Oooooh that was painfully wonderful. Wanted to take it in so bad but conflicts - thank you so much for sharing these great pics. I'm another Bottlebrush Buckeye fan - but you need LOTS of real estate for those. Do you know when 'Stitch in Time' will be available - did anyone give any clues? It's amazing. Westy

Last but not least, the convention plants, The Gathering and Rendezvous. I got R. as the freebie. It must be tasty - one of the gardens had both, and while there was almost no slug damage elsewhere, they had chewed on R. Saturday afternoon they sold the left over plants for $10.00, so I picked up The Gathering just in case R. turns out to be slug bait. It's pretty small, but time will fix that. It was a lot of fun, met some great people, saw beautiful gardens, came home broke. The deer had been in the daylily beds and weeds were everywhere, so I'm thinking maybe mid-July wasn't such a good time to be gone. Sure had fun, though! The Dubuque hosta society put on a wonderful convention and fed us VERY well. Loved the home-made pies at the Arboreteum BBQ. Josephine, I was surprised at what a nice division of Lakeside Mom I got. The Dawn's Bloomer's hostas are the biggest and best looking of anything I bought. Tomorrow the heat wave is supposed to break, so plants can start going in the ground. Many are going around Pan's Oak. (Our second corgi died about 15 years ago, and we put a Shumard Oak over him.) Thanks for the comments, guys- Chris

Oh, how I would love to go. (haha) To leave my frost free environment, to go to the snowy hell I Ieft 42 years ago? NOT. Just put up my tarp to cover the hostas and keep them out of our (hopeful ) winter rains. Perhaps in my dreams (or nightmares) would I go back east. I LOVE my hostas, but I don't love the cold climates they came from. Would love to meet Ken someday, but not in winter. -Babka

Debra, that would have been fun! Lets aim for next winter for sure. I do not stay in hotel so usually miss hostatality night on Friday. But it works out anyway as one gets plenty of time to mingle. Food is great too. This year swap is May 14, apprx 3 to 5 pm or so in Evanston IL. It might be our 15? annual so things usually run well, we get about hundred people coming, just bring  what you have to share and take whats available. We do have preswap page on another forum so people can specifically ask for wants. As any indoor grown seedlings they will need to be hardened off once the weather turns warmer. After that planted as any hosta, I usually keep pots for a bit but this year I am making seedling beds. Hosta_maker, how do you manage your set up? What amount of seeds you start and how do you cull? Am sure some of your new introductions were shown in Josh presentation and were lots of ohh and ahh about them. Once I have seen Jeff Miller's culling pile, it was half of my height but then he was known to grow immense amount of seeds. I am about to start my vegetable seed production, tomatoes peppers eggplants etc. My "second name" is Tomatolady and I grow about 60 80 heirloom varieties to be given away at the swap. So I will be running out of grow lights pretty soon lol.