Dear Albert, dear All, First of all, thank you very much Albert, for your service for all of us. I hear with regret that you resigned from your job as director of the bulb and seed exchange. I know we had some correspondence about you being overwhelmed by (too) many donations but still, there are quite some labels with BX on them from your time. I hope you can step down without bitterness. My idea for a combined BX/SX would be to introduce deadlines by which donations should have arrived. And then do one big distribution for spring sowing/planting and another one for autumn. This would apply for both hemispheres, the seed will adapt straightaway and bulbs need their time to adapt anyway. There are only very few seeds or bulbs that cannot be stored and for these alternatives may be necessary. But it is not necessary to offer seeds or bulbs which can be stored every time they arrive. If the postings would be concentrated into two each year the overall workload would be less. I have received several postings this year which each require packing, labeling, posting etc.. Of course the workload twice a year would then be quite big. But with a more scheduled procedure I would hope that a group of volunteers could be formed who could share the work. And not necessarily the same persons each time. I am also a member of the Alpine Garden Society in England who do the biggest seed exchange I know of. Only once a year in January which is a bit too late for rare autumn seeds. I contribute but PBS gets the rarer and more fragile stuff. They have quite strict rules but I guess this is necessary for such a project. Maybe it would make sense to contact them. (Maybe not right now as they are in the middle of the annual workload) Personally I would be happy to help but living in Portugal this is practically impossible. Except for work which does not imply the handling of seed. I have just sent a large consignment of seeds from Portugal and from my garden, most of it for autumn sowing. I have been late sending it because there was so much „pioneer work“ in my new garden! Hopefully the seed will be distributed, it was a lot of effort to get it done. Not sure if that helps, happy to discuss more on this forum. Bye for today Uli _______________________________________________ pbs mailing list pbs@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net http://lists.pacificbulbsociety.net/cgi-bin/…