Oh the culling of one's books thread. How many variations of this topic have we had, and almost all with the same results. If one is a bibliophile, it's really, REALLY hard to part with those books on the shelf. Josh, how could you get rid of James/Jan Morris? His trilogy (written when he was James) on the British Empire will be in my library forever. I'm pretty brutal about the fiction I keep. If a novel doesn't really speak to me, out it goes into the boxes that go either to the library's used book store or into the boxes of book that I'll donate to the AAUW used book sale this fall. My downfall is the noon-fiction. Gardening books cascading off the shelves & ditto for the books on history. And yes, all this information (or most of it) is on-line, but I know which book it's in so it's easier for me to take it off the shelf than to wade through 1,000 Google search results. Right now I've gotten hooked on a series called The Modern Library Food - a set of books edited by Ruth Reichl that cover all things gastronomic. I just finished Endless Feasts a collection of 60 years of writing about food from Gourmet magazine & now am into Remembrance of Things Paris which is a ditto only covering that magazines essays about food in France. It's a little bit of fantasy: how to have the perfect French christening party (with recipes), the utter joy that was the old Les Halles market, and little reminders about inflation when I read that a dinner check at Maxim's in 1947 was $16.00.

Lynn, I see that you and I still like many of the same tomatoes. LOL I think you will like Jubilee and Jaunne Flammee'. Both are really great performers in our heat, but your heat probably is worse than ours. Heatwave is iffy. It does produce in the July and August heat but the flavor is a little lacking (but you know that I say that based on my "heirloom-preferring" tastebuds). In your soil and your growing conditions, it may taste better than it did in my soil and growing conditions. I do think Heat Wave II tasted better to me than the original Heat Wave. Brandy, Sorry if I confused you by referring to seeds sown directly into the ground as wintersown. On GardenWeb, winter sown does refer to seeds sown in containers and exposed to the cold temps. To me, though, anything I plant in the winter in wintersown, which probably would drive the people on the wintersowing forum nuts! LOL If you want a good explanation of wintersowing, go to the wintersowing forum here at GardenWeband read Trudi's FAQ. It is very informative. I sow larkspur, poppies, etc. into the ground anytime between November and February, depending on when I get around to it. This seeds will sprout in the cold and form tiny ground-hugging rosettes. You won't see much vertical growth, but they are making roots all that time and, when the spring conditions are right, they start to grow like crazy. (Lots of cool season weeds, by the way, grow exactly the same way....germinating in fall or winter's cooler weather and flying under the radar until spring). Some plants don't like to be transplanted, and for me, poppies and larkspur are two of those. (I have transplanted poppies before, but they aren't crazy about it because they have long taproots.) So, wintersowing them in containers doesn't work because they get mad when you transplant them into the ground. As far as the purple coneflowers and hollyhocks....I tried numerous times to start them indoors under lights. I was able to do it with the hollyhocks pretty easily, but the coneflowers just didn't want to sprout. Yet, they would reseed readily in my garden. So, I wintersowed some a couple of years ago and had great results. As for the hollyhocks, there is no reason to take up a lot of space indoors under lights because I can direct sow them into the ground (if it is not a rainy winter) or in flats. They transplant easily and are pretty cold hardy. I seem to get higher germination rates with the ones sown outside than I do with the ones sowed inside. I love hollyhocks and have them every year. However, if a really, really wet rainy year, the seed often rots before it can germinate because I have horrible, slow-draining red clay soil. Your problem with hollyhocks last year probably had more to do with the excessively wet weather, the lack of sunshine as it seemed to stay cloudy FOREVER, and the late cold spells. Those three conditions caused lots of problems with plants here that are usually pretty easy to grow. Between "the cold" and "the wet", a lot of roots were stunted and the plants just didn't grow. I noticed this weekend that hollyhocks are already sprouted in my garden. They are small and low to the ground, with 2 or 3 leaves about the size of a nickle or so. You could direct sow hollyhocks in the ground now or wintersow some in a flat or other container. My main challenge with wintersowing is that the cats like to lay on any flat I plant anything in, even if I have lids on the flats! The dogs, of course, like to walk on the containers, and the wild things, like racoons and possums, like to paw through the soil looking for whatever. Also, if I am not careful, the wind carries them all away, even when I think I have them in places where they are sheltered from the wind. Dawn

Melinda - sending you lots of prayers and hugs your way.... Shirley - my 'little guy' will soon be 12 in about 2-1/2 months.(if you ask him, he thinks he is about 15, LOL) He did testing last night for Martial Arts and passed with flying colors! He is currently testing for his black belt...3 total - he passed his first one last night - 2 more to go. He has been breaking the black board with his hand and foot for well over a year now. (that is the highest board, some adults cant even do this) This is a NICE photo of him at his last tournament/competition the end of July 'sparring' - his favorite part! (Yes, mama is so proud! =) Margo! wow! never saw a spider like that before! She must be out and about for Halloween =) Enjoy your day ladies... not even suppose to reach 50 today...we are in some sort of a 'nor easter' right now -we are getting torrential rain falls and 50+ mph winds - in effect until 11 pm or later tonight.Electricity went out last night. Jayeanne This post was edited by pinkiris on Tue, Oct 28, 14 at 12:05

I just finished making a donation. CNN is having a great fundraiser with wonderful music. Neil Young and Dave Mathews just performed. Hey, we don't need to be rich to make a difference. Even $5.00 helps.