Last night for hours I was watching TV coverage of the horrific mega-tornado in Moore, Oklahoma; the scope of destruction is beyond belief, with a tornado a mile wide and winds in excess of 200 mph (320 kph).  My heart goes out to the people of Moore that have lost loved ones, homes, livelihoods, and all their earthly belongings.
A short photo gallery showing the damage:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324102604578496951450902918.html#slide/1

An elegant orchid, love the slight undulation of the leaves.

Certainly everyone I've spoken to here wants to send their support and hopes through to the people of Moore and Oklahoma City.

The news is very sad.

Beautiful.

A change from the tuberous ones is Cephalanthera longifolia which is rhizomatus and comes from coniferous forests. It is completely hardy

Thanks for the comment. Lori try the Daphne with some granite pieces to cover the root. I Had one with roots tucked under tufa rocks. It was not doing well. Moved with roots under granite. Doing very well. I have Daphne lawrence crocker which is in buds now. All my three Daphne gets moderate to high sun.All are doing very well.

Claire, your Dactylorhizas are magnificent, both for the variable leaf mottling (wow), but also for the variable flower markings; genetics running amock!  In the second photo of your D. fuchsii hybrids, the markings on each flower mimics Edvard Munch's ghostly "the scream".

Tony, the vanilla icecream color D. sambucina is delightful. I'm going to have to expand my horizons and start growing more hardy orchids.

I'm with you on the P. newberryi ID; first of all, there are few woody species of this intense flower color, and now seeing the golden hairy anthers it seems fairly positive that's what it is.  And what a glorious penstemon it is.

Thanks Lori S. and RickR,

This year the garden became very nice but i hope i have many new species thus year with batch's of Germination that people exchange and give to me .

The weather in my area is very rainy this year , the sun shine some day since the start of 2013 and not for long time.

But, i've seen the Tornado in USA  .. I realise raining is so cool after that.

Nobody here was damage ...i hope !!

however (raining days), some plants grow and flowering well..look !


Geranium phaeum


Polemonium caeruleum


Centaurea montana


Arisaema


Ventricosum x


Ramonda myconi




Campanula glomerata

Ron, "The Genus Epimedium" by Stearn is top notch, an essential "bible" on the genus, and other herbaceous Berberidaceae such as Podophyllum, Leontice, Diphylleia, Jeffersonia, Vancouveria, and a couple others. Published in 2002, a year after Stearn's death, it was up to date taxonomically on Epimedium at the time, although new species have been published since then.  I bought mine used but in great shape from Amazon.com at $50 (which is the original selling price), many other copies went as high as $200 for a copy, I was lucky to find the one that I did.

Dave, Epimedium seed can't be had successfully from seed exchanges, because the dry seed will be dead.  The seed must be sown fresh soon after collecting it in late spring (to early summer, depending on the species).  I sow mine immediately after the seed pods are ripe and starting to spill seed, the seed itself looks like little green lima beans with attached fleshy elaiosomes.  I collect seed in plastic sandwich bags, then sow wihtin a week or two, using good compost in peat flats, cover the seed lightly, then top dress with decomposed pine back mulch, cover the flats with wire (prevent squirrels and chipmunks from digging/eating the seed), flats are kept in a shay spot all summer, and sprinler with water every now and then to prevent dessication, they sit there exposed to weather all winter, then germinate like little beans in spring.  Jeffersonia is exactly the same.