The message
from escapee contains these words:


Our garden club brings at least one plant and numbers are picked from a hat.
If, at the end of the first round there are plants left, it is a free
for all.
I always bring tons more plants than I take. It's getting harder and
harder to
find things I don't already have.

It's been a long while since I've participated in a local garden club's
trade encounters. When I did so, I found it pretty much useless unless I
lacked some amazingly common & weedy perennial or wanted to start a new
hen-&-chicks from a single ball. I have right now a "Youth" azalea in its
second year very successfully started from a broken limb, & a "Loder's
White" rhody that was rooted from an old lower limb scarred & placed right
in the ground & almost time to cut it loose from the parent to transplant
in its own location. I'd bring such really nice things to trade but all I
could get for 'em is a pot of scilla or bergenia or some pea seedling a
child brought, so instead I'll just wait until there's someone who needs a
nice wee shrub as an outright gift. My taste in plants runs toward strange
woodland wildflowers & shade plants, & those aren't the things running
rampant in everyone's yard resulting in plenty to trade.

But if you've visited peoples' gardens & know there are plants you'd
really like starts from, they'll surely have things that are not growing
fast enough to trade bits of willynilly, but which will eventually need to
be divided. If you've some pretty nice things to offer on-the-side for
specific plants, maybe you can get some wonderful plants not already being
traded every year, promising something specific & nice for something
specific & nice.

-paghat the ratgirl

--
"Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher.
"Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature.
-from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers"
See the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com/