My sister Carolyn

[Sue_CT]

Oh my gosh, Wildcat62, sorry about that, I meant to leave a thumbs up and just saw I hit the thumbs down by mistake!

[worth1]

I never could figure out why she turned 180º on SSE. They were the main promoters for her book. In the early 2000s, one dared not say a bad word about SSE in Garden Web. And there were many times when she cut a reply short because she had so many requests to fill. One thing to her credit after 2006 was that she followed me in dropping the price so that all members paid the same. (That has since been done by many other major listers.) Things were strange after 2006 as the number of varieties offered were smaller and smaller. The final year was, I think, 2016 or so and was a head-scratcher. She was going to stop listing as all of her seeds were at least 10 years old. What is suspected by some is that her 2006 varieties were not grown by her. Lots of mystery involved!

Martin

[mention]Paquebot[/mention]
It was due to a hostile takeover where they booted out the originator and replaced him with someone else.
That is the short and sweet of it from the best of my knowledge.
Much more to it but I don't want to get into it here.

Sort of a love hate relationship with gardening and myself.
I too was taking piano lessons at an early age.
But was forced to work in the garden too.
Eggplant was one of my first crops grown from seeds in grade school.
Eggplant because I liked chickens.
I suppose Carolyn liked the garden but didn't want to work in it like many of us at that age.

[thear111]

Sorry to hear about Carolyn, I was part of the gardenweb community fairly avidly about 20 years ago... she was always very helpful...
Sorry for your loss and ours...

[eyolf]

I posted somewhat regularly on GW in the late 90's; it was about 1996 or 1997 before we had a reliable, affordable internet connection. Already a gardener and seed saver, I ate it up, often reading late into the night.
By 2008 or so, I had amassed a small collection of oddballs, and Carolyn messaged me for seeds to share. Apparently she was considered the "source", and rather than correct some of her contacts, she would build an "order" from those she thought had fresh seed.

One she asked me for was one I had worked on selecting for my cool MN garden, and I would have been the only source of seed. It was cool to think I was part of something that only a few, worldwide, were interested in. I find a couple of seed houses are offering it...one in Europe. That's pretty cool!

That variety, 2 or 3 more, and a couple of rarities from "famous" upper Midwest seed savers nearly died in my basement: I was asked to join a political organization, within a few months I was an officer and had zero time to do more than maintain a small garden for fresh veggies. I served my sentence, we accomplished much of our goals, and I came back to learn that Carolyn had gone clear.

Early on, I recognized that the internet could possible wreck a person's life...mostly because of a relative who went from troll to convicted minor terrorist...so I never really allowed myself to form an attachement to online personas. Carolyn wasn't really an exception. There were a poster or two that didnt like Carolyn much and would cause trouble. I imagine they were jealous that she had built up a little notoriety. What they didnt see, I suppose, was that publishing a book and holding court on a gardening forum, along with a couple bucks will get you a coffee at the convenience store on the highway. If I saw more than two or three negative posts, I would go away for a week or a month, waiting for it to cool down.

Now, some places are all guns and knives, all day.

THis place doesnt seem to be, and Im happy about that.