I know what you mean about being tired! I work as a housekeeper for a hotel, and spring and summer are extremely busy for us, so I'm always tired. Cleaning rooms is more work than people think! By the time I get home, I'm too tired to work in the garden, but I try to do little bits at a time. The end of April I'm taking a week off, not to work on my on gardens, but to rework my mother's gardens, because she can't get around good anymore, and she lives 200 miles away, so I have to stay there for a while, and visit friends I don't see anymore. Anyway, your photos are lovely, and in the background of your second one I see a wisteria, pruned as a standard? It's gorgeous. Do you have a better picture of it? I have one in my yard, not as big as yours, but in the three years I've lived here (previous owners planted it) I've never seen it bloom. Every year I hope to see a bloom, but no go. I've heard some may never bloom. Karen

It truly is exciting to anticipate a bloom that has never been seen before. Because of this, I started purchasing seedlings in 2008, the year I got crazy with the DL. Some of them bloomed last year and it was very rewarding. My first seedlings of my own seeds got planted last year: Strawberry Candy x NOID and Coquina Key x Best in Class. I doubt that they will bloom this year because of crowding. I do have a scape from purchased seeds planted in October 2008 (Triple Cherries x Blue Lake). Today, I finished preparing 2 small beds to crowd in about 600 seedlings, most from my crosses from last year. Hopefully, we'll get good ones! Ben

I'm getting scapes on my 2009 seedlings this year too. Not all of them, but about half so far are showing scapes. I even have one on a 2010 seedling, that one is Bela Lugosi X Storm Chaser, and both of its parents are putting up scapes right now. On my older seedlings, some of them their parents are putting up scapes, on another cross the seedlings are scaping but not the parents. They bloom later. I'm all sorts of excited to see what they'll look like. It's like Christmas, in summer! Karen

Dave, never heard of Clementella, so I looked it up on the NGA and AHS data bases. So, it's a small one, but unfortunately, neither data base have a picture. Hope you can post one for us. I see it has Stella de Oro as pollen parent.