Not only have I never seen Buddleia reseeding around waste places/roadsides in this area, I can't even get it to survive in my garden, so I don't see invasiveness as an issue locally. I am highly dubious about the proposition that non-native plants supply no nourishment to native insect/animal species. Clearly chickadees and lots of other birds/animals have adapted to using these plants. There was an article in the Sunday New York Times last week from a garden writer emphasizing this (and recommending that people plant a wide variety of native and non-native plants to nourish the local wildlife)*. *this writer's recommendations probably should be taken with a grain of salt, seeing as how his article was primarily about gardening with climate change (he seems to think that a single colder than normal winter is good evidence of climate change, which actually is documented not by single seasonal variation but changes occurring over many years). Here is a link that might be useful: gardening for climate change This post was edited by eric_oh on Sat, May 10, 14 at 11:14

Some people don't know this, but cuttings taken from older or woody growth are not the best, they can take a very very long time to take off. It is possible that that is what you started with here. Ideally, cuttings should come from neither old nor very new growth, but somewhere in between. I was in a round robin last fall and two of the varieties I took from the selection were obviously older growth. I hesitated because I knew they probably wouldn't be good, but I really wanted them so took them anyway. It has been about 8 months now and compared to the other cuttings I planted at the same time, one of them has just now sent out a vine, the other has grown maybe two leaves. So, for anyone that does not know, if buying, selling, or trading, old growth cuttings are not desirable!

I remember reading (this was a joke) about a lady going into the ladies room, not wanting to put her purse on the floor, hanging it around her neck, not wanting to sit on the seat(her mother said you never know what you might pick up), trying to put paper on the seat and then trying to do the stance..Of course the door wouldn't lock right and someone tried to open it and of course that made the lady fall back against the seat...When she was "done", realized there was no paper and had to use a chewing gum wrapper she had in her purse....This joke went on and on and was the funniest thing I had ever read. But it was all very true, when you thought about it....I think the moral was, never go to the rest room alone, always take a friend...To stand and guard the door and then to hand you paper under the door..... I looked and looked, trying to find a copy of this joke...If anyone has it, please post it.....

I'm with heather! I guess I don't mind an occasional snowy day. Some days here, you look out the window and it is so beautiful, it looks just like being on the inside of a snow globe with huge fluffy white snow coming down.... only for hours and hours and hours and hours.... We have lake effect snow and often get 10-12 inches a day for several days a week. Last year we had only a 'little bit' of snow at 169 inches for the season. The year before it was about 200 inches. What I hate is dealing with it. The snow moving, slush, piling up in the yard (we end up with about a 12-14 foot pile in front of our house), having to wear snow 'gear', walking puppies in it 3 times a day then having to restrict them to the kitchen until they are dry so they don't mess up the furniture, slippery roads, I could go on and on... No, I don't much like snow.. or actually winter! If Gary's job were as portable as mine, we'd go south for the winter :-) But it's not... so we wait for retirement....