Some Echeveria I think? It was just labelled with a stick that said "succulent" and the nursery I bought it from was *packed* that day and I didn't feel like being a pest. *shrug*.

Don't you just love how the Christmas tree looks with presents under it? All that color is so beautiful! Lucy, what a wonderful time you had watching Madison get her jeep! I know the exact feeling. When my oldest grandkids were about 7 and 4, I got each one their own motorized car, Barbie and a sort of motorcyle. We wrapped a huge box with smaller ones inside until they got to the smallest one that instructed them to go to grandma's room. We had a huge bow on each of the cars, and boy were they happy. My now 2 y.o. GD has both cars, and we have to watch her in the backyard because she knows how to push on the pedal and go! We aren't starting our celebration until 9 AM, and I can't wait until I see my grandbaby get her rocking horse that I got her! Merry Christmas and eat all you want, LOL!

update- swap went great, mark your calendars for next year- Friday eve of Memorial Day weekend.

Plant all sh2 varieties close together, they are correct that sh2's can grow side by side with little variation in flavor. Do not plant any other corn type that can pollinate with sh2. When sh2 crosses with su or se+, the result is very starchy poorly flavored corn. Planting sh2 with synergistic is the opposite problem, the sweetness and flavor of the synergistic variety will be reduced. Cold tolerance tends to be pretty weak in sh2 varieties so I highly recommend planting into thoroughly warm soil. IMO, su varieties should be limited in your garden because they are less useful in terms of ways to be prepared. There are very few corn varieties that can be compared to Country Gentleman for making creamed corn so please consider growing this variety. Silver Queen is the standard of comparison for a su variety. It makes a decent flavored corn on the cob variety, but I personally do not like the thick pericarp. Cold tolerance in su varieties is the best of the sweet corns. The se+ varieties are less viable in cold soil so I advise planting them a bit later than su varieties. I advise finding a few different se+ varieties than you currently have on the list. Silver King is a commonly available standard se+ variety that can be found in most seed stores. I usually don't recommend a vendor specific variety, but Burpee's Breeders Choice corn is much better than most other mid-early yellows. Do not plant se+ varieties with su types. The result is that the se+ corn is significantly less sweet. I have less experience with synergistics than with the other types so do a little more verifying on this info. Synergistics are intended to combine several different genes into a single package which means you don't have to worry about planting them near just about any other type of sweet corn. However, most of the synergistics are less sweet if pollinated by other varieties. The only synergistic I have grown suffered from the same issues as sh2's. They are very sweet, somewhat watery, and imo, have poor flavor. Corn endosperm is triploid. When the pollen grain grows down through the silk, it splits into two nuclei, one of them combines with a specialized cell to become the germ. The other combines with a diploid cell to become the endosperm which is what we can taste. This means that corn is one of the very few foods that tastes different depending on which direction a cross is made and depending on the dosage effect of the pollen that fertilizes the kernel. If you plant an se+ variety and cross it with sh2 pollen, the result is two sets of genes for se+ and one set of genes for sh2. The dosage effect means the se+ corn will taste like a standard sugary corn but with a slight starchy flavor. In the other direction, an sh2 corn pollinated by an se+ will get two sets of genes for sh2 and one set of se+. But the se+ variety has a gene that patches the defect which causes the sh2 corn to be sweet. The result is corn that tastes like very starchy field corn. My preference is for se+ corn. I am in the process of stabilizing a cross of Country Gentleman X Silver King in an attempt to combine the shoepeg trait (pi2 gene) with sugary (su gene) and sugar enhanced (se gene). I am at the F2 stage which means this year I have seed that will segregate for the desired traits. The tough part is that only one plant in 16 will have the desired combination so I have some work to do to pick out just a few plants with the desired combination. Anyone want to help me taste 100 ears of corn to find 7 that taste really sweet and have the shoepeg trait?