I'm in zone 5 Ottawa,Canada. Zone 4 for you in the US. They used to say you couldn't grow J.maples around here. But for 20 years I always could, and have never lost any, except 2 variegated ones. I have about 25 varieties, a sort of J. maple forest in my back yard & I am running out of room. Good thing they are dwarf trees, unlike our native maples that grow to 50 ft. I wholesale them from (grown in)BC, zone 7-8. They do not loose hardiness by grafting and propagating in a milder climate. The hardiness is built into the plant. I will say that they can sometimes be slow to establish, and this is the important part. Any tree should be planted early and well cared for in the first season, so it is well established going into it's first winter. I don't believe in bare root trees doing well, too slow to establish, or over wintering in a pot. They should always be planted in the ground and well mulched. I do think they prefer a more acidic soil. Ours is neutral approx. 6-7ph, so I spread sulphur everywhere every couple of years to acidify a little.(I don't like pink hydrangeas, prefer blue) I saw a study once, out of U of Michigan I think, where when they tested plants, and they found that plants growing in acidic soil seemed a little hardier than the same plants growing in more alkaline soils. In the past I have used geo-textile fleece as a winter cover for the first few winters, but snow makes a great insulator as well. I get a bit of tip dieback sometimes, but it doesn't matter since they grow back very well, as if they were pruned. There is a sort of wilt going around in J. maples lately, others have noticed as well. It doesn't hurt the tree, it just attacks some of the newest growing tips as they are finished flushing out in summer....sort of self pruning. We regularly get to minus 22 celcius (-10 far.)here most winters, with minimal problems. Even with last winter, the worst in 20 yrs., there were no losses. The only damage I ever notice is the heavy snow pack in spring, will sometimes crack the weeping types as it weighs them down and melts. Variegated types do seem less hardy, possibly due to the fact that variegation is a mutation and therefore weaker. Red and green types are perfectly hardy. They all seem hardier as they get older. thanks, Rich

jeepman252, I found these bowls on Ebay, it is Robinson Ransbottom. They call it the Zephrus pattern. According to this auction they were made in the 1940's. This set shows five bowls, it looks like you are missing a yellow one. But they are beautiful and quite unique. Looks like you got a good find. Jill Here is a link that might be useful: Ebay Auction RRP Zephrus

This site has a discussion about Japanese sewing machines being clones of American machines and why they usually hid their place of manufacture and how they named the machines... it may help you. Does your machine "look" like an old Singer? If so, this site has copies of old manuals. If yours isn't listed on this page, try browsing around the site. It has OODLES of old machines. And here is a third option, just email the folks at this site and send them absolutely all the info you have, and if you can, send them a picture - as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words!

Where do you live? (state, zone?) Is this a recent photo -i.e., are these growing now? I enlarged each picture a lot. Reading top row, L to R: 1, 2, could well be alyssum but the foliage does not seem quite right to me) but 6 definitely is alyssum (which actually IS an herb - Google it!). I agree with the consensus on #3; looks like grass but if you pluck some of the leaves & smells & tastes like an onion, it is chives. I believe #4 is a petunia (also may be considered an herb due to some ways petunias have been used; e.g., as a tisane- yuck - and the leaves as a pest repellent). Row 2, L to R: Number 5 is haunting me; I should know it, but I think it is something generally sold up where I live as an annual in a hanging basket (like a verbena). Number 7 is thyme; w/o being able to smell it cannot say which cultivar, but it looks like English/French/winter or whatever "ordinary" culinary thyme is, depending on what nursery sells it & what they name it. The last one certainly is a rosemary.