Haha Aggie. That's Amber's list - I was just responding to it with my experiences. I hadn't even noticed it was alphabetical. I guess I was going too fast. I have to say I think your collection (and wish list) sounds like such a pretty set. I bet they look very well together. That's just what I did - traded with other newcomers. Then I could swap what I had without feeling too guilty about lack of selection or size. It sure can be intimidating to trade with veterans, with such amazing plants and generous cuttings. I was thinking about it last night and I felt I should say that I do consider most of the ones we are mentioning, including those in Amber's original list, uncommon. Just accessible enough that members of our community have been growing them long enough to share. I totally agree with you, Amber, that the best thing about trading is that feeling when you look at a plant and feel connected through it to the person who gave it to you. I am a very sentimental person and sometimes I think these GW members have no idea how often I am thinking of them, when a new leaf forms or my plant blooms a couple days after they post pictures of its mother's flowers. Occasionally, without my database, I will forget which vendor I got a particular plant from, but a trade plant never gets disconnected in my mind from its origin. I actually got a great deal of pleasure responding to your list just because it made me reflect on all the generous people who enabled me to get to know such lovely species. I hope if you're reading you know how thankful I am! :) I've never had a tamarillo before, Nat. Can you compare it to another fruit? I hope you get an answer to your question, as it looks like a beautiful plant to own.

OK, the second smaller one lived through the summer, but the first one did not. The small one's leaves were eaten by some caterpillars before I sprayed it with BT but it is alive and growing a few new leaves just intime to loose them.. I just planted it out away from hose reach. I have been reading "Gardening With Less Water" by David Bainbridge" and he recommended Deep Piping. I am in Texas that has gotten extreme droughts and we are looking at back to back La Niñas (true not strong ones). I am on a sloping terrain so I am going to add some drilled pipes to the digging hole. These are 20" long with 1/8" holes drilled on one side. I did pick a spot where some dirt from a septic system dug in adobe clay and some dirt from the house being dug into a limestone hill was dumped and leveled. It made the digging of an 18" hole possible. I normally have 2" of topsoil on top of marl and then a solid shelf of limestone.. The pipes should get the water deep into the ground. It has been a dry fall after the hurricane. I was recommended straight square holes by a land restorer at Selah ranch. He said that root would be less likely to do the strangling round round. They would get stuck in a corner and bust on through to our inhospitable his country cr@p ( I say affectionately). We will see. the two rocks are on top of the pipe ends. I still need to gather together a bunch of leaf mulch to op dress it with. AND a cage to keep the deer off of it. I am now digging wholes in an area of no top soil to plant a small red bud and it got a 16" long pipe and I had to calk in the top hole due to not being able to reach depth. That was tough digging. I have also planted a Carolina buckthorn , wafer ash and Anacho Orchid trees in this manner on this Thanksgiving weekend.

Sorry for the late reply to your query Joe. I haven't been on the forum much over winter, busy with other things. I did go up to the Summerland Ornamental Gardens yesterday to do a quick check on the roses. We had a very difficult winter with a warm November and December, and in early January a sudden flash freeze with temperatures as low as -27 C for a week or so. It is still late winter here and the soil is yet frozen to a degree. Summerland is rated as zone 6b, but we had 5a temeratures with strong arctic catabatic winds and wind chill during the cold snap. So, on to the roses. Most of them will be going into their 3rd growing season this summer, and so are still immature plants. I am happy to report that all of them survived. Many have quite a bit of cane damage, but they all have live cane close to the ground and some have swelling buds already. The collection at the Gardens consists of the following: Marianne, Gallicandy, Oshun, Jerry Jennings and Treasure Trail. We also have Allegra, Janet Inada, Mel's Heritage and Won Fang Yon in the greenhouse at Fraser Valley Rose Farm in Deroche. I will continue to look for viable opportunities to acquire more varieties if feasible, but won't be actively seeking them out. We imported six cuttings of each, along with many more early Austin varieties and a few other hard to find varieties last spring. Jason stuck the cuttings and has been growing them on over winter. I have not spoken with Jason for a month or so, but he is doing an inventory and I will know in a few weeks what took. As well as putting Paul's Plants into the collection at Summerland, Jason will be growing Barden varieties as well and will no doubt have some for sale in Canada in a few years. We too will propagate from the plants in the Summerland collection when the mother plants are mature enough. We will sell our resulting plants at our spring plant sale and our annual Rose Tour held in June. The proceeds will go to help support the Ornamental Gardens. So by my count, we have nine of Paul's varieties in the two Canadian collections. They should be secure for a long time in our Public Garden, which is now 110 years old. We of course were unable to get all of the varieties that we might have liked, but we did pretty well in my books. Because the whole idea of the project was to secure and currate some of Paul's varieties in a safe place, I guess we have a success. An additional intent was to allow us to propagate and share these lovely plants with others. Jason will be able to do that better than we can at the Gardens in the next few years and may in fact eventually begin shipping to the US as his new nursery grows. But again, that will be a few years down the road. Even propagating plants for sale here in Canada is still a year or two away. But then this project started in 2019 and we are now entering year six, but we are on the road to reaching our long term goals. I know many on the forums are familiar with Jason through his You Tube Videos and website. he is young, energetic and a cutting edge nurseryman and Rosarian who shares my passion for preserving rare, garden worthy varieties. For those of you in Canada, check out his website and support him if you can.

I bought a hoya curtisii and it was already drowning from the store, after a few weeks od still being wet and going almos all yellow to fallinf i decided to experiment with it in one of this self watering planters, so i repoted it wirh almos all new dry soil moist it it a lil left her in the sun almost two days, the third day i implemented the bottom container from the pot ans bow is by the window and me with my fingers crossed…. is my first hoya ever and i really like it and i cant afford it to die lol after buying 13 planta in a week ny husband revoqued my right to any more plants 😜🤣😂 literally theres is no more space hahaha