Back from out of town....so chiming in, since I added to this with more detail than Patann...sorry.... When I did the cuttage, it was critical that each piece of bulb tissue had a piece of basal plate attached, thus is seems critical/vital that the basal plate is required for bulb growth. Tissue without basal plate won't prosper. I've been in California for the past 4 days, and appreciate all that's been posted on this. I will try and make a trip over lunch this week to speak with the general manager. Maybe the sales pitch from the bulb company was that these bulbs will put on a magnificent display as they are desparate to survive. Doubt the basal plate was removed for propagation purposes. The hurricane lamp and pebbles are pretty shallow and I bet that the company finds that the roots just "get in the way"...and that the bulb will bloom and die.....ensuring another purchase next year. K

Goodness! Was so busy with the move, I missed part of the Pogrom! Anyhoo...we were in Mississippi for a board meeting, and got a look at our old garden, which is looking GREAT. Thought I'd do an update. As I'd stated, we were worried that we'd lose a ton, selling in this market, and with the ongoing noise problem just outside our neighborhood. But the garden gave the house immense 'curb appeal', our Decorator had the interiors whipped into a seductive frenzy, and our Mayor...well...has worked for two decades, to give the town enough cachet to keep property values high, even in this Depression. Too, Kismet smiled upon us, in the form of two young surgeons, who had lived in problem neighborhoods, before. Living in slums until they'd completed residency, they had been assaulted with noise from neighbors' sound systems, too. In order to get much-needed sleep, they had developed an acoustic isolation chamber disguised as a curtained bed. Amazingly similar to what our Decorator had done for our windows, but isolated on all sides, the structure sits on several inches of special foam. So there's no chance of infrasonic vibrations making their way up from the ground. GENIUS! Those whose accounting is more optimistic than mine would say we made a couple hundred grand. I'd say we just broke even, once the move was factored-in. Anyway, we got the (rather high) asking price. Our friends who had moved out here ahead of us found a distressed estate home for us, up the mountain from them. Too artsy-craftsy-early-nineties-lodge-look for me. But our decorator is bringing the house into the new Millennium with only a few tweaks, here and there. Anyway, we got a genuine estate, in one of the most desired neighborhoods in the Northwest, for only a bit more than we'd gotten for our spec-grade McMansion in Madison. Our friends out here also bought an "architecturally-important estate home" at a distressed price, and (once the decorator we share had worked his magic) have been getting offers that would advance their position by over a million. Hope that happens here. Nice as this is, I have my heart set on something smaller and more formal...French cut Limestone, with brick herringbone floors, to be specific. Back in Madison, the Clumping Bamboo we added is thriving, and the young surgeons have found an improved cultivar of variegated Arundo (Peppermint Stick) at Madison Lawn & Garden, to plug up the accoustic 'holes'. This is their first real home, and they are turning into gardening fiends! Wonderful! The CVS urns lynch-mob travesty got us thinking about giant urns for the ends of the pool. So our decorator had Hayles & Howe cast a couple of eight-footers from the parapet of a house in England. They arrived a month back, and we got to see them, newly-installed. Brought tears to my eyes....tears of joy, to see my garden looking so lovely. If the new owners allow the house to be photographed, maybe you'll see it in a magazine. I doubt it, though. Aside from the plantings and the decorating, it's still just a spec house. Based on what I planted that's looking great, here's a list of triumphs: Muskogee Crape Myrtle Peach Drift Rose (quite shade tolerant) Cherokee Rose Lady Banks Rose (all four forms...single white, double white, single yellow, double yellow...as well as the hybrid 'Fortunaiana') Dr. W. VanFleet Rose (the more vigorous parent of New Dawn) Southern Wood Fern Crocosmia Hymenocallis 'Sparkling Burgundy' Camellia Sasanqua Oops!...just opened the gates for my Trainer. Gotta go... Thanks, everybody, for those notes of encouragement!

Hello all! It's been a while since my original post. I kind of got side-tracked by life and am only now checking up on posts! Thanks to both GardenGal and daphnexduck for offering me a place to stay in the Pacific NW. Gosh, that was sure swell; I'd love to visit that area of the country. If I can ever arrange a visit out that way (quite a jaunt from MI), I will be in touch offline! As a clarification, I did mean the swap to be reciprocal while the owner is at home, so the guest would be more a short-term free lodger. I have since created a website for myself as a speaker/writer, and have seriously been thinking of adding a way for people to sign up with this "service." Must iron out details, though. Most home exchange websites charge a small fee that then enables you to see other people's contact info. Now, being cheap, I'd prefer to have it be free, BUT I wouldn't want to list people's street addresses or phone numbers outright due to privacy concerns (individuals would contact each other offline to arrange details). How do people feel, however, about listing their email addresses (can be spam-bot protected) online, or posting photos of their houses? In the short term, I would like to offer my humble but clean abode in Ann Arbor, Michigan, for anyone interested. I live next to a park and can guide you to many local-ish gardens. If anyone here lives near Cleveland, Ohio, I'll be there the week of May 21 (don't know exact dates yet), and would love to stay with a gardener, in exchange for your future visit to Ann Arbor. Thanks! Monica Here is a link that might be useful: My site, not yet related to home swaps for gardeners!

Okay, I won't throw away any ornaments (maybe the REALLY ugly ones)...Jane, you're so right. If you don't get your "donation" stuff out of there right away you'll start looking at it, and one-by-one, things will go back in the house again! Karen, I AM inspired. All these gorgeous things make me want to decorate the house top-to-bottom. My biggest problem is budget (was there ever a house built that DIDN'T go over budget LOL!) Maybe I'll have a Christmas in March, after we move in... - Magpie