If you're looking for prolonged bloom, you'll probably do better with a japonica (such as 'Prof Sargent') rather than a sasanqua (such as 'Fairy Blush' & 'Setsugekka'). If blooming season isn't your only criterion, though, sasanquas are wonderful garden plants. 'Elegans' is known as a long bloomer, & many of its sports (such as 'C M Wilson' & 'Grand Slam') also are supposed to have a long blooming season. As Luis said, 'Spring's Promise' has been mentioned as a marathon bloomer, & 'Daikagura' is a tried & true garden classic that also blooms early in the season. 'Joshua E Youtz' was originally called 'White Daikagura' & is also early, beautiful & blooms for months. 'Prof Sargent' has a reputation as a truly outstanding garden plant- I just planted one this fall, & he's establishing himself nicely, & getting ready to bloom. An article at SFGate mentions that the Prof blooms from Fall to Spring there. 'Nuccio's Bella Rossa' is also supposed to bloom for an unusually long time, & has a gorgeous flower, IMO; I'm a little bit in love with 'NBR Variegated'. Nuccio's isn't terribly close to SF, but if I lived anywhere on the West Coast, I'd consider a visit during blooming season just for the experience itself. Those folks know a few things about camellias, so even if you can't go, you may want to contact them for recommendations for your area. I know SF has a public Japanese tea garden, but don't know much about their camellias- it might be worth a visit? Good luck! Here is a link that might be useful: ACS Camellia Encyclopedia

Late to the party but couldn't resist adding my horror story, greatly abbreviated to reduce my stress from reliving this hellish experience. DH & I, retirees on a modest fixed income, sold our longtime house in 7/07 & bought a waterfront shack, intending to build a fairly humble retirement home within 18 or so months. Picked a local experienced waterfront builder who gave us a very affordable informal estimate; had our lot surveyed by JIM HART & ASSOCIATES of KIRKLAND, WA in 9/07, & commissioned the builder's in-house designer to plan our house at a cost of $13,600. Meanwhile, the city was busy putting further restrictions on building, so we had to rush our designer to get the plan submitted in time to avoid the new construction limitations - made the deadline by the skin of our teeth! So happy! Our builder, however, was not being too helpful & procrastinated, & we unfortunately followed his advice longer than we should have done - the upshot was that it took us until 7/09 to finally get our wft building permit - cue dancing in street! The builder then made a formal bid that was over twice what he'd estimated many months previously. We found a better qualified builder at a similar cost & were getting ready to excavate when we were informed by the city that our $13,500 building permit was rescinded because JIM HART's 2007 SURVEY WAS INACCURATE , per alert neighbor's report! Somehow the city overlooked a basic error, despite charging us $135/hr for MANY MONTHS of "expert review." JIM HART's survey incorrectly stated the ordinary high water mark. Our lot is small, & waterfront construction requirements are stringent, so this inaccurate survey meant our house design would not fit on the lot & was now useless, as we'd only be allowed to build a tiny hut if we simply modified the original building permit. We ended up forced to reapply for (& pay again for) a new building permit, get (& pay again for) a new house design, & engage an expensive architect to try to resolve with the city the problems related to JIM HART's INACCURATE SURVEY as expeditiously & inexpensively as possible (MASSIVE FAILURE!!) So now here we sit, in 11/2010, no new building permit YET, the city keeps requiring more info, & we unhappily anticipate our 4th Christmas in a rented storage unit-cum-2 bdrm apt! We thought we could at least recoup some of our expenses from JIM HART, KIRKLAND WA SURVEYOR, but unfortunately, back in the ignorant bliss of 9/07, JIM HART'S contract limited his liability to the cost of the survey only. We have lost over $45,000, EXCLUSIVE of our extended rental costs, lost our hard-won building permit & experienced over 1 year's construction delay solely due to JIM HART's BAD SURVEY! However, we know we are EXTREMELY lucky to have this type of problem - something to engage us in our Golden Years (lucky ol' DH, a former engineer, has even more diversion - he now works as an oncall security guard @ $13/hr on the overnight shift to keep us in dog food!)

Well-put inquiry! Brand-new Speed Queen front-loader: SIX loads, perhaps 8 tops. Horrendous metal sound in much-touted stainless steel spin basket during final spin at 1000 RPMs. Speed Queen advised us to call for warranty service. Authorized service provider came out next business day. Replacement spin basket was shipped in cardboard box and arrived damaged. Have just been told it will be another two weeks before part is in. We have been unable to use the washer since February 14. Not exactly the superior customer service Speed Queen claims to strive for on their website. Speed Queen/Alliance rep informed me this is a fluke. (I seem to recall similar comments when I called Maytag Priority One Service in 1998 when mildew first appeared in the rubber door seal of our Maytag Neptune Front-Loader.) For what it's worth, in almost ten years, we had no other problems with the Neptune front-loader until its recent demise. The only replacement machines we considered were Miele and Speed Queen and we feel totally duped. After drooling over the bells and whistles offered by Miele, we decided to go back to the basics with Speed Queen's "commercial quality" machines. Plumbly 22 has excellent points. Also, beware of salespeople only interested in promoting appliances which provide them with "spiffs." We went to the Brand Source dealer that sold us our built-in refrigerator and double oven since they carried Speed Queen. They only wanted to sell us the latest models of another manufacturer which all of the salesmen just happened to have in their homes. You have lots of time for web research before the big day. I'd definitely take your wife along on the shopping adventure. Best of luck!

About a year and a half. I never remember being without electricity when I was a child in Ontario: I don't know when electricity first came to our home. Grandpa had bought our farm near London, on a major highway about a mile and a quarter from a village, in 1917 and Dad and Mom took over the farm some time after their marriage in 1925. I was born in 1929 and I remember us getting a small table radio about 1940. Dad had bronchial trouble and was concerned that he was on the way to becoming asthmatic, and moved to Saskatchewan just after World War II, in 1946. He sharecropped a farm about 10 miles from the capital, Regina, owned by a man whom Grandpa had helped get an education around 1900, who moved to the prairies with his brother as young men. We arrived in the spring of 1946, we three boys drove four miles to school and I stayed home for a week or so later in the spring to help put in the crops. I was the only student in Grade 11 and I think that the principal (operating Grades 9 - 12) in the one-room high school, spent more than usual time with me to get me up to speed. I should perhaps be embarrassed to report hat my average in that school year was higher than the next, my final year, when I was there for the full year. The power line was a mile and a half from the house where we lived and our landlord hadn't chosen to install a connection to it ... but he did, a few years later, after Dad had bought a farm, when the landlord retired and moved from the city out to that farmhouse. A year and almost a half after our move, I went to university in Saskatchewan's second largest city, Saskatoon ... there's a bush berry beloved of people in that part of the prairies that bears its name. After my first year, I returned to the farm so lived without electricity from May till September of that year, as well. We had an oil-fired cookstove, a battery radio and kerosene-powered lamps and lanterns that pushed kerosene under pressure up a tube by a conical mesh where it was vapourized and then burned as the vapour hit the mesh, to provide light that was quite bright - and warmth, as well (which was appreciated in winter). By the way ... my first encounter with a bathroom, which requires water under pressure, in my place of residence was when I went to university and lived in a dorm, in the fall of 1947, when I was 18. ole joyfuelled