Oh, boy! I've been sick and coming back and reading this is like...well, like a mandate to go to the nusery! Most of you guys have warmer gardens than me, but these still have to be plants that'll show up early here too. Nippersdad, this is my first year with Edgeworthia. My friends all went crazy over it some time ago, but I looked at those silly flower-on-stick blooms and, as much as I love fragrance and winter bloom, decided to pass. Then I saw a mature plant all leafed out in another garden, and wow! The foliage is lush, even a bit on the tropical side, and it makes a very handsome plant for a position you'll be passing by a lot. Not so in winter, but then you get to spend the whole fall and early winter watching and waiting as those buds swell, so it is really a prize. That's very valuable information about daphne, Steve, and I'm writing it down to remember. It's still on my must-have-someday list so I haven't managed to kill it yet. What a great trip, Razorback. I love the Tama types but they sold out during a trip I made with friends to Fort Valley before I could grab one. Speaking of wanting more room, I used to live about 15 minutes from Descanso Gardens and 20 from Nuccio's Nursery, but my entire garden, carved out of the side of a mountain, totaled about 4000 square feet. I had 5 camellias in the shady back. Candytuft's always been on the list, Mk87, but it suddenly jumped up big time on the tidy groundcover list I'm trying to put together. I have so much dirt to cover and am already seeing that vining groundcovers are going to be a major hassel to control in large spaces. Thank you. A plant that's doing very nicely in my garden is lime thyme. Lemon thyme kept dying back after a while, but lime thyme's looking very pretty and fresh out there right now. If rodents (I assume) hadn't eaten my little species tulips, they would have been a wonderful picture. I'll be trying again. I don't mind all the learning experiences so much, it's that they take soooo long! I'm afraid of what another of these cycles is going to do, even though I have no winter-flowering camellias yet (it's so cold here I have to stick with winter-hardy, with maybe a couple of my favorites tucked against the house. What a difference these warm temperatures made since my post on New Year's Day, though. My tiny Osmanthus delavayi now has tiny buds at each leaf joint, so it will bloom after all, and both witch hazels, virginiana and Primavera, are opening flowers I thought had been killed by that early cold. These are my first from them, and I was thrilled to find their fragrances lovely and easy to discern from even one open flower (turns out they start blooming from the bottom, so I'm on my knees in the mud checking them out). Also looking very nice out there is Lavandula stoechas, Spanish lavender. The label's gone (do birds fly off with them?), so I don't know what cultivar, if any, but it's a very handsome tidy mound of a pretty pale green-blue-gray. And has a wonderful fragrance when you brush your hand over in passing or pinch off a piece to carry along. It's not in an especially dry or well-draining spot but doesn't seem to have been bothered by the rains so far. My husband needs me. A window just blew out of his workshop.

My computer has been having issues and won't accept any new pictures for some reason. And I have tons of them of the mangosteen blooming...not just the grafted one, but the small seedlings too! Sheehan...not new growth on pulasan but blooms on it too! Sure wish I could show you guys..............sigh. Seriously...the growth coming out of the pulasan is so small, I doubt the camera would pic it up! As for thrips cure? I'm starting to wonder how well lighter fluid just might work...it's a part one of a two part cure of course.

After reading this thread, I searched for the series on YouTube. Found both seasons, but the episodes uploaded are not the best. One person's upload was too dark, the one I had to settle on was too small. In other words, much of the time the actors' heads are cut off. But I get the gist. Looked into Netflix for $11.99 a month. I couldn't justify paying that along with my monthly cable bill. I see there is a free trial tho. How easy is it to cancel after the free trial?

My problem with the little bit I watched was that everyone seemed to be trying too hard, as actors, I mean. It made me uneasy. I saw a lot of potential in the premise, the dialogue, and really like the individual cast members but I just couldn't get into it at all. I may try another episode or two later today, with a hopeful attitude. I like intelligent, quirky comedies.