lavender

He probably would. He is 92 and bored because there isn't much he can do anymore. I think the mimosa will be fine. Haven't had time to do much in the greenhouse lately. Fortunately the plants get along pretty well without me at this time of year.

We have tons of them as cracking them is my father-in-laws winter hobby. There must be a trick to it because he gets them out in large pieces. The rest of us aren't nearly that good. You have to be careful of the shells in with the nuts. They are almost indistinguishable from the nuts and are very hard on the teeth. I don't use the small stuff at the bottoms of the jars because that is where they tend to accumulate. Try a black walnut pie. I did one last year for Christmas. Oh, and the mimosa has finally put out a shoot. Thanks!

I'm getting tons of catalog's. We can always dream. I finally asked today at one of the garden centers about all the wildly colored poinsettias. Last year there were spotted ones, curled ones and all different shades of pink, white and red. This year they have branched out into blues and purples. "Self", I said, "This is ridiculous. I know genetic engineering has done remarkable things but BLUE poinsettias?". So I asked and was told that they are "sprayed". They look very real.

It is not unusual for a brug to lose its leaves when it is brought in.They often go semi-dormant for the winter. In fact many people overwinter them in the dormant state. Brugs should be summered on a patio with some sun. They need a big pot and quite a bit of water. Maybe you are not watering it enough in the summer or perhaps it is getting too much sun. If it is dropping its leaves it may be just a reaction to the change in climate. You may want to accustom it to the outdoors by putting it in a shady protected position first and gradually moving it into the sun. That said there are many different cultivars of brugs. Some are prone to dropping leaves at the drop of a hat. Some bloom more freely than others. Some are a dickens to get to bloom. You just never know. You could try feeding it in the summer with a high phosphate fertilizer. Too much nitrogen will inhibit blooming. There are sticky yellow strips that you can get that will control white fly. The flies are attracted to the yellow color and stick to the strip.

Jasmine? The plant is worth keeping around just for its leaves. I looks like something from Dr. Seuss. It puts out these long stems at times and the flat leaves will grow from them. I've got another orchid cactus that has red flowers and the leaves are narrower and not as shiny. It is a better (day) bloomer but just doesn't compare with this one. It quit blooming, I think, because I potted it into a bigger pot and then we started using the guest bedroom where I kept it. It just wasn't getting the long dark nights it needed. It is out in the greenhouse now so perhaps it will start blooming regularly again.

The common name of this plant is Night Blooming Cereus. I am quite aware that it is actually Epiphyllum oxypetalum as that is what the tag in it says. It is called Night Blooming Cereus to differentiate it from rest of the Epiphyllum which are mostly day blooming plants. They are indeed commonly called orchid cacti and are tropical epiphytes. There is another plant called Night Blooming Cereus, it is Hylocereus undatus. It is a much rarer desert plant. Many plants share common names. This is why it is much better, if somewhat pretentious, to use the proper botanical names. I shall be pretentious in the future so as not to be confusing. If anyone was actually confused by my use of the plant's common name.

Have you seen a Night Blooming Cereus in Bloom? Mine bloomed in September. The flower only lasts for one night and they have a very sweet odor. This is the first time mine has bloomed in years. They need total darkness at night to bloom.

Yew're welcome and the Yew part came from Agatha Christie and not a plant book but, I'm sure she got it right. (Actually, I checked her out and it is really bad news as the amount that will kill a dog is so small.) She likes to kill off people with monkshood, too. And I think there was one time that someone mixed up foxglove and spinach but he must have been as idiot.

Will your pup actually eat this stuff? He would have to ingest it for it to harm him. I never had a dog who ate the bushes and our black lab would drag rotting carcasses home for dinner. The ones that are poisonous to humans are poisonous to dogs as well. If he does eat the bushes you might want to think about things that have thorns or barely edible foliage like the barberry or the evergreens. You can check evergreens on an individual basis as to how urine tolerant and poisonous they are. Yew is deadly. Stay away from arborvitae. I just remembered what my mother's male dog did to my Rheingold arborvitae in just a week.

