It sounds like your seeds are ripe. If the pod isn't completely dry I'd keep it in a paper bag and let it finish drying. The paper bag will allow air circulation and contain the seeds. If it's dry just split it open and take the seeds out. Lay them on some paper to make sure they dry out completely before you store them. Daturas might actually be a tender perennial. I grow them as annuals but did send a double purple plant to a friend in FL before the cold set in here and it's still growing and blooming for him. They are just so easy to grow from seed that nobody bothers to try wintering them over in colder zones. If your plant is already dead or dying I doubt that it will come back to life but you can just sow more seeds in early spring. I usually start them inside in late winter because our frost date isn't until early May. Karyn PS: I don't think the photo in the first post is available anymore. All I see is the red x too.

> I don't imagine things are different in Canada, Zabby. Actually, there are some significant differences, which is why there's work for me on accounting texts here, most of which are adaptations of U.S. books. But the overriding principles we're arguing about are universal. > In the U.S. there are 7 sets of GAAPs. I don't know any accountants who talks of "sets of GAAPs" --- they're not like the ten commandments, but a large body of principles and customs. > However, "So the overall cost of my life doesn't go up if I start using that shovel to grow veggies." doesn't ring true in this case. We are not measuring the total cost of your life. We are trying to make a comparison between the costs of a home-canned jar of something with what it costs to buy that something. So, in this case, you have to include all those bits and pieces in order to compare like to like. Ah, but here is where I think your logic is truly faulty. As I said, accounting is a decision-making tool. It helps businesses make decisions about their finances, governments make decisions about how much tax to charge you, and people make decisions about what to do with their money, time, etc. (though of course it's not the only or even the most important factor in those decisions, as we have all agreed in the case of canning and gardening). So accounting helps you ask various questions and get answers that compare things. Now, you seem to be asking the question "How much does it cost a company, starting from building the factory, to make and sell a can of tomatoes, vs. how much it costs a person, starting with absolutely nothing, to make a can of tomatoes?" As an academic exercise, it may be interesting, but it's irrelevant to most real situations. The question I was talking about is the useful one: what is the overall extra cost (or savings) to my life is I can veggies instead of buying them? If I already own a shovel to grow my flowers with, that shovel has been already "paid for" out of my "growing flowers as a hobby" cost centre in my life. If I "charge" some of it to my canning cost centre, then I'm double expensing it --- a no-no according to GAAP in any country. > There's also another aspect we haven't begun to look at: Cost of possession. When you are buying things you generally buy for immediate needs, or maintain a very small inventory. Not necessarily. I know plenty of people who buy canned goods by the caseload from Costco or Price Club. But the general point is true that there is a cost of maintaining inventory --- though it can't be generalized to a particular percentage for most situations. It depends a great deal on how the inventory is managed and where it's kept. (That cost is much higher, for e.g., in places where space is expensive, or for goods that require special circumstances --- so the cost of possession was way higher for things I stored frozen in the city than for a canned good in my larger small-town home.) A much bigger often-uncounted cost by many people is the land --- I would have bought a home with a smaller yard if I hadn't known I wanted a veggie garden. So part of my mortgage every month should reasonably be costed to my veggies. On the other hand, the veggies I grew in Toronto were in my BF's backyard which he wasn't using anyway, so it would have been UNreasonable to apply the space cost there. It's comparable to, say, vacant land that a municipality donates to a company to help entice them to move to that municipality. SImilarly, one's labour time should be charged only if, realistically, one would have been making money if one wasn't canning. (In my case this is sometimes true.) If one does it for sheer joy, then it's comparable to volunteer labour. > The fact is, most opportunity costs are unrealistic. Sure, if you weren't canning you could spend that time on a ski trip. But would your _really_ make that trip? Probably not. Opportunity costs are hard to measure, because who can say for sure what one WOULD have done? But they are absolutely real, and companies that ignore them in their accounting make worse decisions. In the case of many people who regard canning as a hobby, if they weren't canning, tney'd be doing something else recreational, very possibly something that costs money. > Number one: You cannot can food less expensively than you can buy it. Well, the main difference between us probably really is that I think you're using a definition of "less expensively" that is irrelevant to the question most people trying to make this calculation are actually asking --- and I mean quite apart from including the whole "priceless experience" factor. One that I suspect would, in fact, be rejected by an auditor. Even under my definitions, mind you, I think many people, probably including me, don't save money by canning. But I think some people do. Sigh. I am tired of arguing this one, too, GL, and I don't actually have any expectation you will change your mind; the only reason I am bothering, is that actual cost, in a realistic, practical sense, DOES enter into it for some folks. (I have one friend, for example, who canned fruit during grad school to save money.) And for those people who might want or really need to economize in this way, it's not helpful to say categorically it can't be done, nor to claim that some supposed "rule" of accounting means they "have" to count certain things as costs that don't make sense in the real situation. It shows a misunderstanding (all too common) of what accounting actually means. > Number two: Who cares? We can for all sorts of great reasons, and actual cost hardly enters into it. For me it sure doesn't, I am 100% with you on that! And we do agree on the main thing that the experience and great product are the most important, for us. Z

HappyDay, it looks like I should be getting more beans since there are lots of flowers, so I'm going to let them do their own thing this year. I've never had to force before and I'm not sure what's up. We haven't been for a few years; we went in 2006 and 2007. We have friends there whom we visit, but we usually stay in a gîte and do a lot of exploring on our own. We love the south of France! I haven't tried the small French plums; we usually go in the fall around the vendange when the sunflowers are just fading. Figs are ripe then, though, and that's always lovely.

I have no idea what it could be, but let the pod dry really really well. The seeds need to mature inside, so wait for the pod to turn brown. This could take a while. You may want to mark it somehow, and you may want to protect it in some way so that you'll get the seeds when the time comes. Some plants spew out their seeds when they're ready; they may self-sow (and hey, that would be kinda cool.