Hi JG, It's good to hear from you again, JG. Please forgive me for referring to your "Extreme Roll" zinnias as "Extreme Curl". The word "roll" is much more appropriate for the geometry of their petals than the word "curl". I should have referred back to your messages instead of relying on my memory. Let's have a drum roll for Extreme Roll. Maybe that can serve as a mnemonic for me. "I've got a number of Extreme Roll progeny coming up..it will probably be some time before I see any flowers or can show any photos! And there, I am optimistic... " I am very hopeful that you will get some more Extreme Roll specimens. I have never seen a zinnia like them and, because they are so unique, their flowers have a magical look. I hope they get a permanent place in zinniadom. "I'm finding, too that the topsoil I had in those bags is a terrible absorbant for water...I'll take my garden soil over that any time! Water actually rolls off the growing mixes, too, when they are hot and dry. I wonder why some sort of wetting agent isn't added!" I wonder, too. I have a bag of Peat Moss that I had intended to use for inside gardening, but when it gets dry, it is just like you described. Water sets on top of it in beads. It takes forever for it to absorb the water. I'm going to give up on it and incorporate it in some outdoor garden soil. There is a small flower bed at the front of the house that I think I will incorporate it into, along with a dose of fill sand. I think that Miracle-Gro is advertising some growing mixes that are kind of foolproof, and I think they also have some of those water absorbing crystals and the mix also kind of expands when it gets watered. And it may have a plant-friendly wetting agent. The TV ads for it look kind of enticing. It probably costs too much to use on a large scale, but I can see how it would be appropriate for small high-value flower beds. I am building another compost pile. Weeds and lawn clippings are an almost inexhaustible source of organic matter in this rural environment. Well rotted compost and sand are two of my favorite soil amendments. I mentioned a plant friendly wetting agent. Obviously there are such things. In the past I have used small amounts of Dawn dishwashing detergent in some of my foliar sprays. I am not sure of the chemistry of Dawn, but I have seen them using it to wash oil slicks off of waterfowl, so it is at least "bird friendly". However, some detergents are phytotoxic to plants. Some detergents can act as herbicides. I suppose I should do some experiments with Dawn on zinnias. I currently have some Tween 20 and Tween 80 that I have used in my indoor gardening. They are food grade, so hopefully they are safe to use. But I haven't done experiments with them to determine at what levels they might be phytotoxic. "I finally watered the plants two days ago in anticipation of this very hot spell. I've been conservative with the water because we are on a well. On average, the plants are about 5-6" high now with some trying to put out buds. This is the worst gardening season I have ever seen! " Same here. I have been using a lawn sprinkler on my zinnia patch to keep it from "burning up". And we have a rural well, too, and it will "run dry". When I see the water pressure starting to drop off, I turn off the sprinkler. The well recovers in a few hours. But this heat wave is going to be a continual problem for our well capacity. This close-up of a trumpet-petal recombinant shows the petals in some detail. It is a single bloom, and single zinnias are usually culls for me. But I am keeping this one around because it has an unusual "look". The petals remind me a bit of pitcher plants. That little beetle peeking out of a pitcher petal confirms that this is not a carnivorous plant. I do wonder, though, if a variation of this flower form could develop nutrient absorption capabilities that could produce a carnivorous strain of zinnias. Admittedly, that would be a real "stretch". But zinnias continue to surprise me with their odd variations. ZM (not associated with any product or vendor mentioned or linked)

