plant them in such a way as to enhance the ability to mow around them. In the east garden, for instance, I planted over the years three rows of fruit trees, plus another row of currants, rhubarb, and grapes. In between the trees, I planted within the rows all kinds of herbaceaous plants, for organic companion reasons, but also so that I could just run the mower all the way up and down without having to go around each individual tree. (I initially scoffed at the by-word "easy to mow around," but soon incorporated it into my criteria of good gardening once I actually started mowing.) Rainbow garden-- Blue: blue flax Darker blue: Veronica austriaca 'Crater Lake Blue' Annual blue salvia that either survive or reseed every year, c.r.n. (can't remember name)--Victoria? Purple: annual reseeding larkpur, Consolida ambigua Veronica spicata 'Blue Peter' Veronica 'Sunny Border Blue' Salvia X Superba 'Blue Hill' Salvia 'Superba Blue Queen' Red: Ground cover rose 'Red Ribbons' (Jackson & Perkins) Dianthus, 'Flashing Light' and 'Brilliant' Orange: Asclepias tuberosa Gaillardia, 'Goblin' and a bigger c.r.n. Gold: Coreopsis, tall c.r.n. Rudbeckia fulgida 'Goldsturm' Yellow: Achillea filipendula Coreopsis 'Zagreb' Green: Juniper horizontalis 'Plumosa Youngstown' Euphorbia cyparissias (am phasing out as juniper grows) Historical restoration--As I view pictures that go all the way back to 1900, I see many changes, including the location of fences, the coming and going of huge trees, and in the ground itself as I describe before with the double terracing. And yet there are still a couple of barns and a corn crib that endure. Times change and new personalities come in. My blood link to the past allows me to both have some knowledge of the past, as well as the capability of gathing more knowledge from pictures, written material, and friends and neighbors whose relationships with the family go back for generations. I cherish this, and often repeat plantings to mimic the past. Yet I can't put it all back and I don't feel the need. As long as I have the family blood, the farm is still evolving as the family farm. I try to do it justice, and though I enjoy it tremendously myself, I'm really only borrowing it from the next generation, whether it goes to my nieces (we're child-free) or whether it changes over to a whole new set of genes. Please check out the gallery again as I will soon have some more pictures in it. Egyptianonion