Just a quick note to wish all the dahlia aficionados on the forum a Merry Christmas. If you plan to travel, please be safe. God Bless!

Thanks, Dan, and I also wish our dahlia friends the best Christmas. God bless us, everyone.

Whooha! Merry Christmas. Day two of cooking and sitting with a beer for a break. Got to be 'beer-thirty' somewhere.

Haven't checked in in quite awhile. Big changes continue to occur in my life. I've moved off the farm and into the city. First time in my life I've lived in town. My back yard has a flower bed all the way around it and some in the front yard but it's a lot less space than I used to have. Now I really must cut back but I ordered some more last fall from SI before I knew I'd be moving. Lucky for me my daughter and her new husband have moved to the farm and she will continue to grow dahlias. But she wants to turn a lot of my flower/shrubs back into lawn so I'm going to have to dig up anything I want to keep and the dahlias will just have to share. I don't have enough space for everything, sigh.

Are you enjoying life in town? It's so nice that your daughter and SIL can now enjoy the farm.

How many dahlias do you think you'll be planting this year? I feel like a wimp with my 40 while others have hundreds.

I only have a few more than you Arlene and that will get scaled down this spring. I just went down to the crawl space to check for the first time. I opened about 12-15 bags and none were rotting, only a few had smaller tubers on the outer fringes showing signs of drying. Amazingly few have sprouts. Seems like this time last year many were sprouting. Interesting. Seems like I just dug them up.

Connie, will you have room for your dahlias at your new place? Must be quite an adjustment after having so much room. But far more relaxing with the reduced work load.

I wonder if your daughters interests will change as she ages? Everyone has their own vision of what they would like to see. I find just grass rather boring, but it is work to maintain flower beds too. I hope you enjoy your new house and gardens. Great to see some activity on the dahlias thread this time of year!

My it's been awhile since I've been here to the forum. Been busy getting my house in order and settling in. There is an existing flower bed that runs all around 3 sides of my lot so I will have quite a bit of room. It is lightly shaded for several hours a day so I hope there will be enough light for the dahlias. My daughter loves flowers but has a bit of a bad back and doesn't want to have to do all the weeding. But she does want to continue with the dahlias. We plant those in rows and after they are up at least a couple of feet we don't worry so much about the weeds anymore. I always kept mulch between the rows.

I just tell myself that all the chickweed covers the ground and so keeps moisture in.