Hi Rhoni Ann, Lots of people are painting red/orangey-red brick homes nowadays. If you're a fan of the Fixer-Upper TV show on HGTV, you've probably noticed that Chip and Joanna Gaines have totally transformed the exterior of many brick homes by painting that red/red-orange brick in all sorts of lovely shades of gray, creamy white or beige. After they add new trim and sometimes shutters and window boxes (depending on the style of the home and the look they're going for), along with new landscaping, those homes look just as transformed on the exterior as they are on the interior. Keep in mind that once you paint your brick, assuming you are going with a lighter color, it will reflect heat and light, but I have found there are lots of plants which grow well on the hotter west and south sides of homes that what a person might expect. First of all, if you will amend your clay with compost or some other organic material before you plant, then your plants will do so much better that it will blow your mind and you won't have to water nearly as much. We have dense, thick red clay (the kind you could use to make clay pots) that had zero organic matter when I tested it when we moved here in 1999. When they dug the holes for our percolation test for our septic system when we built our house, most all of the water remained in the holes after 24-hours, which explains why we have a lagoon instead of leach lines. Along our south and west facing walls, cannas have done really well in only lightly amended clay. If you plant the tall ones that get 4-7' tall, they will form their own mini-wall along the bring wall, and they don't really mind the heat as long as you water them occasionally in summer. They die back in winter, but you can cut off the ugly dead foliage at the ground so you don't have to look at it all winter long. Cannas are very strong, resilient plants, fitting into my favorite category of plants that I describe in this manner: they won't die and you can't kill them. In front of those taller cannas, you could the short, compact evergreen shrubs of your choice so you'd have something green there year-round. Some of the shorter varieties of hollies would work, and hollies come with many different leaf shapes from the very small leaves of yaupon hollies to the larger leaves of other forms of holly. If you don't want evergreen shrubs on the west side of the house, you could plant daylilies, lantana, gomprena (aka globe amaranth), zinnias, cosmos and some perennial members of the salvia family. All of these do well in well-amended, well-draining soil and only need moderate amounts of water in summer as long as they are well mulched. Or, you could plant ground cover type plants that thrive in full sun. Purple wintercreeper is a lovely greenish groundcover that is low maintenance. We just cut ours back to the ground with the string trimmer once or twice a year. It turns purplish-green in the cold season. Its flowers are not very obvious but then they give you lovely little berries. Hollies, by the way, are one of my favorite plants for clay soil because once they are established many of them are really drought-tolerant as well as heat-tolerant. If you like crape myrtles they are very heat-tolerant and come in all sorts of sizes, from more tree-like forms that can attain 20-40' Crape Myrtle Trails--Varietiesin height to weeping forms only a couple of feet tall. Be sure to purchase named crape myrtles varieties so you can Google those varieties before you buy to ensure you're getting the right size for your area. Sometimes the ones sold at places like Wal-Mart don't give a variety name on the tag, so you have no idea what you're getting. There's nothing worse than planting a big variety of crape myrtle in an area that is only appropriate for a small to medium sized one because you'll spend tons of time trying to prune back the big one to keep it small enough. Depending on the color you ultimately choose to paint your brick, you might like some of the Black Diamond series of crape myrtles with their purplish-black foliage. They would look striking against a lighter colored wall and they don't get too large. To give you an idea of the many kinds of crape myrtles available, I'm going to link the page of the Crape Myrtle Trails of McKinney, TX, which is my favorite website for Crape Myrtle information. I haven't tried Rose of Sharon on the west side of the house, but it probably would be alright. I have several kinds of hardy hibiscus in the border around our large veggie garden and they are both heat tolerant and drought tolerant. They are growing in heavily amended clay in raised beds, but there's a couple of smaller ones at the lower north end of our heavily sloping garden and they are equally heat and drought tolerant, growing at grade level in soil only lightly amended. Another perennial flower (often considered a reseeding annual, but perennial in my garden) that doesn't mind the west side of a building is tall verbena, Verbena bonariensis. It is one of the most heat-tolerant and drought-tolerant plants I've ever grown and is a real butterfly magnet. I use lots of autumn sage (Salvia greggii) plants as they tolerate heat and plentiful sunshine. They are perennials and are semi-evergreen. Sometimes they bloom on and off throughout the winter here in zone 7b. I just shear them back pretty hard right before new growth begins in early Spring to keep them more compact and more manageable. There's tons of options for the west side of a house. Just avoid things like hydrangeas that must have afternoon shade in our climate and avoid plants that need perfect drainage. Good luck, and if you have more questions, I hope you'll ask them. Also, watch for the Master Gardener's plant sale in your county, which has a very active MG group that puts on a great plant sale in the Spring. This year's plant sale is May 11th. More info about it can be found on the website linked below. Pottawatomie County Extension Service Webpage The Master Gardeners have a display garden at the ag extension building and you might visit it to get some ideas. Dawn

Actually, it's not h. sieboldiana Elegans. It's just Elegans. This is copied from the hostalibrary h. Elegans page: Use of the name sieboldiana 'Elegans', though widespread, is technically incorrect. The name 'Elegans' was originally given to a hybrid created by Arends, which was called 'Robusta'. Today the name is used for a variety of different blue sieboldiana-type plants which have been grown from seed in the last century. It should be considered a general name for these plants, and not that of a specific cultivar. In preparation for his book The Genus Hosta, W. George Schmid once tried to track down the original plant from Arends, but was able only to narrow it down to five growing in two locations in Germany. This is from the Sieboldiana page: sieboldiana is an extremely variable cultivated species. A selected clonal form named ‘Gray Cole’ (Kuk) best exemplifies the Western form, which can reach immense proportions. The cultivated population includes many seedlings which have been selected for conformity to the accepted norm. Well over 100 named cultivars look very much like the idealized form of this species, which is a cultivar form and many Japanese naturalists have reported to that they have never encountered such plants in the wild. The species as represented in the West is clearly hybridized, but has been treated as a species since the 1830s. So, sieboldiana is not a species, but a cultivar. bk

For those of us who regard a cross country flight as about as desirable as 12 hours worth of root canal surgery, let me add that Whitney Gardens is one of the great sources for mail order rhododendrons and other plants. Everything I have ever received from then has been larger than advertised, impeccably packed and arrived with sometimes hard to believe speed.. In one case, a package left extreme western Washington on a Monday and arrived at my local post office in Maine on the following Saturday. This via USPS parcel post, so much less expensive than UPS, FedEx or Priority Mail. If you go by the listed shipping rates on Whitney's website or in it's paper catalog, it looks very expensive because it does not reflect the change to USPS. It actually has what is probably the least expensive shipping in the industry.The story of how Whitney Gardens was established, the hybridization work of William Whitney and the early days of west coast rhododendron nurseries is a fascinating story. Whitney remains, as far as I know, completely family owned and now into the third generation of management. Great people who deserve the support of anyone who appreciates plants and independent garden centers.