Ready for discussions.

I am totally in! Your last "Not from the Seed Rack Seed Swap" was fantastic. I'm excited to be part of it again!

ditto to Erica - just happy to be here - have some organizing to do.

If I post some links of paintings of plants belonging to malvaceae here, would it be all right to ask if anyone could help me identify them? I could continue making games like this out of other mystery plant paintings.

Perhaps I could offer a prize of seeds, in which case it would help for participants to list a wish or few on the wish thread.

Just an idea - am not ready to do this right now, but soooooon

So far, I have posted my "flowers-in-art" idea to the following NGA database pages:
Confederate Rose (Hibiscus mutabilis)
Queen of the Night (Epiphyllum oxypetalum)

Nine people joined today so we are off to a good start.
Karen, I think this is a good place to ask questions and try to get IDs. Play games all you want, either here, or on the Games thread. I haven't added one yet, but you can if you need it before I get around to it. Last time we played several games while waiting to trade. This year with three months lead time it will take a lot of games to fill the time so I won't even try, but I do have one in mind that I will post next weekend.

Welcome @acacius48, @Bluespiral, @Danita, @de, @duane456, @EricaBraun, @KarenHolt, @luvsgrtdanes, @patrob, @pinkmauisunset, and @RickCorey! @ishareflowers and @heavenlyfarm will be joining us soon, and there is plenty of time to build.

I'm ready to get this year (maybe my worst garden ever) behind me and look forward to a better one. No time, hotter than hot, drier than dry, and woodland creatures ate my beans and peppers while using my little pond for a spa. Three different snakes used the facilities on the same day, or at least I saw three. This weekend I forgot and left a window down in a vehicle and found raccoon tracks throughout. He must have had a dip in the spa himself before climbing in.

Anyone else have a bad year, or did you all have Jack's Beanstalk and Miss Lottie's Marigolds?

No beanstalks here that's for sure...we started off slow with a cold, cold spring, a few weeks of nice weather, then went to hot, hot, hot and we are still in a drought

I don't know where the raccoons were hiding themselves this year. Silhouetted against moonlight, one night while I perched on the porch watching out for our resident vandal, was a family of possums slowwwwly climbing over and around each other.

I would say that because of Homo sapiens 'Vandalitis', this was the summer from hell. Am not up to going into detail right now, but when I can gather a few wits, I'd like to talk about it using the metaphor of Uncle Wormwood. Does anyone remember C.S. Lewis' The Screwtape Letters? In the book, Uncle Wormwood coached Nephew Screwtape how to be a proper devil. I think he has a horticulturally oriented cousin, Nephew Vandalitis, who has been assigned to be my personal garden demon. I do get depressed over this, but sometimes ya gotta laugh to keep spirits up.

Ronnie, it got hot, excessively, here too. I would clear an area and come back out the next day to find that weeds DH had pulled and dumped in the compost pile the previous day, had been replanted where I had weeded. And NV is constantly moving what I try to grow around, which allows plants to barely survive, but they don't look that far from death. Etc. We've given up on the compost pile and have been carrying weeds off to the county dump.

If I razed everything down and put out a mean pooch and prison lights, I would miss the garden I made that was sort of modeled on castle gardens - just an approximation on a peasant's income.

I've made a few remarks about this on some of the images I recently uploaded to the Plant Database, if you'd like a better idea of how well Uncle Wormwood has schooled my Nephew Vandalitis.

Thank you for this thread, Alana. I will enjoy warbling about Uncle Wormwood.

Work, work, workity-work work. And that was my 9-6 job, NOT the garden!

I could barely keep up with weeding and mowing the yard, and got my park management mad enough at me that they sent in their goon squad to hack things down. They "trimmed" a bamboo as if it were a hedge, including "topping" it about half-way up! (I'd like to "top" the park manager and she how SHE flourishes after being cut in half. At least my little Fargesia rufa WILL come back over the next few years. But he is going to look STRANGE when he puts out a "top-knot" that's twice as tall as the rest of his "haircut".

At the same time, they trampled a big Hosta underfoot, and sheared off a big chunk of a Knockout rose bush because it overhung a sidewalk that went from nowhere to nowhere ... but a cranky neighbor complained. About roses facing her house.

And they STOLE both my compost heaps!!

Oh, well. Don't make beds if you can't keep them weeded, and your neighbors like to make trouble.

