Bessie Thank you Bessie! I have been following Paula at Garden Bee (and buying her tubers) since I started. Her climate is so similar to mine, and her information is excellent. She's truly an inspiration. I'm not familiar with the other site, but I will check it out.
And thank you NCDahlia for that report. Much of NC is similar in climate to where I am. Charlottesville gets some variable weather due to the mountains, but I guess we're all experiencing that these days. I did experiment with afternoon shade last year (from existing trees,) and am doing so again this year, mostly because I'm filling up the garden with dahlias! Come to think of it, I really hadn't done much gardening before 2020--I used to enjoy it, but traveling in the summer made it hard to maintain things. Like a lot of people, the pandemic gave me much more time to think about the garden, and we coincidentally lost a few trees that were admittedly at the end of their life spans. So what else are you going to do with a sudden surplus of sunshine? I much prefer growing flowers to the vegetables that I used to grow.
Teddahlia I'll be interested to see how tall she grows for me. I had some monsters last year (Ferncliff Copper and Sylvia Craig Hunter, both in a raised bed with some shade.) Luckily I'm 6 feet tall myself!
blown_dry Gah that is too tempting, and not too far away, in WV. The dog certainly does make a good spokesmodel.
