Oh jeez, I started off with 2- a phal (12 blossoms!) and paph. I saw them in the orchid bark and thought- Gee whiz! I need to repot these in proper soil! So I repotted them in miracle gro potting soil. And put the phal in direct sun on a 90 deg. day. Stupid! It got sunburn and started dying immediately. I tried so hard to save it...spent 2 weeks just dragging its death out. I took it to the nursery- I didn't know diddly about orchids (obviously), potted it in the bark again, cut off the sunburned leaves, doused it with physan (it now had root rot, and I didn't even cut off the bad roots). The blossoms dropped immediately as well. Then I cut the spike, and cut more leaves because the infection was spreading. So then I was left with a pathetic looking plant, half spike and only 2 leaves. Then the crown starting to rot. I threw it out soon thereafter. It just got too depressing watching it die. I really wanted to save it- it was a get well present from my mother. It's amazing what we will do for these plants. Miraculously, the paph survived. Definitely learned a few lessons here! BTW- I really enjoyed some of these stories. I've only been at this 6 months, and I still feel rather thickheaded at times.

A house I formerly lived in was an early nineteenth-century stone farmhouse. When my housemates were breaking ground for an extensive vegetable garden, they found three tombstones scattered in an old field on the property - a mother's and father's, presumably, and a much smaller stone for a child. These were almost certainly marking the grave sites of the original residents. I can't remember if the incriptions were legible or what they might have been. The tombstones were the very thin ones typical of very old graveyards in my area. They gave the stones place of honor in the main room of the farmhouse near its hearth. It sounds macabre to some, I suppose, but we all felt like they kind of belonged there, and that the family they belonged to became a kind of presence in the house once again. I've long lost contact with those housemates but did learn that they moved on. I do hope that the tombstones remained on the property or were taken to a local historical society. cranebill

Wow, Dave! You've got quite the Ilex zoo there. I don't get nearly as much diversity. You didn't even post the totally smooth-leaved one you've mentioned before. I do have one with very bright bronze-red new growth, that I am keeping an eye on. I don't think it's a hybrid, just a variant of the wild opacas around here. I double checked and mine is definitely a sport. Hopefully it will stabilize as an almost spineless American holly...I will let it continue to grow and gradually cut away the spiny parts. My only concern, such as it is, is the most eccentric foliar forms of various Ilex species seem to be males. Somewhat reducing their marketability, not that I really care about that.

I've been nursing a head cold and binge watching HGTV shows this week, something I don't normally do. This house looks EXACTLY like every house I've seen on Property Brothers, Flip or Flop and every other one of those inane remodeling shows this week. It's one white and grey room after another, and although I have nothing against white or grey, it gets pretty old quickly. So anyway, I wouldn't call it the worst staging ever. Just the most 2017 staging ever.