Siberian Blues Dianthus is definitely mauve and not blue. My Fama Blue Scabiosa is more of a blue/purple, depending on the time of day and how old the bloom is. Brunnera is a gorgeous light true blue. There is nothing else that I've seen out there like it. Cranesbill Jolly Bee is a bit bluer than Rozanne. I grow both and at times they look exactly alike. I think a lot depends on the heat and the time of year. I bought an annual salvia at a greenhouse this year called Patio Deep Blue and it is a very, very intense blue. I hope they sell it again next year in case I don't get seeds to save from it. Another nice blue salvia is Salvia Black and Blue. It is normally an annual in our zone, but I've had my plant for three years now. Linda

Everyone just laugh along with us. It's free & soooo good for you. I'm glad Shirley found a good use for the upcycled binder piece from a zippered binder from my son. It had frayed beyond repair again and was previous repaired by my daughter with duct tape, so two kids used it hauling a lot of places. Now it's a hanger for Shirley's things by her computer. Great idea by the way because there are lots of thin binders that get beat up here, too, but the rings weren't large enough for the garden tools like this one was. I didn't take any pics of what I made to send. Shirley, do you know how to upload pics to GWeb for Heidi to see? Description of how I made the book cover: I folded a brown paper sack to slide the ends of the front & back covers. I used hot glue to seal the sack to itself, but not to the book. I laid 2 scraps of upholstery samples side by side to cover the front. They already have pinked edges & I only cleaned up the side that was attached in the sample book. I placed another smaller piece overlapping both of the 1st pieces for the pocket or pouch gluing it in place on the sides & bottom. Next to it I attached another smaller rectangle for the pen & pencil. It's a bit tight, so hope it loosens up, but at least you won't lose the pen or pencil out of it. The denim blue & white color scheme looked nice on the brown paper, so that's how I picked them. I also selected one of the Sunset books that is the same size as the Ortho garden books, so if you have another thin volume you're using to carry around with you for reading in the garden or while waiting at dr's office you can slip that book inside the cover instead. Hope that helps, Corrine

Carol, Eglantyne is sooo ruffly and a great bloomer! Eglanryne will probably bloom all summer for you same as me because we dont get as hot as Diane’s summers. Diane’s Evelyn is a beauty! Can’t wait to see Evelyn in my garden! You will love them both!!!. i am sure you can find some Austin supplier, hopefully from Phoenix P. Rain water does do well on roses! They love that soft ”no chenicals,” water. Maybe you need a water softener on your hose? Is your water usually ”hard?” D Austins are supposed to bloom more than most rosess-they are shrub roses w/ abundant blooms. I have DAs: PAoK, Anne Bolyne, Desdemona, Harlow Carr, Munstead W., Eglantyne, Abe, Princess Anne, Lich. Angel, B Cadfael, Mary Rose, Heritage, Strawberry Hill, James Galway, & Mayflower and they all bloom constantly. Mary Rose blooms the most, but a few are too new to show their stuff much, yet. I ordered Evelyn, Emily Bronte, Eutacia Vye, Roald Dahl, Silas Marner, Queen of Sweden-we will see how they perform. Carol, Could Straw ship Austin roses to you? I suppose you both wouod deal with shipping fliwers border certification.

Rebecca, I understand about plants that do their own thing despite what we think that ought to be doing. I think every gardener has at least one type of plant that behaves bizarrely in their garden. I do think that morning glories and moonflowers just behave that way sometimes. I had trouble getting them to sprout in the soil here the first few years, though I have no idea why. Admittedly, it was awful red clay and we were in drought, so maybe the soil, even though I was amending it every year, just hadn't reached that right point yet. Now, and you just have to laugh, they reseed everywhere with wild abandon and have become a royal PITA because I want a few dozen morning glory plants to grow along the south and east garden fence of the front garden and enough sprout to cover every square inch of the garden in morning glories. They sprout irregularly too, so I am yanking out MG volunteers literally every single week of the garden season. I've never grown them in the back garden for fear they also would run amok back there, but this year some Grandpa Ott's popped up back there, perhaps planted by the birds, so now I am sure I'll be yanking out millions of them back there too. It baffles me that they were so hard to get started in the early years and now you cannot stop volunteers from sprouting and growing to save your life. And, in that same way that tells you plants have their own minds, we have had Milky Way and/or Blue Star morning glories pop up in a crack in the concrete near the garage for over a decade. They get no irrigation, no food, no care, no compost, no mulch and no relief from the hot summer sun beating down on them and the concrete---and they come back every year and grow like mad. I guarantee you if I had built a bed for them back there and tried to grow them on purpose, there probably wouldn't be a single one there. These are plants that know their own mind. Nancy, Hydrangeas do not do well at my end of the state---we are just too hot and too dry for much of the summer most years, but your soil and weather up there is very different from mine. There's a lot of plants that grow really well in eastern OK that don't grow well in other parts of the state, and I think hydrangeas are one of them. It isn't really the 95 degree days or 100 degree days that get them down here, but in those years where we have a lot of days over 105 in combination with little to no rainfall, you can just see the life leaving the hydrangeas even if you're doing your best to keep them well-watered. I started out with a lot of hostas our first year here, and the deer taught me they were deer chow, so we have none now. Daylilies do great here as long as they are within the fenced garden where the deer cannot reach them. Crinum lilies are an unstoppable force of nature down here and they don't care how hot and dry it gets. They bloom in the worst of the heat. Will they eventually wilt and die back to the ground if we are hot and dry for months on end? They will, but since their root clumps are the approximate size of a Smart Car, they surely do not die, and I've never had deer eat them either. The crinums will just sit there dormant and wait for better weather so they can green up again and regrow. I have had crinums in the same spot for over a decade and need to dig them up and divide them but don't even know if it is possible at this point---it might require the use of a backhoe or some other form of earth-moving equipment. Speaking of hungry deer and the lengths they'll go to in order to eat....a friend of ours a couple of miles north of us had to release two deer from the hog trap (these hog traps are not big enough for the deer, but try telling the deer that) the other day. I guess the bait in the hog trap was too attractive to the hungry deer, they crawled in and couldn't get out. That happened a lot in 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014, but hasn't happened since. I guess the fact it is happening again shows how much the autumn/winter drought has hurt their winter food supply. Kim, lol at the cartoon. Dawn