Very nice indeed. Paphs. are my passion but I'm getting more and more vandas. I'm currently on vacation in Myrtle Beach and have been hitting all the Lowes in the area looking for bag orchids. Have picked up a dozen vanda bag orchids. Bob in Albany, N.Y.

Bulbos of all sorts are temperamental devils. I'm not sure about cold treatment. They are nearly all very tropical in distribution and don't get any cold weather naturally. Withholding water might be a better option provided there is no young growth. If it's any consolation at all, we rescued one from a fallen treetrunk in the forest quite near to here. I am waiting for it to bloom so it can be identified. Waiting and waiting....It can't be that the conditions are wrong. I just accept that they are sulky little pests and only flower when they have a mood to.

One of the things I like best about my Miele, which I think is the Optima, (new this year and only in use for about a month) is that you can easily adjust the top sliding rack (the place that holds mainly glasses) and push it up one level to hold tall items down below on the bottom rollout rack. I've found that this is great when we have a cookie sheet, a big blender container or something else that's extra tall. Maybe other dishwashers do this, too, but this is the first one I've had that does it and it is a great space-saver and allows for more stuff to go in. We also have a teenager, plus a tween, and both load the dishwasher willy nilly (the utensil tray can the most challenging for them) but it's working out just fine after a little retraining...haha. We absolutely love the Miele...I was just saying to my hubby that I never thought I'd say this but it really is worth the price. We "had to" buy it because our glasses were getting ruined in our old d/w due to the water hardness here but we didn't want to get a whole house water softener so this was the perfect solution. So glad we bought the Miele!

I guess I have to add some more of my Tillandsia's. So, I was keeping them outside in the notches of my lilac tree. They got some dunkings in my pond and the occasional rain. They were putting out new growth and everything. Life seemed all good and happy full of rainbows and puppies untill the day of August 9th. So, my plan was to attach them to a peice of Driftwood I found at my cabin but that wasn't enough for me so I had to add moss and lichen to the wood to make it look more interesting. There's non of that here, only at my cabin so I brought them and the wood with me for a 7 hour car ride. I put them in a zip loc bag (open) like I've done several times in the past. So I've got 7 Tillandsias in a zip loc bag in the truck. We got to my cabin and it was 34 degrees Celsius there and we also havnt been there for 2 months. So I always have to do the usual walk around to check things out and stuff. Back in May we planted a vegetable garden from seed and I was pretty surprised how huge it got. I'm talking 9ft foot corn stalks. Anyway, I saw that there were a ton of zucchinis everywhere and got completely distracted. So 4 hours went by of the sun beating directly down on the truck in 34 degree weather that happend to have a bag of Tillandsias in it. When I remembered I went out there and the bag was full of water and they looked awful. I made a post in the Bromeliad forum asking if they're was any hope in them pushing through but yeah no. They were such a sickly looking green brown. 5 out of the 7 died. 2 were defently dead right away but the others took a few days to show anything. The two I was left with still got badly sunburned so I had to give them some haircuts. My 'big' Tillandsia got about 90% of its leaves removed and my Juncea's tips were all dried out. So I was left with two broken ugly looking things to mount on my Driftwood. Anyways, I got 6? More and decorated my Driftwood with the moss and lichens. It's not done yet but shoukd be soon. My 2 survivors are gonna be on rehab for a while but yeah. That's my Sad tale of whoa. It was so stupid too. Anyways, 2 of the zucchinis made 12 loafs of zucchini bread...