I would like to trade with you. I don't have a lot of different flowers but this is what I have: purple coneflower, blackberry lily, Hardy hibiscus, red, white with red center and just a few pink, yellow profusion zinnias. I would like your Malva Bibor Felho, rudbeckia hirta mixed hybrids, Thymophila, digitalis lutea. If you don't like those I have some other seeds from other years - let me know what you are looking for.

Everything you ordered sounds purrrrfect (for cats!). The Aster carolinius grows like a house-a-fire! My neighbor bought his form Plant Delights in a tiny pot, and it reached the top of his fenceline by fall. It blooms in fall, too, and is just covered. Very nice vine. I just bought regular old liatris spicata purple flowering tubers at Wal-mart. I would love to have some of the other native species, but was afraid that they'd be grown in small pots and would take awhile to get going. Do you think that's true? I could get 25 tubers for $4 at Wal-mart, so thought I'd have a pretty nice stand of it. I also bought a couple of the Blue Stars (Amsonia) from them, and a couple from Woodlanders, too. I like to see the variation in what nursery's provide. I did a comparison between PD and Heronswood on my thalictrum flavum 'Illuminator', and the Heronswood plant was much nicer. I also bought a honeysuckle (L. sempervirens 'Leo') which has the red-orange blooms on it. I have a yellow-blooming one that is very old, and grows like a tree up a post in the front yard, that is connected to a V-shaped lath extending out from the porch. The trunk is a good 8" on it, and there are lots of tangled dead wood that the birds just love to nest and play around in. This is the plant that I get the hummingbird clearwing cats from. But, I'm also trying to attract hummingbirds, too, so I thought maybe the brighter color would help. I'm going to grow it in partial shade, but from what I've read, it should do fine there. Also got an anise shrub, too, but not the yellow and purchased the bottlebrush buckeye as well. Had to replace the spicebushes I got last year because they apparently have died. I broke off part of the limbs on them and the cambium layer was deader than a doornail. I just couldn't keep them watered enough last year in our 100+ temps we had for 2 months. So, I am going to grow them in pots this year in front. I pay more attention to them that way. I also got the Sweetbay Magnolia, too. I hope we have good luck with our plants. In Alabama, you are probably in zone 7b, aren't you? I'm in 7a in OKC. Happy planting and glad you're getting settled in now. Susan

HI Gang! I'm sacrificing one of my brug gardens for a veggie plot for this year. I hilled it up into a raised bed, 4'x10'size. I'm using the square foot method, it's really cool & productive. When one veggie is harvested, I'll turn it under, add a little compost, & sow something else in it's place. So crop rotation naturally occurs, cutting down on soild depletion & pest infestation. I plan on using most of the rest of my garden space for my hundred or so brug plants, cuttings & seedlings. This year, I will be tucking in seeds of beans in bare spots, and turn them under after harvest, to increase the fertility of my soil even more. (I'm a big organic gardener) Any given day, you can spy banana peels, orange & grapefruit rinds left over from lunch, hiding in a ziplock bag in my purse, heading home for my compost!) I'll be nagging my hubby this year, into hauling many truck loads of the most beautiful dark friable old horse manure this side of Eden. My soil is sandy, & because of the heat here, it eats up organic material like crazy! My little greenhouse gets a rotation of brug cuttings every day, then back in they go at night! I'm sowing more veggie seeds tomorrow before I go to work- lettuce, kale, beets, more snow pod peas. I'll dust all my legumes (peas & beans) with an inocculant, to increase the nitrogen at their roots & raise yields. Tonight I'm sowing more peppers- a nice rainbow color mix. That's it for now- better stop rambling, & get back to it! kasha77

As I write this, snow is falling outside my window and I consider the outdoor activities of the season  shoveling (a rather distant relation to my beloved digging, at least it gets me outside) and xcountry skiing -- as mere placeholders til gardening season starts. I dip into NE Gardening on GW about every other day in the cold months. I constantly admire the cheerleaders of posting for trying to get us slugs to respond. I do read blogs, mostly garden blogs, but a few every day, and I have been doing this for years. I have favorites, and I try dipping into links to these. Some become keepers, others one would never want to visit again. A blog is an experience of one individual  when you read blogs consistently, you get to know the person (gardener) and his/her garden and style. Photos are also an integral part of blogs. I have given some thought to why I read the blogs I do, and it really comes down to how good the writing is, and mostly because I share some of the same sensibilities as the blogger. Also reading blogs allows you to follow the continuity of something. One thing that I have noticed is that all the blogs I read are in cold climates more like our own -- there is a big garden blogging community in TX, but I havenÂt been tempted to follow anyone there, or in California either. But on GW, one feels like a contributor, not an audience. And itÂs fun to see how all of us different people respond to the same topic. Sharing and gathering Info, yes, but giving commentary and experience too. Sometimes I just want to know what others more or less around here have to say about a particular thing. We are a community too IÂm not on FB (and never will be) nor on Twitter  I personally think this is more of a generational thing. At Xmas also, I saw my 20-something daughter discreetly check her Blackberry periodically. I read the New York Times every day but in my department at work it is only us fifty-somethings who actually read the paper version. My assistant, like my daughter, both read it online. I think the internet is so big that there is room for discussion forums and social networking and blogs and research sources of all kinds. And then there is browsing for shopping. I adore going thru my catalogs, but I have found unique websites of very specialized nurseries whose catalogs I would never have received in the mail  actually they probably donÂt mail catalogs out. And now all we have to do is wait til awful winter is over, and the ground calls to us.