Js pm'd me the info for a local contact and I've passed it on to you in a pm.

You are most welcome, ps. I hope that we can be there for the other wonderful projects you have slated for the school. The munchkins are sooooooo cute. I have to pass on to the forum what one of them said about the double bulbs. He said he knew quite a bit about bulbs and that the doubles and triples were huddled up to stay warm until spring. I hope they have a wonderful crop of blooms.

I know peonies are poisonous and nothing ever eats my mock orange so I'm guessing that it is too. Lilacs maybe too. The rest I've never heard were a problem. Poisonous is kind of relative. Yew and monkshood will kill you, some will cause your mouth to burn and some will give you an upset tummy. An awful lot of plants will have some ill effect if you eat them. You can safely eat roses and rose hips.

A dog's urine is high in nitrogen and it causes the same kind on burning that pouring strong fertilizer on the plant would. It is the nitrogen not the acidity that causes the problem. The easiest thing to do is spray the plant often to dilute the urine and wash it away. I will vouch for the fact that rugosa roses will put up with anything a dog can dish out. They survived for years on the Brady Street parking lot. I have been told that barberry and peonies are also resistant. It is possible that plants that are salt resistant may also be resistant to urine. You could try mock orange, potentilla, lilac, dwarf Mugho pine, Colorado spruce, Austrian pine or Tamarack.

I'd be interested in hearing how it turns out. I can always use personal experience for the newsletter. What works in books and magazines doesn't always work in DuBois. Two years of experimenting and we've concluded that you can save seeds from the Wave petunias and have them come true for all practical purposes. This is the kind of info you don't get from the seed companies. They also aren't going to tell you that you can carry over your baskets of petunias.

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We treat petunias as annuals because they will not come through our winters but they are probably good for many seasons in their native climate. I suspect that they don't go completely dormant where ever they are native something like pansies. Cutting them back will rejuvenate them for another blooming session. It may be difficult to give them enough sun indoors to keep them growing nicely but you should be able to enjoy them for quite some time. If you do get them through the winter cut them back and stick them outside for the summer and they will come back. I've never tried this with petunias but I've had some luck with other hanging baskets full of so called annuals.

We finally did get some rain and it looks as though it will rain again today. Your streets get 2 feet of water at high tide? What a weird place to build a city! Head north if it rains too hard.

Can't complain about our well water but the water softener is probably not good for us. I know it isn't good for the plants. I lug water for the orchids when I have time. The rest of the time they just have to cope with it.

Forsyth's Drilling got 7 calls for dry wells yesterday. Just a bit of trivia I gathered while my dishwasher was being fixed. Got some really good stuff but I can't repeat it here. ;D

Be careful with back walnuts. They are difficult to crack and even more difficult to get all of the shells out of. We have some most years and while I bake with them I only do it for us because of the shell problem. They are hard on the teeth! It is very expensive to buy them shelled so they are a treasure.

Cleaned out my raspberry patch and pruned it hard last month. I'm getting raspberries as big as my thumb. Too bad there aren't enough to make some jam. I usually get more in the spring.

Last year Save a Lot had them for 99 cents as well but I haven't checked lately.

Jelly doesn't set because there isn't enough sugar in it, it isn't acid enough or there isn't enough pectin. Or it didn't get cooked right. It has to come to a rapid boil and boil hard. Sometimes making too big a batch screws it up. That one is my downfall. Fruit varies in ripeness and acidity so it isn't always easy to get it right. Penn States canning bulletin says you can fix it: "When re-cooking and using powdered pectin, for each cup of soft jelly or jam measure 2 tablespoons sugar, 1 tablespoon water, and 1

Big Lots had them for 99 cents a month or so ago. I can't remember if they had the wide mouth or not.

I did it and I wasn't overly impressed. The flavor was good but they were tough. Maybe I dried them too long. By the time I got around to it the romas I was picking were very small. ps Yes, I used garlic. I can't resist garlic.