Hi Alex, "I didn't know that about State Fair being triploid." State Fair is tetraploid. If you cross a tetraploid with a diploid, you get a triploid. Triploids are sterile. A good example of triploids is bananas. All of the bananas in the store are triploids and in effect seedless. Those tiny brown dots would have been seed embryos if one parent had not been a tetraploid while the other was diploid. Banana breeders breed a lot of different diploid bananas and a lot of different tetraploid bananas, and their bananas have fertile seeds. So they grow bananas from seeds in order to get new varieties of bananas. They produce many amazing forms of bananas that never get grown commercially for one reason or another. Many years ago a banana company (I think it was Dole) ran a full page magazine add showing an assortment of their experimental bananas. One of them was round like a grapefruit. But I digress. "I now have Kaspersky for my security system. He promises to keep me safe - eh, comrade?" Let us know how Kapersky works. I have never tried that one. "And the good news... I have gathered some nice plump seeds from Alpha - yay! So, all is going well." Are you going to dry them for planting next Spring? I have a few green seeds that are nearly ready to pull, but I will be putting mine in a pre-germ Ziploc. I hope to have a second generation growing by Christmas. "... Bummer. I do still have the RAW files, I think, saved elsewhere, ..." I know you are not a fan of the user interface, but DxO Optics Pro 10 is now available for a free 30-day fully functional trial, and it could convert those raw files to a form that your Photoshop Elements 12 could process. Incidentally, DxO Optic's user interface has "improved" (changed) a little, and you might hate it less. It does allow you to create your own Presets, which makes it easy to repeat a previous choice of settings. DxO Optic's Prime option for Denoising is computation intensive, but very possibly the best available. Topaz's DeNoise plug-in is nearly as capable. I have both, but primarily use DxO's Prime Denoising, because it is spooky good. (Topaz's DeNoise is also spooky good.) "Other pics I can pick up from here and Photobucket. But it's going to take time." But the pics here and in Photobucket don't have nearly as much detail as your original Raw files. Incidentally, do you have a Nikon program called ViewNX 2? It can show you thumbnail pictures of NEF (RAW) files and you can double-click those thumbnails to get a full screen view of your RAW file. More later. More indoor gardening to do. ZM (not associated with any product or vendor mentioned or linked)

Okay... I just found this line: (7) Destroy volunteer overwintering plants and avoid planting near established diseased crops. from the following site: http://plantpathology.tamu.edu/Texlab/Multicrop/asteryellows.html Does a volunteer overwintering plant mean from seed too or just from a from a plant that survived the winter? I wonder if the warning for not planting new plants near currently infected plants only means during the same season, or if it also includes a new growing season where once infect plants once were. The only spaces in my garden for the new coneflowers are where the diseased were pulled up. :c( Should I not even bother?

Thanks Karen, Oh yes! If you go back and read the description for the first pic (Aster) you'll read my warning :O I'm so darn close to just yanking them all out for one not so invasive. It is more suited to my prairie bed and may be just where they're gonna go since they are a prairie plant; they'll get along just fine with the Rudbeckia, Ratibida, Echinacea, Mondarda, grasses, ect! I winter-sowed them and germination was 100% and out of about 50 seedlings I only planted 3 in back and 1 in one of my small front beds. I let them go to seed to harvest for trades and the following year I had Aster seedlings coming out of my ears. The fluffy seeds are carried by wind and boy did it ever blow around! Last year I cut them back before setting seed and this spring I still had a ton of seedlings cropping up....between the crevices of my rock border, in the gravel road outside of the bed and just about everywhere else:O

Where are you located? I'm interested in the rudbeckia and asters. Maybe others but definately those. I hope to be going to BelAir(not Bowie) and Catonsville next weekend so it might not be too far off course. Thanks for posting the offer. Bethb