Keep searching! By the middle to end of summer, lots of bulb companies will have their websites updated with new listings of bulbs... and the Fall 2008 catalogs will be available! If you Google "fall bulbs" or "amaryllis" or "hippeastrum", or any key word combination related to indoor forcing bulbs or bulbs for indoor forcing, you should get lots of results with tons of links to follow! Companies that sell Tulips and Daffodils often sell Hippeastrum bulbs, as well. I searched last fall for online catalogs and retail sellers of hippeastrum, and I found lots of links to stores and places to order from! One of my favorite places is Royal Colors... John Scheeper's is another good bulb company... Brent & Becky's, Blooming Bulb, Dutch Gardens, Nature Hills, Garden Import, and the list goes on... A Google search for amaryllis bulbs should net a good amount of places to begin looking! Here is a link that might be useful: Royal Colors

Finally..... This is for all that posted some great suggestions with detailed information about each, exactly what I was looking for, I had to go back and look up my password and soooo busy with all that spring brings for me this thank you was long over due. I have since purchased the book suggested Flower farmer very good info in that as well. I will be starting from seed some of the Zinna's mentioned and sunflowers and I have calendula that I will try to combine with my purple coneflowers(perennials)I think this is all I will have time to start from seed as I have no green house and will have to work these in somehow as it is...sorry for the delay in the follow up. Now Pitter Patter lets get atter! Pitterpat

I hate the key cards, won't use them. If I feel that I must sign up with a store for their discount, I use a work number that is attached to our automated line. Recently, a long time local drugstore sold out to CVS Pharmacy. And since that store is right in the shopping center where I work, they were getting a lot of my casual business for makeup, food items, and sometimes pet food. Well, CVS has a policy of NOT giving the sale prices unless you use their store deal, so a couple of times I walked out of there having paid full price, since I wasn't going to fill out the long application for sale prices. I know they are tracking what I do, that's patent. But finally, I had enough. I went in to return some stale cookies (went to car, opened package, and bit into Dust!!, went right back into store to return) and you would just not believe how big of a deal the clerks made that "She doesn't have a CVS card!" "How can we give back your money without a CVS card?" "We have a policy of giving you $2 in CVS bucks when you find something expired on our shelves, but don't know how to do that without the CVS card!!" All this was called out from one register to the manager at the other, until I just wanted to drop the $4 bag of cookies and go. It was almost a crime that I don't have the card. And the phone number thing didn't work there, because they said it takes their system 3 months to acknowledge the phone number. Anyway, it Was super convenient to wander down their on my break and pick up kleenex or whatever, but I think I'm done. Red

Precisely. That's why I went to all this trouble phoning back and forth. I *know* Abt is highly respected (wait, did I actually let drop their name? I was trying to be a little circumspect. Ooops)... and I've had some really exceptional experiences with them. That's why I wasn't so terribly impressed with the "policy violators" page -- showed up my prejudice too. I was perfectly happy to believe the less-reputable folk (did I let their name slip already too?) were on that list, but I became instantly skeptical when I saw Abt. Which isn't fair, perhaps -- but called the whole thing stem to stern into question. Hence a flurry of phone calls, etc. Most of which have been moderately polite at least with the exception of this new clutch of snotty-plus emails. It's been pointed out, as suggested above, that Franke doesn't even make this stuff, they're "consolidators" of parts... whatever. But the take-home message I got which I agree is hard to swallow from Franke, is that 'they just don't know where this equipment is being gotten from, don't know how "they can be selling it so cheaply" and perhaps that's why they're on the violators list .... though at the end of the day they told me they couldn't even tell me why a company was on the violator-list (as in they did not know, not that they would not). Which I should think is at least unfair and at most unlawful since aren't we all guaranteed by law to face our accuser? Or perhaps not for the "state of Texas" - aka an institution. That's probably only constitutionally protected for individuals ... unless it isn't. Am I ranting or what? Bad day here. I suspect at the end of the day there's a huge amount of grey-area behaviour going on in all kinds of directions. I suspect consumers, while getting their fair share of breaks, are not coming out ahead.... dunno about that either, don't know what would be proper, actually, But as I said in the beginning, it's really hard to know how to act morally in such an unregulated, opaque atmosphere.