Patrick: glad to see you up and posting. I sent emails before trying to set up trade for double petaled bloodroot,lARGE flowering bellwort, trillium grandiflorum, and i too would be interested in lady slippers if you should ever get some to trade. see my trade list. also have a few other thing i can possibly add to the trade. please c-mail me so we can arrange a trade.

Hi I think you gave me seeds years ago. They have bloomed for the first time this year and they were gorgeous.. I only took 12 seeds and I have 8 plants growing still... Only 3 bloomed this year. After about three weeks of blooming, suddenly the white bulbous flower and spathe turned into mush and is gone? Is that normal? Should I be looking for seed like a typical Arisaema tryphyllum? Boy, I hope they are okay they were gorgeous... Thank you again for your generosity. I will pay it forward..

Fantastic list of seeds! I think it is just great that you have focused your life on nature at such a young age. I too would love to have 10 (maybe 5) acres someday to plant a wonderland of natives plants, and am already doing that on 1.25 acres. Difference is, my interest didn't come into sharp focus until age 45. :) There are quite a few seeds on this list I am interested in, and I checked your want list and I have a few on that list. Maybe we can do a trade this fall? Just a note - on your want list is Cynanchum louiseae - this is an extremely invasive non-native vine that is becoming a serious problem in the Northeast US. And it has the additional problem that Monarch butterflies will "sense" it is in the Milkweed family, lay eggs on it, and then it will kill the caterpillars because it is toxic to Monarch larvae.

Yesterday I was at home with my kids (5 and 3) and we tried to plant some seeds together. We planted some Rudbeckia Spotlight as well as 2 types of Marigolds. I am also going to try to wintersow some of these seeds at the end of April or beginning of May - so I won't be too unhappy if they don't grow that well. I was more the act of planting that was the fun for the day. I also started some dahlia roots, 8 yesterday and 2 other ones a couple weeks ago. The kids had a lot more fun planting the dahlia roots because they got to shovel a lot more dirt with their spoons! The first 2 roots I started at the beginning of March, and I pinched them off between 3 and 4 leaf pairs. I was reading about dahlia's on the net recently so I am going to try to pinch out the growing tips of the dinner plate dahlia's the way it is recommended for a more branched plant. The last time I planted them I didn't pinch any of them, and I planted them a bit late so they barely flowered before the frost got to them. I have high hopes for this year if they all start well and transplant well. Janet