Campanula, That post was nothing short of inspirational, i'm very moved :) I am now on the look out for jonquila. lol An unfortunate coincidence, 2 days prior to reading your post I was staring jonquilla baby moon in the face, among about 50 other spring bulbs at a store. In the end, I went with hyacinth city of haarlem because it seemed to be highly regarded as a fragrant, and unusually colored hyacinth. I regret my choice.....might be going back there to pick up baby moon for that "heart-lifting" fragrance. They are really adorable little flowers. I also found that hyacinth very rarely propagate themselves, and need to be lifted and scored after going dormant if you want it to spread......among other unfavorable mentions on hyacinths. I still adore them, and look forward to the fragrance each year at a public garden. Hopefully city of haarlem will not be fussy in my yard. As my favorite daffodil, don't have one. This is my first year messing with daffodils. I picked up a mixed set of 'ice king' and 'delnashaugh'. Hope they perform well. Hopefully I snag some baby moon before it's too late. I feel a favorite coming on if I get it.

Sad to say, I have become less enthusiastic about bulbs. I also find no one here at our house is thrilled to get the job of planting the bulbs. BUT, I also have the same problems as chris reports. The squirrels dug up and ran off with all the crocus I spent all that time selecting and planting last fall, not to mention paying for. Not one bloom this spring from that planting. Very disappointing. Since then I have heard you can sprinkle cayenne pepper around the ground and the bulbs in the hole, but I just don't have the motivation to try it again this year. I added daffodils to a lot of beds the fall before last and now I wish I hadn't. The foliage for the past two years has hung around for months. There is a LOT of foliage too because I put in a good amount. In some areas away from the house, I don't mind as much because it is at a distance and I am not up close looking at it every time I go outside. I keep trying to find a perennial combination that would hide the foliage, but the usual daylily, hosta recommendations just don't work for me, where I placed my bulbs. There are too many of them to braid the foliage. I wanted to dig some of them up this fall and move them...but then the other problem chris mentioned...'where are they?' I already ruined a couple of bulbs in the front when I was trying to dig out a clump of lily of the valley that I decided I wasn't keeping any more. I do move and dig pretty frequently too. I was thinking maybe I should try some of the smaller bulbs that have less obvious foliage when they are finished. I don't mind the crocus foliage and I wouldn't be without it....but, I just wish I could figure out a way to grow bulbs without these issues. Or find a different spring bulb then I haven't tried yet, that doesn't have these problems. I'd really like some that work in the lawn that I wouldn't be disturbing and that by a certain time in the spring I could give them a haircut and that would be the end of them. Anyone have any suggestions for bulbs that I would be happier with? :-)

Cath, I think 'Ice Follies' does well everywhere: it grew here for years until overwhelmed by a prostrate ceanothus, and was one of my major survivors in Washington too. As my taste has developed I've become less impressed with its looks, though. The trumpets I find a bit surprising, though I don't know why; the feral daffodils one runs across here are mostly of that same type. 'Ice Wings' is another Triandrus hybrid, I notice it has received the RHS's Award of Garden Merit. I'm getting fond of Triandrus daffodils. Bart, good luck! Who knows, your cedar may perform wonderfully. I can only report about trees growing in local conditions, and those can be summed up in one word: clay. Ingrid, Gardening is certainly a tempering experience. No sane person would want to deal with the conditions you're fighting now, but they're forcing you to keep on thinking and planning. I wonder what the native California flora might have to offer you? principles of desert gardening as developed in the Middle East, northern Africa, Spain? Here we're still waiting for fall to arrive. It was downright hot yesterday, and sticky, with the sun finally visible after nine days of clouds and rain. Temperatures are supposed to drop this coming week, the sky to clear entirely, and I should think the humidity level will drop as well, and thank goodness. I'm still getting chigger bites and have allergy symptoms. We finished filling in the 70-80 holes we had dug, stuffing them with hay and the dirt that had been removed. It was a heavy job. Last week's rain watered everything nicely, and when it gets a bit cooler we'll be able to begin planting the rooted roses, with my attention particularly focused on those grown from suckers I collected last winter. These are once-blooming European OGRs, mostly Gallicas and Damasks. We have some warm climate roses to get in the ground too, but their holes still need to be prepared, and it's going to be a slow business. And there are a lot more chores. The (mostly) OGR varieties I propagated from suckers are the following: 'Agar' 'La Ville de Bruxelles' 'Petite Orleannaise' 'Duchesse de Berry' 'Nouvelle Pivoine' 'Incomparable' R. gallica 'Splendens' 'Gloire de France' 'Miranda' 'Belle de Crecy' 'Kazanlik' 'Winchester Cathedral' 'Mme. Zoetmans' 'Celsiana' Celestial' 'Nuits de Young' 'Nestor' (?) 'Elisa Rovella' 'Leda' R. foetida 'Persian Yellow' 'Austrian Copper' Of the Petrovic order from two years ago we may have lost as many as a quarter of the total (I think that tends high: I haven't checked the whole line yet), which still leaves us with sixty-odd new varieties. I'm still back-filling holes to bury the grafts deeper, digging out the occasional cursed rootstock sucker, and cleaning around the plants. They'll need to be nursed along for at least a couple of years yet, but they're on their way. Our losses were mostly in two low areas of the bed, which we found out were low when we got the wettest winter imaginable after planting the roses. In these areas we've been building up the planting sites and trenching around them, always amending generously with old hay. The grass and clover this fall are wonderful. Melissa

foxesearth - so funny and so true! I usually put off buying the big bags of daffodil bulbs for naturalizing until October. By then, they either can be 1)marked down considerably 2) half of the bag will have dried up bulbs 3) store has pulled them from the shelves Right now Lowes has 80ct.bags of mixed daffs for $15.97 (?). Couldn't resist checking out WalMart's bulb selections this year - lots of bulbs but not much variety. They had bags of 12ct.Day Dream tulips for $4. Nice looking bulbs, too. I bought one bag, should go back and get a couple more at that price. If I order from bulb catalogs, something takes over; and I end up with a $200 order in no time. Sometimes I fill out an order form, maybe even stamp the envelope but never mail it!