In Appreciation

Thanks to all of you who have posted such kind words about me. It always
feels good to be appreciated. In turn I'd like to mention that I appreciate
all the help I've received since I started the list and wiki. Thanks to
former list administrators, Jennifer Hildebrand and Susan Hayek and to
current list administrators, Arnold Trachtenberg and Diane Whitehead.
There are always a lot of non member requests to field and I'm happy I
don't have to do all of them myself. Thanks to Mark McDonough and Mark
Wilcox for helping in the early stages of the wiki when we were setting it
up and figuring it out. Thanks to Susan Hayek who put in hours and hours of
help on the wiki, patiently changing and improving images, helping others
to add pictures, and helping change all the pages when the wiki url name
changed along with other countless little jobs and almost daily words of
encouragement and support while she was helping. And thanks to my current
helpers, Linda Foulis and Jay Yourch. Linda put in a lot of hours
converting the urls for the wiki photos so they would display as thumbnails
on the wiki pages. Without Jay, we wouldn't have a wiki that is working at
the moment as he has rewritten a lot of the code so that it is secure from
vandals and displays properly. And he is the one that figured out how we
could have thumbnails and wrote it into our wiki so that our version of
this particular wiki is superior to other versions.

I appreciate how helpful members of our list are to the other members of
the list. It has been rare that there have been unpleasant or testy
remarks. So much information has been provided to all of us and I really
like that experts are willing to help beginners. I appreciate all those
people who have contributed to the wiki, but especially those people who
have taken the time to learn how to use it and who work independently. I
appreciate the new people who join our list who are brave enough to
introduce themselves and all those people who take care not to include the
whole previous message in their replies. And I appreciate all those people
who help me figure things out when I write them privately. A lot of
appreciation goes to my husband, Bob, who provides support and help for all
my projects. He doesn't share my passion for bulbs or even for gardening
although he does like meeting other bulb enthusiasts and seeing plants in
bloom and in the wild. He puts up with a lot considering how much time I
spent on the list and wiki that could be spent otherwise.

I have gotten back a lot from all the time I have put into this besides the
great amount that I have learned (always good for the brain to be stretched
and mine has been stretched a lot by trying to figure out different
species, but also by learning how to use and organize the wiki). Our
wiki and list is a great resource for me as well as anyone with computer
access. Best of all, however, has been all the wonderful friends I have
made. I count some of my closest and dearest friends people I have met over
the Internet via my passion for bulbs.

Mary Sue