Back at the old online venue whose name shall not be mentioned again, I used to offer a public service to those seeking intriguing and exotic gifts for the various holidays. This year, considering that everyone is trying to keep a sense of moderation in giftgiving, and that buying a giftcard from a dying retailer in a dying business is a guaranteed method of throwing away perfectly good money, I'm resurrecting the tradition. Part of this is to help friends and cohorts who need the money more than I do. Part of this is to turn interested bystanders in the direction of interesting goods and services. Mostly, though, I'm just having fun.

To begin, longtime readers in the Seattle area may have heard me mention going over to Emerald City Gardens, and now's the time to get out there if you're planning any bulb planting. Here in Dallas at least, I've discovered that the best time to plant tulips, daffodils, garlic, and other bulb or corm plants is right now. The weather isn't too bad, the soil's cold enough to keep things dormant, and the squirrels are too busy running out into the street to mess with the tulips until spring. Considering that Seattle's a lot more amenable to gardening than Dallas has been in the last 30 million years or so, I can only imagine what you can pull off with a little bit of determination.

In previous years, I regularly touted the singular talents of DeAnne DeWitt of Soapy Hollow, but she informed me that she's no longer shipping in commercial quantities due to increased shipping and production costs. This doesn't mean that she's quit soapmaking, so get on her mailing list for special batches. In my case, I don't know what I'd do without her famous "Gardener's Delight" soap (extra pumice for scrubbing and the scent of a fresh-mown lawn), so I'm going to be working at the end of the year to repot her Cypridium orchids in exchange for what she has left. I'm definitely getting the better part of the deal, and if it's all right with her, I'd like to be able to give away some of it in a drawing in the early part of 2009.

I'd be tooting my own horn right now about selling carnivores, but I'll be absolutely honest in saying that I'm not going to be ready for too many sales until spring. Right now, the vast majority of my plants are temperate carnivores, and they're all going into their winter dormancy. As such, I can't in any conscience sell temperate carnivores to people wanting them as Christmas gifts, seeing as how the smaller ones will pine away and die. Also, as much as I want to move into more tropical carnivores (the gentleman who designed my show banner just asked me about purchasing an Albany pitcher plant), I'm going to need a much larger facility before I can consider moving into the variety of Nepenthes pitchers that I want to carry.

That's why I'm doing the honorable thing and referring everyone to the experts. I've always been impressed and amazed at the quality of the plants coming from Sarracenia Northwest, and I hope one of these days to be as good, both as a retailer and as a nurserymen, as the SN folks are. I wouldn't be recommending Sarracenia Northwest if I didn't believe that their plants are some of the best that you'll ever find, and the holiday sale is just gravy.

Finally, while they still don't have any garden gnomes that scream "It's a hippie he's killed! Help! Help! He's killed a hippie!", I'm still extremely fond of our local Clean Air Gardening. This is because it's still my favorite source for Japanese hori-hori knives, my favorite garden tools. Of course, Clean Air Gardening carries the stainless steel blades, instead of the classic anodized black carbon-steel ones. I'm just a traditionalist: when the neighbors see the lunatic out sawing on chinaberry roots, his white hair billowing in the wind, while screaming "Sap and stolons for my lord Arioch!", it just isn't the same with a stainless steel edge.

So...anybody have any other suggestions?