Scott Hildenbrand wrote:

I wanted to put nice tiers held by really good dressed stone blocks on
my back terrace, maybe 30' or more of it. I've dragged my feet on that
because of the expense of the stone and don't want to rip something up I
may not be able to maintain, plus a couple trees are in the way and
should clear them out but hate to do it. Of late, I've been thinking of
planting the terrace as it is, clearing, planting and mulching a little
at a time.

The other thing is that I have always wanted to experiment with plant
propagation and hybridization, the old-fashioned way, not with genetic
manipulation, wish I'd taken more courses in botany and biology in college.

I would love to do more with lilacs, heirloom roses, trees and shrubs,
have been working with roses lately with many disappointments and
failures just getting them to root, have tried several different
methods. I would like to cross pollinate roses, but you have to do
hundreds of seedlings and have a place to keep them; some take a couple
years to come into bloom, same with the lilacs.

Of course, you can buy all that stuff, but I've always been fascinated
with the work of Luther Burbank, Mendel, that Canadian woman who worked
on lilacs, and a man whose name I can't remember who worked on getting
higher yields on food crops before they knew the science of altering
genes. He did his work in Mexico. It is very tedious and
labor-intensive work.

One of my big regrets in life is that I have found unusual trees and
things growing out in rural areas in ditches, etc., and didn't have the
means with me, strength and motivation to dig them out of the mess and
drag them home to see what they would do. Someone would know what some
of the things I've seen were.

I'm always on the lookout for odd mutations, wish I'd saved dandelion
seeds that grew a fuzzy top like a cockscomb lol and a viola that
crossed with the johnny jump ups. I got a light yellow one with a
pretty sky blue border one year, wish I'd been motivated to try and save
the seeds from that.