It's amazing how great people can be about sharing stuff for the garden. Last year I just had a small flower garden, and two of my (new) neighbors brought me perennials from their yards. This year I have a HUGE garden, and somehow people get wind of it and many have been SO generous, totally spontaneously:

A co-worker was helping a friend re-landscape: she gave me about 150 daffodil bulbs and a ton of crocus that they dug up... I'll be planting them this fall and it would have cost a LOT to buy those bulbs!

A friend gave me leftover jalapeno and bell pepper plants that she didn't have room for; she offered some pumpkins starts, too, but I didn't have room. She also gave me some pretty shrubs from her yard.

Another friend who has a big perennial garden bought me some spring-planting bulbs when she heard I'd never done them before.

Yet another friend gave me a bunch of canna (sp?) that a friend of hers had given her. (It's just starting to come up.)

It's just cool to get these great, unexpected additions for my garden. Luckily I have something to give, too ... I need to ask my neighbor what it's called, but whatever she gave me last year is growing like crazy and I've given shoots to about 5 people.

Does everyone give and get this much? It's great!

I'm a lonely gardener in my demographic [they're all out at heavy metal shows drinking fizzy vodka drinks] but my steroidic lupines, who have just put out their third run of blooms in as many weeks, are from Morgan's mother.

As is the dusty miller which I also have to beat back with a stick.

My mom brought me some donkey's tails and hens and chicks that I put beside the heather and the thyme [for a kind of "arid" garden even though I don't really have one] recently and they survived the flight from Toronto.

I get a lot of work castoffs, potted plants as gifts that casting directors are too <censored for employment prudence> to take home, and one of those [a primula] has been blooming steadily off and on since NOVEMBER. It was flowering at CHRISTMAS.

I'm a lonely gardener in my demographic [they're all out at heavy metal shows drinking fizzy vodka drinks]

Your demographic = youth? Hehe, I have a much-younger co-worker who keeps telling me, "Your garden sounds so cool, I'm definitely going to get into gardening when I'm old." :D

Your demographic = youth? Hehe, I have a much-younger co-worker who keeps telling me, "Your garden sounds so cool, I'm definitely going to get into gardening when I'm old." :D

Heh. My demographic: Blue-collar matler Vancouverians with no lawns. I myself have only cedar boxes on my deck but I lurrrve it.

And I am on the young side of the gardening world, and new to it, but it's been very good to me. It's something my mom and I can really share, too.

Hey, I'm going to brag: BOTH my Dendrobium AND my Phaleonopsis orchid have new buds...I didn't kill them this time. I can't remember if I already posted this but I'm so proud of them. Go D! Go P!