Modern neighborhoods seem to be all about Big Brother conformity and small people throwing their "power" around.
No room for messiness OR fresh food.

Karen, your stealthy late night vandal and Rick's openly careless and autocratic one would be equally frustrating, but stealing compost should be punishable with advanced techniques, thumbscrews, for instance.

Karen, cameras and ligjts, catch those creeps in action

poisondartfrog said: ... , but stealing compost should be punishable with advanced techniques, thumbscrews, for instance.

Yes! Or a spring-loaded compost heap that tilts toward the slightest touch and then THROWS the compost in a big, drippy, stinky mess at whoever dared to try to pilfer it.

If I did ever manage to set that up, it would last about 3 days, until I stumbled out, half-awake, with some coffee grounds.

SPROING!

thank you all - I know this isn't funny but I appreciate the help laughing about it - not to mention shared reverence for Ye Compost Pile. Ronnie, I hear ya - thank you. Rick, I have had some relatives who were uber-neatniks and policed their neighborhood; I guess my short-comings in that department might have been what psychologists call reactionary formation.

Well, may their Karma catch up with them

Maybe I will borrow the "reactionary formation" excuse for my garden this year. Would that work for my desk, too?

@Littlecheryl, welcome back.

Alana, I don't see why not - as long as it's used as a brief stepping stone toward a more serene, happier state of being, as opposed to a door stop.

Maybe being messy is itself just a stepping stone ... or a home ... dunno

Hi, Bluespiral!

I know that my messiness is derived from someone, at least once, having tried to make me be neater.

Reactive, oh yes. That would be me!

It was enough to throw me the other way for at least the rest of THIS lifetime! Not the kind of thing a MATURE person would do, or so I understand from reading about that "maturity" thing.

But I do have some neat traits, which I call OCD or O. Seed D. Of course they go to the extreme opposite!

Enantiodromia, I hope they never invent a pill for it! If you can't enjoy a thing AND its opposite, what CAN you enjoy?

Rick - so true: "Enantiodromia, I hope they never invent a pill for it! If you can't enjoy a thing AND its opposite, what CAN you enjoy?"

I'm up for a while - bumps in the night going on outside and a few innocuous (I hope) goings-on not worth mentioning woke me up. It's a pretty night to sip ice water on the porch. With respect to enantiodromia, am okay for now with night rustlings and since can't go back to sleep am happily pursuing my flowers-in-art hobby in my ocd, full-out obsessed way.

Which brings me to a flower I just found in an 18th century still life by Paul Theodor van Brussel (1754 - 1795) - http://art-and-things-of-beaut... (never mind this link's misspelling Brussel's surname)

In this painting is a Crested Cockscomb (Celosia cristata) that is ivory with a dusky, dark rose picotee. Might anyone know a source of this coloring in a cockscomb? I know about the Kurume Series, but they don't have this particular bicolor, as far as I can tell. I could grow it in a pot next summer that would be carried back indoors at night, per vandal. A few tiny plants could perch around the edge of the pot beneath it.

Thanking y'all in advance for any help.

Happy First Day of Fall! We topped out at 91 degrees so the calendar is the only way I know that. That's a few degrees down, but it does not feel very autumnal.

Welcome @midwestfarmwife! Glad to have you.

That Cockscomb is beautiful, Karen. I almost didn't recognize it as such. I've grown some of the Kurume series, but none as pretty as that one. I don't know any other bicolors, but they must be out there.

This weekend I will post a game. I'll try for one a week until we get closer to the swap, but I know a couple of our friends will be hosting a game or two along the way, too.

It's astonishing to me that ANYONE can paint something so realistic, OR so evocative. If I hadn't seen paintings since I was young, I would confidently declare that thar cain't BE such things made by human hands.

I've READ about taking a balanced and moderate approach to things - even assuming there are people who can work that way, is it even desirable? All-out enthusiasm is more satisfying.

I guess it's sometimes worthwhile to do effective things instead of fun things.

I guuuueeeess it would be worthwhile, if the outcome was more important than having fun.

(These are unfamiliar and uncomfortable speculations for me. But apparently sane people know about such things. Boy, It takes all kinds!)

Welcome two new swap members: @ladyblackr and @suzysparklesalot. If either you have questions hurl them this way and someone will catch them.