(And it's _still_ winter in New Zealand, and seed catalogs don't seem to have been invented here yet. Bummer.)

Fran

Greg, that sounds fine, assuming the plants looked like cleverly shaped candles too.

When we moved into our current apartment, the only way we could get our old black sofabed into my basement office was by shoving it out the back bedroom window, then lowering it from the fire escape into the back yard via a pulley. We'd measured, so we knew it would fit through the back basement door. No way could we get it through the narrow first-floor hallway and around the hairpin turn at the top of the basement stairs.

Naturally, Jim Macdonald comes into this story, though it could also have been a Steve Gould story. (It's pure coincidence that the two most pulley-happy people I know both teach at the same workshop I do.)

Jim rigged an elaborate pulley arrangement that hung from the fire escape of the apartment above us, and was lowering the sofabed into the back yard, where Patrick was waiting to guide it down. (In the meantime, Patrick had whipped out his cell phone and called his assistant at work to say "You're not going to believe what we're doing right now.")

It was at that critical moment that I suddenly saw what was about to happen, and said the most useless thing I've ever said in my life. Which was: "Don't put the sofa down on top of the Astilbe chinensis pumila!"

"What?" said Jim, lowering the sofa to the ground.

"What?" said Patrick, unerringly bringing it to rest directly on top of the astilbe.

"Never mind," I said.

And I'm copying your recipes and saving them until summer hits.

Love the pulley story :-D

Fran

I hope you're at least looking at them; they're awfully pretty. I'd vainly imagined that there'd be one or two comments along the lines of "Wow, look at that great Wisteria floribunda longissima alba!";

Yes, but I've spent so much time on the other links I only had time to look at a few. I liked the lavender wisteria better. Must go now. Have dental appointment at 3 and must have lunch first. (Nitrous on empty stomach is bad juju.)

My work includes grabbing the digital camera (luckily the old one doesn't work on my computer, so I now get to use the nice one, which is my boss's, not company property) and nipping over to the store to photograph something to look good on the company web page. So seeing these oil paintings of hero product does arouse a little envy along with the "oooh." At least the company's not competing with us, but I feel like I'm competing with whoever does those pix.

Currently, my photography routinely inhabits the welcome page of my company's site. In the works, with approval from above, is a gallery of my past shots of the place where I work.

Kip

ps: Thanks for putting my link in on page 1! I will be updating content again soon to put some stereo pictures I shot in England up, and also the trip to Italy.

I've been to Monterey Bay Nursery. It's huge. My friend and fellow plant nut and I shrugged off their offer of a golf cart to travel through the nursery, and hoofed it instead. Wandered through a valley-full of 1-gallon and 5-gallon containers of all sorts of nice looking plants. Hiked back up the hill, over the ridge, to find another huge slope full of more plants we never got to. Luen Miller--one of MBN's owners and I'd guess the writer of those funny comments--is a really nice guy, too.

Nice to see I'm not the only one who enjoys their website. Native Sons is another good one, and San Marcos Growers. I'm in the biz (landscape designer) so I've got an excuse to hang out looking at plant photos there. *grin*

I'm just saying.