..I've often wondered why Austin's haven't named any roses after Jane Austen's characters or places in her books. I've tried to research this a little but cannot find a satisfactory answer, so I presume that either her family or the Jane Austen House and Museum - may have rights to exclusivity. I note that in Holland there is a rose called 'Pride of Jane', but this was developed at the request of the Dutch Jane Austen Society...and here we have a recent Harkness rose 'Pride and Prejudice' released 2013, and which I see prominently placed in garden centres, but again this was bred at the request of the Jane Austen House and Museum at Chawton, with some proceeds from the sale going to that property... so negotiations of some sort must have gone on there... ...David Austin Roses have of course released 'Jayne Austin', a family member, which may fool some purchasers, but otherwise, the only rose they've bred that can be connected with Jane is 'Winchester Cathedral' which is where she's buried... and one they could have chosen presumably without the need to defer to anyone else... ...you would think that a rose named after 'Elizabeth Bennet'... 'Mr Darcy'... 'Emma'... 'Mansfield Park'... etc. would likely be best sellers.... ...regading the issue of trademarking, here is a photo of two labels from their roses 'Wollerton Old Hall' which has been 'TM' for some time and this years debutante, 'Desdemona' which hadn't at that time, have that 'TM', [I don't know if it does now]... but as you can see it says 'applied for'... I remember thinking at the time when I saw this, that how can they prohibit propagation without a licence, when it's only been 'applied for', and from that I infer not yet received...

I live in a small town where there's not a lot of perennials available from the nurseries. And lots of what's for sale isn't really for this zone. For several years I've had a perennial plant sale in the spring. Mostly divisions of whatever happens to need dividing at the time. Now that I've started this, it seems hard to quit. People stop me on the street and ask me when my sale is. I sell everything at a very reasonable price. I pot the divisions in used potting mix. It makes it easier to keep the divisions healthy until the day of the sale. Some plants were divided in the fall and are in pots sunk in the garden. It's a lot of work but I get to meet a lot of people who are very happy to get hardy perennials. Every year I say that's the last one, but I always have stuff that needs a home.

Mine grows own-root, and it's also from Heirloom. This year, I had to hit the reset button on a lot of roses, due to issues related to encroaching shade, which I addressed by giving the Callery pear another harsh haircut this year. 'Prospero' scared me a bit, because it sent forth two stout canes, but then just bloomed and branched upon that. This year, I noticed cane borer damage, and I had to cut it moderately-hard. Was the cane borer damage holding it back, or its inherent disdain for producing new canes? We'll find out this year. We sure are getting a lot of rain today and tomorrow -- nearly 48 hours of it, nonstop -- and I gave the beds a healthy feeding of Garden Tone, so I'm hoping the garden refreshes nicely. We're so behind on warming up, making me wonder how this year will turn out. :-) ~Christopher

Yes, I've eaten rabbit my whole life, both wild and domesticated. And I've raised and processed my own, but it's a process I dislike and the final product isn't worth the work to me. As floral says, it's relatively boney. I have pressure canned it, but it has a lot of tiny little bones that you'll be constantly picking out of the very well cooked meat if you can it with bones in. If you remove it from the bone, it's tedious and time consuming. I've eaten rabbit my whole life, my brother used to hunt for small game and would bring home wild rabbits that he shot. Usually it was made into stew, because a couple of small wild rabbits would feed six people that comprised my family if you added enough vegetables. Grandma also would cook the meat until it came off the bones easily, pick the bones out and make rabbit meat in gravy to be served over biscuits. Occasionally we would have it soaked in buttermilk and then fried, like chicken, and more recently, we've put a couple in the smoker. I actually liked that the best of all the applications. Good luck with your experiment. Rabbit is mild, and domesticated is even milder than wild rabbit, so it can be fixed various ways without competing with other flavors. It's also low in fat and high in protein, a sustainable and healthy choice as long as you can find someone to slaughter them, or have the patience to do it yourself. Annie