OFFERS TODAY: Tuesday Feb 10, 09 1 offer Bi-color Mixed varieties? 1 offer Watermelon Sugar Baby 1 offer Melon: Honey Dew 4 offers Maltese Cross 1 offer Watermelon Jubilee 1 offer Large Pear Shaped Tomato 1 offer Passion Flower Passiflora caerulea yr unknown Comm. pk 1 offer Lavatera Mont Blanc Annual yr unknown Comm. pk Full Sun 1 offer Euphorbe Summer Icicle Annual yr unknown Comm. Pk Sun to Part Shade 1 offer Thyme (Organics Biologique) Comm.pk yr unknown 1 offer Lettuce Mesclun Bon Vivant yr hand written on it 2008 1 offer Dill Chia Brand Herbs Comm year unknown 1 offer Morning Glory Heavenly Blue Comm yr unknown 1 offer Tomato Brandywine (Oragnic Biologique) yr marked out 1 offer Castor Bean feels like 4 seeds comm. pk unknown yr 1 offer Tomato could be black no other info 1 offer Heirloom Tomato Basinga 2006 1 offer Isis Yellow Flag 2 offer Asclepias Soulmate Pink zone 3-9 Please note I have NO clue what the first one might even remotely be, your guess is as good as mine! Also remember anything you are requesting could be on your list and if I have put one pack in your bag already and you request these extras too, then you have 2 I will not pull the first pack or the requested. It would be too confusing to try to keep up wiith I think so you will just have 2 lol. :) Fran

Thanks for your kind comments! Trish... I am so sorry that Sandy affected you and your home in such a major way. I hope that things are going as smoothly as possible as you try to put things back together. To deal with all of that with a busy two year old must be especially challenging. I absolutely love my tile and its warm somewhat rustic appearance so I'm glad that you like it too. I did some checking for you and have some info which I hope will be helpful. I sourced my tile from my local Virginia Tile store in Michigan. They would ship to NY but that would be hugely expensive, of course. I googled Edimax distributors in NY and came up with a couple who told me that they don't carry Material Forte and Westchester Tile in Scarsdale which told me that the Materia Forte was being discontinued(!) I quickly called my Virginia Tile rep who had not heard anything about that and was still expecting shipments within the next month. Checking further, I found the AllStone Boston Design Center that carries Edimax tile. The good news is they ship from a warehouse in New Jersey so that might be reasonable to consider. I spoke with Lauren Maggio who was very helpful and suggested that you contact her (lauren@allstone.net) with details about the sizes and quantity that you'd be interested in and that she could order a tile sample for you. Their phone number is 617-737-2200. Depending on the size tiles that you're considering, I wouldn't be too hesitant to order tile in this way. We found that, by doing the usual mixing of boxes, we were happy with all of the large tiles and how they blended together. The 4 x 4's were a different story however because they had much more variation in tones and because they were a tumbled tile with uneven edges... some of them were very, very uneven. We ordered way more than we needed and picked out the best ones to use. I hope that helps... please feel free to let me know if you have any other questions that I might be able to answer. I'd love to hear what you decide to do and look forward to seeing pictures of your room.

What lovely nostalgic stories! My memories of a cold winter morning were of the rattling coming up the big old round furnace pipes as Dad shook the ashes out of the grates and put some more wood blocks on the coals to start the fire going ... the heat came more quickly if he'd bought some coal in the fall and put some on the fire at night, for there'd be more coals left. We cut our own wood from trees that were dieing in our woodlot. Then Dad went to the barn to milk the cows and feed them - as we got older, we had to go out to help, mainly feeding the cattle. We fed the work horses and the beef cattle and pigs (we didn't call them "swine") in another barn after breakfast - but went to school on school days. Eight kids in one-room elementary school, separate doors for "Boys" and "Girls", with toilets over a tank in the separated basement. We'd line up by the "Boys" entrance door from cloakroom and march around to our desks as the teacher played, "English Country Gardens" on the piano. The big kids helped the littler ones with their work, part of the time. Once a bit of a distant neighbour came into the little general store in the village when I was there, about 4 years old, I think and Dad was in a side romm getting something, and when he saw me is reported to have said, "No need to ask who you are - Dick Baker will never be dead as long as you're around!". Dad died 23 years ago ... and there was 28 years difference in our ages. When he was in his 80s, he'd drive 2,000 miles alone every year from the Prairies down here to London to visit old friends ... in 3 days. We used to say that he was crazy ... but agreed that when they're 80 or so, you may as well save your breath to cool your porridge as tell them what they should do. Did I say that? Brother said that he was too tight to spring for more than two nights in a motel on the road ... and when I asked what was the difference - he'd spend about three weeks in a motel when he was down here, brother replied, "Oh, yeah - but he gets a weekly rate from them!". Did someone say something about apples not falling far from trees? Have yourselves a great spring weekend, everyone. ole joyful

Harriet, I agree, and it was that way dating back to at least the 1980s, though it got even better in the 1990s. I do think Howard Garrett had a lot to do with that---it seems to me that there was a huge number of folks gardening organically in the D-FW metro area long before it became nearly as popular in other areas. I still prefer shopping down there, although at least many of the organic products are now found in stores only 20-30 miles from where we live, whereas in our early years here we had to drive 80-90 miles, one way, to find those same organic products. So much has improved for organic gardeners in recent years. I grew up listening to Neil Sperry and have nothing but the utmost respect and admiration for him. His books are my gardening bibles dating back decades. I listened to his gardening show from when it first started, which I think may have been in the 1970s when I was still in high school. I read his columns. I remember when he was our county extension agent back even prior to the radio show. Then at some point I became aware of Howard Garrett too, probably in the 1980s, and began reading his newspaper columns/books and listening to his program on the radio too. To this day, when I mention Howard Garrett, Tim quips his tag line from the end of the radio show "and don't forget to feed the birds". Maybe that is why we feed the birds to this day. When Neil Sperry and Howard Garrett had a sort of quiet war between them on the radio waves, with each of them making pointed remarks about what "other people" recommended without saying one another's names, I knew who those barbs were aimed at, and I hated it. They both are fine people, with different philosophies, and I bet if they knew each other outside of horticulture, they'd like each other just fine. I just tried to learn from both of them and to find my own way to garden based on what I know and feel is important. I've always been 95% organic though, so even when Neil recommends synthetic products, I tend to let that part go in one ear and out the other. I used a miticide (Kelthane) once in the 1980s and Round-up a few times, and Bug-B-Gone for grasshoppers once in the 2000s. That's about the extent of my synthetic product usage in terms of miticides, herbicides and insecticides, but I do use Daconil to prevent/halt the spread of Early Blight sometimes. So, I guess I garden more Howard's way in terms of the philosophy and general practices I use, but from Neil I have learned so much about everything involved in horticulture that I appreciate---his knowlege of plants, pests and diseases is huge and vast and there's just no one like him. I still get his e-newsletter weekly and devour every word. If you've read and listened to Neil all along, you know that he is much less chemically-oriented than he once was. He was, after all, a product of what he was taught when he was in college and they all were taught the chemical way back then. I just happen to prefer Howard's natural way a lot more and it generally works well for most things. You know how when you have two friends who you get along with just fine, but they cannot stand each other? Well, that's how I felt it was with Neil and Howard, though I did not know either one personally. I just kept wishing they could get along and appreciate one another as much as I appreciated both of them. I guess that never will happen though. Dawn