It's hard to believe that the Cocker Spaniel was once a hunting breed... if you look into the histories of many modern canine breeds, you can see that they began as something other than they are now... ignorant and irresponsible breedership and owership are subjects that really make my hair stand on edge, and it's in thinking about this that I wish culling extended into the human race, for once! Proper breeding is a subject that can be learned about with relative ease... the genetic code has been cracked since the 1950's, and it's not a hidden secret! The information needed to be an intelligent canine breeder is available for the taking! Nothing makes me more angry than the current state of affairs within the canine breeder world! Just because a person owns a male and a female is not grounds to call themselves "breeders"! If you're doing it right, you should be either breaking even or losing money on making a better dog through breeding! If you're making money, and you don't know what the word "cull" means, you're a puppy mill! Plain and simple!! I'll stop now before I get really irked! This is a subject that is near and dear to my heart... having been in the breeding game for quite some time, I understand the importance of stepping back and looking at the big picture, the importance of using every tool at our disposal to keep a genetically clean, strong gene pool going, and the importance of realizing that by changing the natural selection, we're playing God, and it's our responsibility to do it right... even if it means sending pups back to God for rework! Lemon Lime, Lemon & Lime and Limona all seem to be very prolific bloomers, generous seed bearers, and all appear to have a similar ancestry... they are all gorgeous, as well!

I'm unfamiliar with the history of flower color as it applies to hippeastrums... and I'm not very familiar with the colors of most species hippeastrums... would red be the color most often found in nature? If so, therein lies your answer... red, if this is the most common color, will most often be the dominant one, or at least show up to some extent in a percentage of offspring... the gene for red is in the ancestry, and although it can be suppressed through careful choice of breeding partners, it will show up from time to time... this is simply the nature of genetics... I think that with careful flower parent choice, culling and a bit of luck, a true yellow or more golden shade can be obtained... it would take lots of breedings, lots of culling, lots of time, and lots of perseverance! Nice flower, by the way! I'm partial to green throats in hippis!

Job's tears??? Has many uses for crafts, stringing, beading, weaving mats.

Actually, all you need to do for a lemon tree is plant it in loose soil, water the soil lightly, and stick it in a ziplock bag. See this thread: http://forums2.gardenweb.com/forums/load/trees/msg111341588777.html That lemon tree is mine. I grew from seed. All I did was (STEP BY STEP leaving out absolutely NO information) 1) I grabbed the seed from a lemonade drink made from a lemon bought from a lemonade stand, this past summer 2) put the seeds in a cup of water. All of them sank(sadly, I have no clue where they are now) 3) Placed them in a container somewhere (except for 6) 4) took that plastic cup and cut some holes in the bottom 5) put soil (which turned out to be harder than rock when watered) inside the cup 6) stuck the seed in the cup 7) watered the soil lightly 8) stuck the seed in a plastic ziplock baggy 9) put it on the counter 9) Forgot it was even there About 2 weeks later, I said "OH CRAP! AM I TOO LATE? IS IT DEAD? I CAN'T BELIEVE I FORGOT ABOUT IT!!! OH MY GOSH, PLEASE DON'T BE DEAD! PLEASE DON'T BE DEAD!!!" After panicking and looking for about 20 minutes, I finally found it buried under a lot of crap. I looked into the bag and I'm thinking, "Awwwwww!!!! It's so cute!!!" There was a little lemon tree with it's first two leaves sprouting. After I saw that, I stuck it in the windowsill where it's currently working on it's 5th leaf while finishing up it's 4th. It's the most beautiful thing ever. I would've increased the germination rate though to all six seeds instead of 1 of 6 if I had followed the directions provided online though(nick the seed coat and all that other stuff). But really, just planting the seed and forgetting about it for about 1-2 weeks seemed to work fine. I probably just got lucky though.