Wow! I still havent fully recuperated from Saturday and it may be a couple of days yet before I do. IÂm going to try my best to get everything planted today.

I just wanted to take this opportunity to thank everyone for coming to the 2008 Fall MTPS. As usual the weather, location, food, lecture, plant selection and fellowship were off the hook. I donÂt know what more we could have asked for! I realize that I continually repeat myself after every swap but you guys truly are the best folks on the face of the Earth and I feel very blessed to be associated with you. I count you guys among my closest and dearest friends so the time we share together is priceless to me!

For those of you that werenÂt able to be there Saturday, you were greatly missed and we hope to see you at the 2009 Spring MTPS on May 16th. I think we can all agree that the camaraderie we share is what makes the MTPS so special. I canÂt thank yaÂll enough for your kindness, generosity, support and friendship. You are the ones that make the MTPS the preeminent, quintessential and par excellence event of plant swap world. I couldnÂt be more proud of you!

As we have at every MTPS, hats off to the first-timers! You NewbieÂs never cease to amaze me. As an exampleÂPat Logan, aka burwoodbelle, jumped in like a grizzled veteran of many tours of duty under her belt with a table that totally knocked my socks off. She had everything from goat manure to pinecones to jams to decorative landscape stumps oh yeah  and she had a great selection of plants too! I was quite impressed!

I know I get stressed-out and frustrated prior to every swap but it is because I want yaÂll to have the greatest experience possible. My greatest fear is letting you guys down and putting on a crappy swap. Here are my only requests and all IÂm asking from you are two things:

1.) that you PLEASE register at our website (http://www.midtnplantswap.com/ ) prior to the swap.

2.) comment on our MTPS threads so we can let the newbieÂs understand what we do, how much fun we have, how informative the lectures are, what wonderful food we have and what cool plants we come home with.

IÂm planning on setting something up (actually having Bec set it up ) on the registration page so we know exactly what food is being brought so we donÂt run into a situation where we have no veggies, or no meat, or no ice, or no DRINKS! I do appreciate you guys putting up with me and my quirky idiosyncrasies. Hey I know IÂm a pain in the butt to deal with just ask Lavonne; poor thing has to put up with me 24/7/365.

As always, a special Swap Nazi thanks to Ziggy, Marianndretti, April and Robert for all your help and support. Thanks to all the ladies that get the food tables ready so all I have to do is load up plate after plate and gorge myself into a culinary stupor. And a special thanks to Alyce for her excellent presentation as well as all of you guys for your participation in her lecture. Thank you so much for your generosity in the donations for supplies! Thank you for treating me like IÂm special when we all know that a poorly trained chimp could do what I doÂand probably do it a lot better!

That being said, IÂm going to go ahead and put this bug in your earsÂthe time is quickly coming when I wonÂt be able to handle this anymore because of my business and LavonneÂs health. So if we are going to continue the MTPS then someone is going to have to step up to the plate and volunteer to take over. I think that IÂve been doing this for 5-6 years now. I canÂt get to a point where my time taking care of my wife and my business begins to suffer. ItÂs pretty much at that place right now. Obviously LavonneÂs Type 1 Diabetes doesnÂt ever get better it only progresses worse but thankfully my business is growing. If we could rotate Swap Directors every few years where it didnÂt put too much of a burden on any one person that would be ideal. I know that everyone of us is busy and nobody wants to take away from their limited personal time to do this gig but I canÂt prolong the inevitable much longer. It would just break my heart me to see the MTPS die. This is something that we are going to have to discuss and make a decision on at the Spring Swap.

Until then, letÂs share our MTPS experiences with everyone on GW, our friends, relatives, co-workers, congregation members, customers and anyone else that would enjoy the MTPS. I normally put the MTPS website address on the back of my business cards. So letÂs spread the word!!!

Thank you all again,

Jeff