Hi Joe, if you really want to, I think you still can you mind power to overcome the legends. You might not change overnight, but you can probably overcome it given some time. Just think of it this way, there are so many people who grow banana, and they have no problem, so it should be ok. Then look at some lovely Chinese brush paintings. They have garden pictures with bananas too. Then when you visit those gardens, stay by the banana trees for a long time and tell yourself "see, there is nothing. It is just a plant." After a while, that fear will reduce and hopefully go away one day, but you have to keep doing the above because it is a psychological thing and not just logical thing. I grew up in Indonesia. Banana trees are just so abundant that you see bananas just everywhere. I lived in a city area but still, lots of bananas popped up here and there and many near my house. When you are surrounded by bananas like that, no legend can affect you anymore. And also remember there are so many legends like that in Asia. It is just a matter of knowing it or not. If you happen not to know about the Pontianak legend, then you would feel quite fine; but there are legends about cats, willow trees, the moon, just about anything. Or think about this, when we were children, sometimes because of stories or scary movies that we watched, there was always a fear around graveyard. Maybe this carries over after we are grown up and depends on what our belief is. But when I was small, cemeteries were mysterious and scary to me (especially those huge tombs in Indonesia); but one time I visited a relative of mine. They live in a poorer area by a cemetery. So their children (my cousins) played in the cemetery. They ran around, jumped over, climbed over the tombs! That itself somehow affected me because when I left their place, I remember I was thinking, "huh, maybe it is not that scary afterall." I like banana too but it is too cold for Michigan. If climate permits, I would love to have papaya and mango first before banana though.

If your African violets take too much of your time, then you are giving them way too much attention. Honestly, I barely acknowledge mine and they are gorgeous year round. I think too many people want African violets to seem like they need special care. They don't. I have dropped, crushed, over-watered, under-watered, drenched in hot sunlight, left in the dark, and failed to re-pot my African violets for years at a time. They still reward me with blooms whether or not I deserve it. I have heat intolerance from multiple sclerosis, so I keep my apartment cool (most would say COLD) year round. I drop everything, including the African violets. I might take the dust off their leaves once a year. In the winter I hardly ever turn on the heat, so it's normally at 45-55 degrees; I tell people I keep it warm enough in the winter so the African violets don't freeze. In the summer the temperature cannot go higher than 70 degrees or lose my right leg, right hand and most of my cognitive abilities; at times the air conditioner has the apartment down to 60 degrees all day. I don't provide them with any special lighting. I water them when I am physically able to lift the jug. I always add food to the water, because with my short-term memory loss can never worry about a feeding schedule. I have mine in pots with holes in the bottom sitting on top of a tray of aquarium stones. If the stones look dry, I water the stones. My African violets LOVE living here! They have healthy foliage and gorgeous flowers. In the wild, no one fusses over them. They get gnawed on and stepped on. African violets acclimate very well to many different conditions. They survived before people came along to take care of them. It's a shame to get rid of plants you have cared for. Just stick them somewhere and forget about them. If they look like they are wilted, water them.

Madeleine, Wow! I've been wanting black raspberry canes. I need more vinca and a few threadleaf coreopsis this year, too. And I know exactly where I would put Stella de Oro or Kwanso daylilies....if you have extras. Unfortunately, what I have from your want list, you already have, but my new favorite plant happens to be a biennial edible--flat-leaf parsley "Gigante D'Italia." It's so tough that I was digging it out from under the snow to harvest some in January. I started some seeds of it earlier this week (I decided the two huge plants in my garden just weren't enough!). I can plant another container if you're interested. Diana Lynn

I am in a hot humid 8b zone. I don't prune. On occasion when the foliage canopy cannot protect the tomatoes from direct mid day sun in June, the tomatoes get scalded. I sacrifice some growing space to keep full foliage as assurance against scalding. I have 4 plants in a 4 x 4 and I expect I will learn if I have been too optimistic in crowding them. I have a twin sister on Austin. When she relays her gardening experiences, the conditions are more brutal heat wise, always hotter sooner. May be less humid, which may give you some wiggle room to prolong pollination into July. Most of my plants shut down in July. They idle or die. Some survive until the heat subsides. In reading this forum, I learned some in my zone plant out again in July. The July and august