Well, I suppose that could be...it doesn't look like it. I hope not! The petals are starting to spread, today...ever so slowly, still! They look healthy, just slow. I wonder why that is, though? And if anyone else had similiar experience with this plant

I'll vote for late spring too. But late summer/earliest fall comes next - even though I don't like those earthy and yellow tones that much either. Lochinch butterfly bush in lavender, purple asters, cone flowers, Sungold buddleia in soft yellow - twenty tiger swallowtails fluttering. Monarchs. Gangly tithonias proving that orange can be elegant. Sedums absolutely alive with bees - bumble, honey and little emerald ones. Salvias and the roses making another flush of bloom - deeper colors on the roses, not all paled by the sun. No more Japanese beetles! The vegetable garden at it's most abundant - melons, green beans, tomatoes at every meal, tomato sandwiches for a snack. The tropical garden absolutely jungly. Hummingbirds coming through. Deep blue clean fall sky. Summer haze blown south.

we have had over normal snowfall this winter. there is still a couple foot of snow on the fields with only a few bare spots under trees. But the pair of Lewis's woodpeckers are here early and the male is drumming on the light pole setting up his territory but the male and female are both coming to the feeders together so i don't think they are ready to start with the eggs. the juncos and chickadees and most of the winter birds are still here and usually leave about the later part of march to nest elsewhere. My orioles come mid april to late april to nest close bu usually 3 pairs. Most of the spring birds do not show up till mid april to mid may. and have not seen any of them yet.

Wil add in it is quite possible to breed an early, mid or late season tomato from any variety by consistently choosing to save seed and replant seed only from the earliest, middle-est, or latest fruit for a few generations. %%%%% Several folks I know have tried that and it doesn't work b'c the seeds are the same as to DTM in the earliest of fruits, mids, and lates. One good example is the variety Joyce's strain of Brandywine when Chuck Wyatt saved seeds only from the early fruits and said he had an early strain of Brandywine, But no one who grew it got the same results. Again, b'c the seeds in the fruits were the same, or pretty much so, some exceptions, but not related to time of ripening. (Seed saving instructions to maintain an existing variety generally say to take some seed from each of the early, mid & late fruits, otherwise you may be accidentally breeding for different characteristics than your original plant.) With this I agree. There is genetic heterogeneity within a single variety, so it's important to preserve those traits. And here I'm talking about internode distances, subtle changes in leaf form, etc. Carolyn Carolyn