Hi KitKat. Sorry to have been scarce around here. This past year has been one year of stresses in my life, the most significant of which was my mom being diagnosed with colon cancer and then liver cancer. All things have worked out fine now however after she went through colon surgery to get the one area in her lower colon that was affected and then chemo and radiation to get the areas in her liver. As of earlier this month, it appears that all is well and she is free of cancer but will have to have scans every six months or so to keep a check on things.

Hopefully with that under control I will have more to post here and other places as well.

Per your question about Black Prince, to my knowledge the only place that has sold it in the past was Chalk Hill, which is where I got my plant. I do know however that Dan Long at Brushwood is in a transition stage with his move to Georgia and is planning on growing a lot more varieties of various vines in his new facility. Perhaps that is one that he or Joy Creek or Debbie at Silver Star will offer in the coming years.

Hope you had a great Thanksgiving and a great new year!

Very sorry to read about your mother. You have been missed here.

Hi Miguel, sorry about your mom but very happy to hear that she is doing well. Also very happy that she has a son to walk the path with. Very important stuff.

So...... you have a Black Prince eh!!! Of course you do, I should have known, how do you like him? I am totally besotted with this clem and I want him, want him, want him. I have already approached Dan and he was open to the idea of propagation if I could identify a public garden that had a specimen growing and he would approach them but I dont know anybody here who has. I also contacted Manuel at Joy Creek but I havent heard back yet. I havent asked Silver Star but I will. I dont suppose that you would be interested in a little propagation exercise :) would you, huh, huh.....? Very happy to see you back here. We had a great Thanksgiving, thank you, drank alot, but never too much and played Pictionary until 2 am!!! All the best, Kat

Thanks BorS and Kat for your kind words. It has been one long year but at least now the "C" is not an issue.

Kat, I like Black Prince a lot. It does have a flower color that reminds me a lot of how Niobe blooms look when they first come out and before they are bleached out by our sun here in the south. Mine is planted on the back wooden trellis and is intermingled with a bunch of other clematis, as is my normal planting style--pack them in as much as you can. Not really sure how I would get cuttings to Dan in a timely manner since I would have to try and ferret out which stems belonged to it versus all the other clematis around it. Will just have to wait and see how things look next spring. Although I still have Duchess of Albany and two Blekitny Aniols in bloom here (as well as a brugmansia and two or three types of salvias--no hard freeze here yet), most of the other clematis have browned out for the season and I won't see new growth until the spring.