I just got best tall bearded iris at our show this weekend with Jesse's Song, it is a great iris. Best of Show was with Sky Hooks, I also got a special award for Pink Champagne and Sign of Leo. Skating Party is another good one for show. I am sure more will answer with more names for you:) I had to take in alot for the public to see as some of our members did not have much bloom at the time of the show and with all of the rain we had. If you join the AIS, every January or rather the first bulletin of the year has all of the show winners posted so you could see what was winning at what show. Yvette

Well, I went looking for signs of Q. velutina acorns ripening on some trees. Well, I was staring up into a tree a guy came up to me with sawdust all over him and said "hi". He was part of a crew that had from what he said just chopped down a large chestnut tree in the back of one of the homes by the road I was on. He told me that I was a month too early for the Red oak acorns, but, the squirrels were eating up the other nuts (chestnuts?) like crazy. I did see a Q. Alba with little green acorns on it. So I guess that's my answer. As far as the one pic on someone else's post here wanting an ID of their red oak ( I think a Q. Velutina) I don't know how to explain that one. I guess they had a already half formed Red oak family (Q. Velutina was my guess) acorn. The place I was at when the guy came up to my car, has tons of mature trees. Oaks, Chestnuts obviously, Maples. sycamores, Hickory, many others I am unfamiliar with some Walnuts, I don't know a black Walnut from any other Walnut. Pecans look like Walnuts to me as far as leaves. I would need my Field Guide to tell the difference. I didn't go to the place that I will be going to in mid to late September for a Q. Velutina acorn search. If they had been ripe I could've gotten them where I went today. I may look there first, (where I went today) in mid Sept. If I find any I'll offer some to anyone here who wants any. I have 2 Q. Velutinas. I have one that is close to a Q. Robur, and one that has enough room to grow to a nice wide spreading tree. I love the one that is in the open.

No, but for the irregular TV watching we do, we really like MHz. It offers European TV productions/series from various countries, with subtitles. French and Italian shows are well represented but there are others too. Most of the series are mysteries and/or crime related in some way but not all. The writing and acting are always superb and seem to be of a much higher quality than typical American fare. Amazon Prime also offers some European series productions, I recommend those too, for the same reasons.

Sounds interesting, but is it subtitles? I can't usually read those. I don't see a lot of the bad behavior you describe in most US cooking competitions, so I think we're seeing different ones. The manners are more natural than from the book, but the ones where people are snippy are mostly where they're sleep deprived in order to make them more "interesting", which I abhor.