Sorry I am not home or I would invite you to see my 150 varieties over on Vashon Island. I'm not a breeder though, just grow them to sell as cut flowers. I "second" the test Garden at Pt Defiance...I stop by frequently for my color fix!

Diane, I'm not sure about the quality of pickle you'd get from Armenian Cucumbers since they're actually from the melon family and not the cucumber family, but I know people who use them for pickles. Robert, I'm sorry you didn't get more plums. I have had years like that where a seemingly potential bumper crop just disappeared before it ripened. This year we have had an amazing crop and I still have a lot of harvesting left to do, but so far I have harvested almost 300 lbs. of plums and peaches from a total of three trees. I did thin appropriately, removing approximately 92% of the young fruit, and even after that thinning, the crop has been heavy enough to break many limbs on the peach tree and a few on the plum trees. The birds and insects have had their share of the fruit, but with such a plentiful harvest, we haven't missed the ones they've gotten. That's why I am awake....a marathon canning session during the coolest part of the day, which of course, means canning at night. I have the last batch in the canner now and then will go to sleep and get whatever sleep I can. Paula and everyone else, You can make your own garlic spray by combining 1 to 2 cloves of garlic in a blender or food processor with 1 quart of water. Strain out the solids. Add a few drops (not too much) of a true soap, like Murphy's Oil Soap or any of the vegetable-based Dr. Bronner's soaps or an insecticidal soap, but NOT a dish detergent, which is detergent not soap and can burn foliage. To make it more potent add a hot pepper or two when you mix the garlic and water together. The use of dish detergents, like Dawn, is recommended all over the web but is not a good idea. Detergents are not the same as soap and can burn foliage quite easily. I believe the recommendation to use dish detergents is an unfortunate carryover from the days when it was recommended to use dish soap because back then it really was SOAP, but nowadays it is detergent. I use Dr. Bronner's Peppermint Soap in my concoctions, although once the weather is hot, I avoid soap sprays as much as possible because they can burn foliage when used here at temps over 85 degrees. I've seen the commercial Garlic Barrier spray at some local farm stores (TSCs) in southern OK and north central Texas and at organic supply nurseries in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. I've linked an image of one of those products. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: This Is The One Sold In Our Stores

I would trade in the winters here for the summers in FLA in a heartbeat. Like someone said, you don't have to shovel sunshine! Most people don't believe me when I say half the time the summers in DC are worse than in most places in FLA. In FLA, especially near the coasts they almost never deal with 100+ heat. Its a cool 74 in St. Petersburg as we speak. Here in DC, at 10 till midnight its still 88F. St. Pete has been in the high 80s to very low 90s, while were sweltering in very high 90s to low 100s the past few days. Its going to be 90F in St. Pete tomorrow, and 102 or so here in DC. I pay fairly close attention to St. Pete's weather, as it is where I am looking to end up, and often in summer the daytime highs are HOTTER here in DC than they are down there, AND we have just as much humidity during summer as down there, and sometimes more.

How important it is to keep in touch with loved ones. Perhaps especially as they age. As someone said, we don't know how many more times the opportunity may be available ... but that's true for everyone, even younger ones, though they "disappear" less frequently. Someone spoke of how hard it is to see our loved ones age, and in a way that's true ... but I think that we should not let ourselves get sort of bent out of shape over it, for it's part of the ongoing drama of life. Also ... to try to stop it is a fruitless enterprise: there are things that we can do something about, and things that we can't, so there's little value/future in fretting about the impossibles. ole joyful