Seems like a difficult business to be in some days. :-) I did a quick search on amazon and came up with this link and another at the bottom of my post. http://www.amazon.com/Operate-Financially-Successful-Landscaping-Business/dp/1601382286/ref=sr_1_fkmr2_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1279400638&sr=1-1-fkmr2 I would say find a business that is successful and see if you can pick their brain. We seem to be seeing a lot of nurseries going out of business, isn't that true? I would think it's expensive especially if you have to keep greenhouses going. I know Lexington Gardens went out of business a few years ago, and you could see it coming for quite a few years. I was told by someone in management that the cost of fuel to run the greenhouse became outrageous. I know the owner was older and started to have health issues too. As a potential customer, I like that you are inclined toward natives and would love an organic direction as well. I travel a distance to make purchases that are in line with those two basic ideas. I drive 50mins to the NEWFS to buy native, mostly organically grown plant material. I drive the same distance to purchase organic vegetable starts in the spring, in years I don't start my own. I travel to Maine and combine a day trip to justify doing it, to purchase popular perennial and annual 'plugs' once a year in early spring, because so many nurseries that are close to me don't offer a plug size and have just about stopped offering the old '6 pack' size. I buy tiny shrubs from Bluestone Perennials because no one local offers that size and it makes it really affordable. I think a lot of people buy from them because of that and their frequent sales and great customer service. I was going to suggest that if you could model your business on one that didn't need heated greenhouses, you might be ahead of the game. Don't know if that is possible. It would certainly cut your costs, but limit what you offer. Anyway, maybe others can offer their own reasons why they shop at one place or another and what they are looking for in a nursery. Here is a link that might be useful: So you want to start a plant nursery

I'm amazed at the photos and stories of the damage done in other parts of New England. Here in Eastern Massachusetts, we seemed to have had a mild experience in comparison to others. We had wind and a small amount of rain but it was pretty manageable. Two medium branches were on the ground from Maples and that was about it as far as damage. Two streets over there was a power outage that didn't reach us on Sunday during the day, so we had power all day and then lost it about midnight Sunday night for about 4 hours and that was pretty easy to tolerate. But hearing that some people in our state may have to wait until the end of the week for power to be restored, makes me feel we should prepare better next time, because that could have just as easily have been us. I would have been ready to tolerate a couple of days without power, but 5 days plus, seems like more than we would have tolerated easily. I'm glad it wasn't worse than it was. Seemed to be a lot more damage from a tropical storm than I would have expected though. Hope that everyone here is doing well and not having a lot of damage to deal with.

Suzie, It is a sad story about the firefighter. They haven't released a lot of details, but I think he was involved in a fire truck burnover, which is when a wind-driven wildfire overtakes a firetruck and literally burns right over it/through it/around it. My husband and our Asst. Chief survived one of those a couple of years ago and it happened while I was watching. The only "good" thing about it was that the fire moved so fast that by the time it registered in my brain that fire had overtaken his truck, he'd driven out of the fire safely and the fire was running towards the interstate and he turned and 'chased' it from behind. I hope to never see anything like that again. The big fire west of Fort Worth is near Possum Kingdom Lake in very rough and rugged terrain. The last I heard, about 30 homes there had burned and over 200 more were at risk and had been evacuated. Possum Kingdom State Park had been closed, and some roads were closed. There's also a huge complex of fires in the Wichita Falls area that involves at least 3 separate very large, major wildfires. Homes have burned there and evacuations have occurred. Some Love County firefighters are in the county next to Wichita Falls helping fight a different fire complex near Henrietta, TX. Before today's fires, Texas had had about a half-million acres burn just in the last 7 or 8 days. There's no telling what that number will be after they total up all the acreage today. Our VFD only had two brief fire calls today so I consider us very fortuante indeed because it could have been so much worse. Our county's burn ban expires next week and I hope the commissioners renew it (though I don't think they will because burn bans are very unpopular with some of their constituents). Carol, Our mesonet station goes out every time the wind gusts over 20 mph. It is out even when no one else's stations are malfunctioning. It drives me up the wall. Our wind was like a ocean today....choppy and full of big waves interspersed with periods of calm. As sundown approached, it seemed to calm down a lot...then began gusting really hard again. It can't seem to make up its mind what to do. The little wildlife puddle in our driveway had little choppy whitecaps. The birds bathed in it anyway. There was a big wreck on I35 in Gainesville this afternoon caused by the wind blowing tractor-trailer trucks around. Gainesville's highest recorded gust was 53 and ours was 54. Our weather is very similar to theirs, so when the Burneyville mesonet station malfunctions, I just check the station at the Gainesville Airport. I'm watching the 10 p.m. newscast and Steve LaNore just said we'll have near-record lows here tonight. Oh good, just what we needed. Also, he said the wind returns Sunday, so I'll try to get a lot done tomorrow in case Sunday's weather is yucky. Dawn

I think the writer you are thinking of is the late Lilian Beckwith who wrote The Hills is Lonely and several other humorous books about the Hebrides. mariannese, the Norsemen/Vikings landed first on the Shetland and Orkney Isles, to the North of Scotland (the Hebrides are on the West coast) they were remarkable sea-men. Even to this day the Shetlanders see themselves as quite distinct from the Scots . . . no pipes, reels, tartans etc although they became part of Scotland in about 1450 as they made up part of the dowry of a Norwegian Princess when she was bethrothed to the King of Scotland. As children we used to stay on Unst, the most northerly of the islands in the days before oil was discovered in the North Sea. A fascinating, remote area, really wild Shetland ponies, almost as wild sheep, sea-birds that would attack humans at nesting times, very laid-back but independent people and the most incredible clear air free of nearly all pollution. Sorry I sound like a 'travelogue' :-) "And so as the sun sets on the Holm of Vatsland, we say farewell to Shetland" Here is a link that might be useful: Lilian Beckwuth