Hey all! I am liking this tablet but am missing a key board and mouse. I must be old fashioned, lol. I am trying to stir up a twitter hashtag for us #gwroses but I'm not sure it'll work. I hope it does I really miss the old days here. Y'all became such great friends. I do get free books with kindle, but no free rose dictionary yet...here's hoping. Florence, each day has been a struggle but my family and roses are my reason d'etre. How are you feeling???? I truly hope all is well! Rosy hugs, carlota or @HobbesCarlota on twitter.

Great pics, and I love to watch the little critters that visit the gardens! I spend hours contorting myself into strange positions to get pictures of the pollinators and other visitors. At first, the bees or butterflies seem skittish when I first appear, but after a few minutes, they seem to get used to this big human creature with a camera. They let me get very close sometimes. Here are a couple of the assorted bees that come to pollinate - Yesterday was very exciting, a female Monarch was alternating between nectaring and laying eggs on the Asclepias tuberosa and incarnata. Here she is nectaring - And here she is laying an egg - Can you spot the butterfly in this picture? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Oh, here she is!

mrclint: Nice tree. Glad to see others singing the praises of Page mandarin hybrid. Most people don't know it is closer to a grapefruit than an orange (in its genes). Page responds very well to fruit thinning as Patty mentioned for those suffering with small Page fruit. When I moved from Houston, in 04, Page was the first tree I planted. The tree was on citrange rootstock. That Christmas eve night it started snowing about 9 PM and continued until about 4am. My Page and about 60 other potted citrus were covered with two layers of heavy duty frost blanket so I did not care. Next morning there were 8 inches of wet snow on the ground. I could not see where the frost blanket was! It looked like a big igloo out there. I now have two more Page trees on standard trifoliate. One was supposed to be a Lee. The original Page was damaged in a bad freeze in the winter of 09/10. The bark split all the way past the graft line. But it is holding up better than I thought possible. My frost blanket ripped that night.

thank you for the suggestions. i got a 4 cu. ft. bag of vermiculite from a pool supply - i'm hoping its the right kind. i'm going to return the perlite and give the guy an earful for selling me perlite when i asked for vermiculite! not really, but this is really a headache! i'll feel better tomorrow once i get my soil mixed up and my seeds in =)