I have also ordered from a lot of these places, and had wonderful experiences. Countryside Roses was my first ever nursery to order from, and they were so wonderful and helpful that it got me hooked on roses for life! I ordered from Rose Petals Nursery in Florida as well, and LOVED my plants, very healthy and they have only been in the ground for 2 weeks and are covered in buds. Very good customer services, good selection, and very good prices! I took pictures of my order and will post as soon as I get my roses from RU. This is my second year gardening so I am taking photos of everything :) I have also ordered from Roses Unlimited, but this year is my first, and I have not received my plants yet (they ship next week, YAY!!) But I can say that Pat has been wonderful, helpful, and very prompt with answering all of my questions, and suffering through my change of order (3 times I'm ashamed to say). I also have heard that the plants from Roses Unlimited are outstanding in healthiness and quality that make them stand out from some other online rose sellers. I look forward very much to ordering from them to remodel my mothers backyard next year... You didn't mention Rogue Valley, which I have had very nice customer services from, but the item I wanted to order was out of stock, so I have not yet ordered from them before. I think the nurseries we've talked about are definitely the cream of the crop when it comes to mail order rose nurseries! I am soo glad they are around to help out newbies like me find good quality roses instead of my trying to find something at my local big box store. Those stores are about as helpful to me as a Japanese beetle. **cringe** Natalie

Yes it is a good course. Several regulars here have taken it as a refresher course and our extension office canning instructor uses it as the basis for her home canning certification courses. Dave

For practicing on, plain unbleached muslin is usually around a dollar a yard and as totallyblessed says, most fabric stores regularly have coupons to drop the cost even further. Many experienced sewers do practice/test pieces and try out new patterns on unbleached muslin because it's so cheap. Walmart also has a buck-a-yard table, so if you're over there for something else, stop by the fabric department - it may not be exactly what you want but if it's for practicing on I imagine day-glo orange paisley isn't quite so bad. ;-) (If your practice pieces come out well, donate them to Goodwill!) Fabrics-Store.com has pretty good prices in their "oops" and "doggie bag" departments; they specialize in linen. People rave about eBay for fabric shopping. I haven't bought anything yet but I'm drooling over upholstery fabrics for a chair and a couch (the couch is a "someday").

One of the seed sellers' stock was bought out by a third party but the name of the company was not changed. Apparently a lot what has been for sale on that site has been quite old stock. I spent quite a bit on an ounce of Delphinium virescens, Prairie Larkspur, and the seed was old and dead. I also bought a pound of Adonis aestivalis and it was all dead. I don't think I got any results from anything I bought from that company except for Heavenly Blue morning glory, although even those seeds seemed really old. They make a big deal about using mylar packaging but some species, especially those of the Ranunculaceae family, tend to have short lifespan. Really, a responsible company will list the age of each species' seed on its website. So far, the only place I've seen do that is Sheffields. I haven't ordered from that company yet because I just don't have any money at the moment. One knock against them is that they sell some rare seeds for high prices that are so old I can't see how they'll germinate, including seeds from the 1990s. Some species will last a long time, like Moth Mullein, but some others may only last six months (aster, goldenrod). However, at least they make the important effort of disclosing the age of the seed! A Western seed site that sells mainly native seeds sold me a pound of a tall native delphinium and a pound of a shorter native delphinium. I have no plants from either, although it's possible that climate difference is to blame. Nonetheless, the germination rate on the seed for the tall species was said to be around 35%. With storage it may have dropped further. They did warn me before I paid for the order about that, though, which was good business. Seed sellers really should list the approximate lifespan of each species' seed on their website, so people will know to avoid old seed from some species. This kind of transparency will give people an incentive to shop there. Some species are hard to grow so it's not always the fault of the seed seller. But, that first company I mentioned seems to be selling very old stocks, along with perhaps some cheap easily-located annuals in bulk. The issue of old dead seed isn't just a problem in the US. A UK paper published an article where it said there were problems with corn poppy and yellow rattle seed having poor viability or being completely dead. I bought corn poppy (Shirley type) from wildseedfarms and had excellent results. So, far, I can recommend Prairie Moon, Wildseedfarms, Native American Seed (seedsource), and the Irish site Seedaholic. I'm sure there are other good seed sources but I haven't tried all that many. I have had very good results from seed purchased from those four companies although I have also had some duds. The duds were probably the result of trying to grow plants in the wrong conditions, like me trying to grow Astragalus, Dalea, Ipomopsis, and Amorpha (leadplant) in heavy moist clay loam. I had plenty of success, for example, with Ipomopsis in rocky places where water would never pool after a heavy rain. Other gravel areas where water would pool killed the plants after the first year. Any place that didn't have rocky soil... the plants barely grew, if at all. The difference between the plants thriving and not growing at all, depending on the spot/soil was tremendous. It is a fairly picky plant. The ones in front of my house where the soil is full of lava rock got very big, even though it's clay and we had a record amount of rainfall this spring. Not a single plant grew in the meadows proper, even though the soil had been freshly tilled. Too much moisture I suppose. I'm not sure I got any sprouts from the two packets of Poke milkweed (it's hard to know for sure because the seedlings look like Purple milkweed I guess and I planted that as well as Spider milkweed and Sullivant's) but pretty much every other packet I bought from Prairie Moon last winter grew, although some plants were very difficult to keep going (like Turtlehead!). Packets are a good way to figure out which species really should be purchased as small plants or plugs — or which should be sown in situ or into large pots (rather than small peat cups). For instance, I had poor results growing Liatris ligulistylis in peat cups and pots, as well as in spots in the ground I transplanted them to. However, one that I moved to a 6" plastic pot rather late in the season is now thriving. Plants are sometimes very picky. Perhaps I got the right soil mix. It could also be that I used Osmocote in the pots and not with the peat cups/pots. Maybe ligulistylis won't grow without fertilization. I also bought a pound of Adonis aestivalis from the Cactus Store and, unlike the seed from the first company I mentioned, it wasn't all dead. So, I will likely be shopping from them again. I also got some Chinese columbine from them and got some plants. There is another company that was very disappointing. It put out price lists that seemed excellent but the actual prices were much higher and the stock was very poor. I had planned to get a bunch of different species from them but all of the interesting ones turned out to not be in stock. Don't get your hopes up beforehand. Verify that companies actually have things in stock. A Prairie Moon employee, though, told me that they keep their website up-to-date with stock, so for some companies this may be less of an issue. Another site listed some rare species, like Indian paintbrush species, in actual real bulk quantities but when I called them they told me it came mixed with grasses. So, in reality, you might be getting mostly grass seed. Another site has been listing Indian Paintbrush for years but it has been Out of Stock for at least the last three years, since I've been checking. Another site uses heavily doctored (Photoshop collage) photos to sell its seed mixes! I have all of the screenshots and have been planning to post an exposé because that kind of conduct is unacceptable. It's bad enough that Ebay allows so many doctored photos without a company's actual website being full of them.