I just wanted to say thanks everyone!! Very informative articles and so much knew stuff you learn each day comming here...I never understood this about bark and wood.. All I can say is thanks! I FINALLY found some! Fir bark... I remebered buying orchards from someone I met in my area over 5 years ago that was growing beautiful and citrus back then, and I remembered him saying someday he was going to sellevery good supply he could think of for orchards and tropicals, to help people be sucessful at these plants. It was a dream of his. I saved his number from then. I called him, and come to find out, he is a big supplier of YES!! "fir bark"...We were both happy to hear from each other besides. He has fine and or small and medium grade...He says it's real real good stuff. He specializes in this bark..NICE ha. Now I am excited. I get a FREE delivery of three bags within the next couple of days... I will take a pic, and you can see if it as nice as he says when I get to using it.... If it is, then I would be willing to tell you where I got it privately, since it can be VERY difficult to obtain this hard to find good stuff..:-) A secret he shared. I asked him how his plants were doing. He said better than ever before, since he waters his plants once a month with, ready? Seltzer water, sodium free.... He explained the benefits in detail, hard to remember...Hummm.. As anyone ever heard of this, watering container plants with seltzer water?

I figure I could add something years later since other people added comments a year later. I moved into a rental house in Boulder, CO that had very well done perennial beds around the time this original post was written. It's been neglected for 7 or 8 years or so, especially the last 3 years. I can tell from Google maps the last year the lambs really took out for the rest of the beds and even the yard. I've been digging, pulling and now have covered an entire bed with clear plastic to kill the seeds before I'll consider planting there. The roots have formed an impenetrable mass and are sometimes thicker than my thumb. They have smaller roots finding them all together. I think if I were building a prairie Sod house I would be thrilled to find these. I'm constantly facing masses of sprouts and churning them over with hopes of killing most of them. We live in a Bee Safe neighborhood, and I don't think Round Up would have helped much anyway. I put an ad on craigslist and I've had many people haul garbage bags of plants away but eventually I got tired of answering the text-I think I had probably 50 people take A wavering amounts of these plants. I've never had them spread before but I stay on top of them, possibly since I use them in flower arrangements or pull them out as soon as they stray out of their designated area. I've discovered I now despise them and I don't think I'll ever let them grow again. I see them downwind from our yard and I'm tempted to go pull them now to spare them future agony- especially since it's likely the seeds came from here in the first place.

decor64 - I'm going to be the devil's advocate here, and I'm sure most people will not agree, but here goes....we lost our house and everything we owned in Hurricane Katrina. Beautiful furniture and accessories that we had collected over 35 years of marriage. Finally, we are building a new home, but there's no way that we could afford to replace what we had, such as Henkel-Harris breakfront, armoires, secretary, etc. Costs have risen quite a bit since we purchased them in the 70's, and our insurance did not come close to making us whole, as they love to say. The only thing high-end that we have purchased is the house! After scouring numerous magazines, articles and websites, we have purchased stylish, but not the most high-end furnishings that will complement our house. Look at it this way, styles change, even classics, so if you haven't invested an arm and a leg into your sofa, and you tire of it, it's a lot easier to change, instead of feeling like you're married to it because it was so expensive. There are not that many high-end furniture places here on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, but I chose to purchase locally, because businesses suffered as much as residents here. Sorry to ramble. Good luck with your selections.

Hi Veronica! Where to start... First, the seeds on damp builders sand, are they in an enclosed container, or simply sitting on the top of the sand in an open container? If it's open and your refrigerator is frost-free, they are being kept too dry to germinate. If the container is enclosed, you should bury them under the damp sand about a quarter of an inch below the surface. Some people sprout their seeds on damp paper toweling, enclosed in either zip loc baggies or other enclosed containers. The temperature of the refrigerator also makes a difference. The lower the temperature, the longer the seeds hold before germinating. Some will sprout below forty degrees, many won't. Supposedly, germination begins to fall off at temps above 70F, but I see many sprout well up into the eighties. I would plant them in the sand to about a quarter of an inch depth and make sure the sand is still damp and it is well covered to prevent it from drying out. Dry storage will hold the seeds longer without germination. Some believe drying them out will cause them to take even longer to germinate. If they haven't germinated by the time your outdoor temps fall into the sixties and seventies, remove the container from the refrigerator and place it where it will receive those temps. Hopefully, that will be indoors where you can keep an eye on them without the container filling full of water or something getting in and eating the seeds. Rodents LOVE rose seed. Good luck!