wow! You'll have to post pics when they bloom! I'm still working on ID'ing an heirloom I picked up at the old homestead down in south Arkansas. Imagine something similar to "Baby Moon" but with 3-5 blooms per stalk, with the height being about 18-24 inches, and extremely fragrant. The petals aren't as round as Baby Moon. Looks a little more like a traditional daff with a short cup. Except the entire flower diameter is smaller than a dime! No pics right now. If anyone has any ideas...let me know! I hate not having a name on something! LOL! Daffs are some of my faves! HW

I was haunting the forums, looking for pictures of flowers for ideas for wintersowing and saw this string and had to put in my fav! I'm verging on zone 4 at my altitude, listed as zone 5 and last year was the first spring I had Penstemon strictus (Rocky Mountain Blue was the variety) bloom in my garden. It bloomed pretty much the entire time I had peonies. I have around 90 varieties that bloom from early to late and this penstemon bloomed the entire time. It's a larger blooming penstemon but only gets to around 3' high max, spread probably around 18-24". It's still a slightly spiky bloom and the blue looked great with every peony I put it with, made wonderful arrangements. It is one of the easiest seeds to wintersow, also. If started this winter I wouldn't be surprised if it had a small amount of blooms late spring this next season and a large spread the 2nd year.

Thanks for the input. I really appreciate the link and reading the other discussion. I had searched ranunculus on the cutting forum, but hadn't thought to search the bulb forum..doh! I am planning on trying a small batch inside and see how it goes. Maybe I can get them started inside and move them out early spring...ah, sounds like a recipe for disaster, but the only way for me to know for sure. :D But it seems the main issue is they need to develop a good root system in a frost free environment before they start flowering--hence giving them the longer days til harvest, but ruling out growing them in areas where it heats up fast. This year we had some days in the 90s in early June. WE used to live about 15 minutes away from the Carlsbad Flower Fields. Figures I would want to grow them as cut flowers only after we move away! The whole area was saturated with flower growers. Now I see I should have been growing and shipping flowers to the Midwest. :P I am starting to look into the feasibility of growing late into fall and early in spring with greenhouses here. It may just make the investment worth it but the heating cost is unpredictable. A couple of places have indicated they would buy local flowers if available then. When selling to the farmer's market, it wasn't much of an issue since the markets only run June-Oct. But I find I much prefer selling directly to a store. Less per bouquet, but less time and more predictable. I've been debating forcing a few bulbs this fall. Last fall I tried some with a partner in her (unreliable) refrigerator and there were a lot of problems (understatement). Most of the bulbs ended up rotting. I'd like to try again in a situation with better control over the conditions but it was so bad last year, I am still recouperating. I know once fall hits I won't be able to resist though. I go through my own private tulip mania. I grew Purple Sensation and Allium multibulbosum--a white variety about the same size as Purple Sensation but blooms a bit later. I thought these were great, but they did not sell well. Perhaps they were a bit overwhelming for most consumers on their own and I did not have other flowers to complement them well. Hmmm, some forced spring branches might go with them. I have planted a scattering of shrubs, so maybe I'll have a few things to try out. Also I have about 35 peonies, but all new last fall and they sure are still tiny little things. I still want to plant more though, but I have run out of space. I will give muscari a try. Do have a lot, but yes they were short. ANd thanks for the daffodil suggestions. I am going through catalogs and feel as though my eyes are bulging out from all the intense colors and I am definitely gripped with indecision! magz--Will you be keeping the wallflowers inside all winter? That'd be great if they can flower in a bright window or with some additional light. I'll look into that. I also thought I'd try leucojum, but I think they bloom in June for me here. I just harvested the last of my Canterbury bells which were sowed last summer and put in the field last fall. They were great cut flowers! The odd thing that happened with some of them though was they developed a very thick central stalk, and then the side shoots were too wiry and short for cutting. This did not happen to all of them . I want to try the Champion series which supposedly has thick side shoots. I am looking forward to trying other campanula types next year as they were just stunning and a single stalk really sold the rest of the bouquet. Oh, I also wonder about Painted Tongue Salpiglossis sinuata as a cut flower for early spring flowering. Thanks all!

Hey, thanks everyone. And, Kristi, I stole my wife's camera to take that pic. Its more of a point and shoot type camera... but, beggars can't be choosers! We were running near record hi's over the weekend. 80 to 85. Really unusually warm for us. I noticed our record low for yesterday was 12. Our average last freeze date here isn't until April 15, so I figure we have one more good cold snap left ahead for us. After this really hot weather its really gonna mess some stuff up around here if it does give us some more hard freezes. Glad to hear you have things shaping up for your C Pinkie. I just did some work on the arbor mine are on yesterday.