woooooohooooo!!! I have finally passed the 50 pounds lost mark! Almost half way there towards my weight loss goals! I feel ready to start at the gym and hit the cardio machines, and steady increase the length of exercise each week. I have to take it slow since I do not want to injure my joints and ligaments since I still carry 60 pounds too much ... but I will loose my overweight and get in shape again this year!!! I am so sorry to hear about your hip problems Florence. I hope and pray for your recovery, and that you will endure the healing so you can enjoy your garden when summer comes. You are getting very close to the healthy BMI range Doug!! Loosing a pound every week is actually pretty good! Imagine doing that for 40 weeks!! Take it slow at the gym!!! The guy that can do an exercise with a 10 pounds dumbbell and exercise a muscle group correct is training just as hard as the guy using a 20 pound dumbbell. Both are hitting the muscles to the max of their individual ability at that time. Good form and not cheating is better than all the cheaters using too much weight and poor form ... be kind to your body. And I have quit smoking again ... 13 days now without cigarettes. I feel great!!! I hope all of you will reach your weight loss and fitness goals. Let this be the year. We only live once!

I rarely look up YouTube videos on anything and now this thread has me looking to see what else I can find. [g] I do like PIet Oudolf ever since I saw the Lurie Garden, and I find this video fascinating, of PIet Oudolf explaining how he got the job of doing the Lurie Garden and what his design was.... PIet Oudolf explaining the Lurie Garden Naumkeag Garden in Stockbridge MA The organic garden of Highgrove UK Alan Titchmarsh tours Highgrove

All trees survived the 16 F night with no cold damage. All my kumquat and tangerine trees set out with very large flushes in September and November. While these flushes are still active they have slowed down to under an inch a week. My greenhouse is heated by heat bleeding from my (R-5 basement wall into the dirt and heat bleed through My R-40 dinning room wall into the air. I have no new picture as there is not much change over time at this time of the year. Trace. Thank for following and sharing Your trees look very nice. I enjoy seeing your picture. You and I seem to be the most excited over our seed grown trees. I would like to see updates as they show more growth. When ever I make plans for my trees I find that they do something making it impossible to continue as planed I have no control over what is likely to happen a month down the calender. I will do another YouTube video when the greenhouse is up to 4 layers glass thick on all surfaces. Steve

My neighbor works for Ball International Nursery. They grew some of Yves Piaget's seeds in a 45% composted pine fines, peat moss, vermiculite, perlite, and gypsum. the pot was 1/2 gallon, but the rose had at least a dozen blooms, very impressive. That's the same way when I bought a gallon-rose from Home Depot. I pulled that rose out, and the soil was coarse pine barks mixed with peat moss, and osmocote fertilizer. There was at least a dozen blooms on that rose bush, way more blooms than leaves. The growing medium has an effect on flowering. The Russian Grower Gerda who posted the most-blooms roses in HMF told me she applied humus. Pine Fines break down into humus, and roses love that stuff. In my garden, there's a poor drainage clay spot, so I put tons of fresh pine mulch... the two roses Firefighter and Romantica Sweet Promise, both gave me 80 to 90 blooms as 1st year gallon-own-root. There's another spot which I fixed clay with peatmoss, thinking that would hold more moisture. However, Sonia Rykiel and Crimson Glory did bad, despite tons of rain, like 5 blooms for 1st year. I dug those up and found the soil was rock-hard like cement. Pine mulch (pH 4.5) works better than peat moss (pH 4) because it's a larger particle, which aerated my heavy clay. Roots need oxygen. Both Sonia Rykiel and Crimson glory were yellowish, due to soil compaction and less oxygen with dense peatmoss glue-up with clay. In contrast, peat moss worked great for Columbus Rose Park in Ohio ... they fixed their sandy soil with peat moss, with tons of blooms on Graham Thomas & others. Here's a horticulture research entitled "Rose-cultivation with coco-soil versus pumice". Here's the result: "As far as flower production was concerned, more flowers were harvested from plants grown on coco-soil than on pumice, independently of the planting density. On the other hand, stem length and weight were the same in rose flowers produced on both substrates. " See link below: Here is a link that might be useful: Comparative study of coco-coil vs. pumice soil This post was edited by Strawberryhill on Mon, Nov 25, 13 at 17:33