Very nice! But the pic needs to be BIGGER. And it is a must that when you put pics on the forum of such beauties, they have to be identified so we can all be enabled into acquiring them too. :) I love the fluffy yellow one in the middle--could that be Citron du Cap? What about the maroon ones directly behind the yellow and orange waterlily? Actually, I already have Citron du Cap but I got it at an "end-of-the-season" clearance so it was planted too late in my garden to bloom. I think it was about to send up buds when our first cold weather hit and melted them all down like the Wicked Witch of the West. Very nice dahlias you posted. Keep 'em coming! Annabeth

Double male flowers are uncommon but not rare. In my garden they seem to be one every couple hundred flowers. The rare thing is double female flowers. I personally love double fruit and I hunt for them every year. While the doubles are rare, compared to other squash they are fairly common in acorn squash and jack-be-littles. They are more rare in ornamental gourds and very rare in actual pumpkins. I travel all over my area looking for them and I usually find about a dozen double fruit each year. When you say pinch do you mean culling extra fruits or just pinching the growing tips? I have NEVER pinched the tips of any vines with the aim of ripening fruit faster. I really don't think that does anything honestly. But if you feel the need to do it then I would say that it takes at least a month to go from flower to orange pumpkin (5 - 10 lb size, longer for larger fruit). Also once they reach the full size and are dark green they will ripen off the vine at any time after this (though they won't store as long). You can decide when to pinch accordingly based on your last frost date.

Jim, You can tag an image into the body of the thread by using an html tag like this. "" To embed a link in the body of your message, use this form. jim's link Don't include the space after the in either of the examples above. The problem with your link is that you did not post an image but rather a link to a picasa webpage that contains images. You can individually link your photos if you use the image url like this. DarJones

Well, I'll be the first to tell you that I am very ignorant of the building process :o). But, fortunately, my husband isn't. Although green, he's been doing research 'off and on' for a couple of years and very much so 'on' in the last six months. We also did a complete home remodel in the house we just sold - while we lived there!! What an education! We did not GC that project, but it was a nice tiny springboard to this (or so we think). DH is an engineer by trade so he actually enjoys the details. I am also trying to educate myself about the hammer and nail portion of building (though seriously uninteresting). I am much more intrigued by the 'inside' lipstick portion of building :o). The subs we have lined up have been much easier to work with than we anticipated (that being everyone's first horror story they give you) -- now I'll confirm or deny that statement here in about a month :o). Our framer has been a wealth of information and even told my DH that he was impressed at how much he knew about the building process. He is certainly a good student. There again, his boss is building right now, set to be in by Labor Day, so he has been funneling the 'good' subs our way and has been very helpful in the 1,2,3s of the process. I appreciate the comments and encouragement, I know that you guys know what you are talking about. Thanks for that link sierraeast - i'll send that to DH pronto!