Well a quick update to a long saga... I mailed a large package stuffed with seeds, to a Round Robin that I'm participating in, on Dec 21, 2009. Lo and Behold that package arrived back to me, plastered with stickers saying it would not be mailed due to the fact that it was over 13 oz and I didn't hand deliver it, on December 24th!! Interestingly, I recalled checking the weight to put proper postage on it and the weight on my postal scale said 12 oz. STOMPING MAD...DH made me calm down...so I weighed it...with all the stamps and stickers, it gained .2 oz. Well it could have gone at the 12 oz price had they not placed all the blasted stickers all over it, but it was FAR from over 13 oz. Guess where I went Monday morning??? You guessed it! Well actually on Christmas Eve, I contacted the postal Consumer Affairs division and filed another formal complaint and explained that I'm still awaiting a phone call from the blasted Postal Manager of our local post office. I used a few colorful words with him and he just continued typing knowing I was MORE than angry! After walking up to the counter on Monday AM and placing my package on the counter, the postal worker started with attitude. I said nothing other than, will you please weigh this package for me. He grabbed the package and forcefully put it on the scale. I waited..... Now for the blank...oops look on his face, he said, "Oh it's 12.2 oz...someone must have messed up." Well I made sure that everyone in that office heard every word I said. I told him I wanted proof of the weight as I had a formal complaint filed and this WILL be resolved! Amazingly his attitude did a complete 180. He said, "Well it must have happened after leaving the local PO..." I stopped him and said, "Those stamps would have been cancelled if that were the case! I know EXACTLY where that problem occurred and if it isn't handled, there will be a formal investigation and I will contact the media! If the idiot who weighed the package had charged postage, I'd have been charged for Priority or at least 2 oz more than what was owed on it! That's FRAUD!!" He apologized profusely and I turned and said, "I don't want your apology! I want an apology from the division that I'm at WAR with! But thank you anyway." I made sure everyone in that room heard exactly what was going on. Still my 2 cents...and growing roots awaiting the SECOND phone call that was supposed to have come by Tuesday. So Monday morning I'll be on the phone again. I don't expect a quick resolution to this issue, but I'm becoming quite well known with the postal employees and Consumer Affairs. You know the squeaky wheel gets the oil....so I'll continue to squeak and be a nice big ol' thorn in their side until they fix this problem with the lack of common sense and decency. You know none of them make mistakes...ask them, they'll rip your head off. Cause they are always right and we are always wrong... I'm off my soap box now ;) but I will certainly keep you updated...don't hold your breath...cause I'm not holding mine lol. HAPPY NEW YEARS EVERYONE...BE SAFE!!!!!!! Toni

Some kind of wild poppie/thistle out here on the plains. I don't know the name.

Cecelia - We need to hook up! : ) Have you tried to find any other John Cook roses? Of his 24 or so roses it seems like Radiance and her sports and Enchantress(e) at ARE are the only ones not "extinct". I made DH drive while I peered in yards and weeds where John Cook lived and where he supposedly landscaped the yards of some of the big, old homes in Baltimore hoping to discover some of his roses, but all I got was depressed. : ) Linked below is a bit of info about a garden planted with John Cook's roses in 1941 which was later moved to Druid Hill, Balt. in 1989. There are gardens planted by the zoo in Druid Hill but the woman I spoke with said all the Cook roses died and they just have a few OGR's there now. Sad. Regarding fragrance... Lady Mary Fitzwilliam, Mrs. Wakefield Christie-Miller and Betty Uprichard all are supposedly fragrant. I smelled my rose the other day and there is a fragrance, but it is light and perhaps a bit sweet, but most often it smells of black pepper. My nose is used to smelling roses known for their fragrance so perhaps I'm expecting too much. Good luck getting cuttings from the old rose, I'd love to see some pics of it. Here is a link that might be useful: John Cook info

Carolyn, Thanks for the input. That's what I was looking for ... someone who has grown several different "wild" tomatoes or tomatoes with a "wild" parent to tell me if the tendency for radical splitting pictured in the original post is typical to those types of tomatoes. Let me clarify what I meant when I said, "I never had a Indian Stripe split open like that regardless of rain." As you know, I only grew Indian Stripe one year ... 2006 ... but that was a very hot summer with a week or so of torrential rain coinciding with the Indian Stripe getting ripe in July. Yes, as I said above, the 2006 Indian Stripe had "an occasional random skin split ... but not anything radical." What I meant is, yes, the Indian Stripe would exhibit a skin split in a random pattern sometimes vertically, but usually horizontal around the belt of the fruit with some irregularity in the direction ... NOT a radical, vertical chasm from the calyx to the blossom end and bleeding seeds as shown in the pictures above. Also, as I said in the original post, "the Sungold I grew and used for this cross only split like this when dead ripe and hit with a heavy rain" meaning the Sungold would split from stem to stern in a big ugly chasm just like what is shown in the pictures above. That's why I thought just maybe the tendency to split open from stem to stern, vertically, as shown in the pictures in the original post, might be a characteristic carried into the cross by the Sungold parent and specifically associated with the interior structure of the fruit ... two or three proportionally large seed cells as opposed to Indian Stripe structure which looks like this: Oh my gosh ... look at that ... there is a skin split right there on the left hand half-tomato right at 3:00 (90* azimuth) ... but notice the skin split doesn't open through the interior wall, bursting the fruit and spilling the seeds and gel. So, I may be imagining things here, I admit, because just about any thin skinned tomato I've grown will split its skin in a heavy rain following a dry spell, right? But again ... I'm talking about the degree of splitting shown in the pictures in the original post. Maybe I should characterize it as "bursting" rather than "splitting." Then I might say I don't remember seeing tomatoes burst open, stem to stern, when they had an interior structure like say this. And none of these heavy walled tomatoes burst open or even split in 2006 and were grown right next to the Indian Stripe and in the same row as some Sugar Lumps which did burst open exactly like the Sungold and the F1 shown in the original post. Here's an example of a very heavy walled fruit that didn't split in that garden. But, again, thanks for the input as it is what I was asking for. Since there are several "wild" tomatoes or tomatoes with one "wild" parent that you point out don't tend to burst as shown, I need to look further into the particular structure of the walls and locules to see if there is something there that indicates this weakness. Bill