Thank you stonesriver and everyone else for the kind welcome. Yes, I think I may have been a bit bitten by the "gardening" germ. Granted, I am nowhere close to where most people on this forum probably are. I am mainly a "decorator" who feels that a house without any indoor plants is sad, dry and too much of a sign of our rushed times. So I decided I HAVE TO get some reasonably elegant indoors plants established. The only thing close to caring for a plant I've done before were some geraniums. They did OK, I managed not to kill them and they bloomed quite a bit over the winter even if they did get leggy. Oh, well. Now I took them outside and I decided that they will go in the basemenent for wintering when times comes. I will no longer keep them in the house because they are not really elegant, gracious plants. I like their bright colors outside in the summer but that's that for now. So I decided it was time for something finer and elegant to go with our classic/traditional living room as well as my busy schedule. I also knew this was going to be harder than a geranium which are quite hard to kill anyway. So off I went to Pikes and I grabbed some plants I had heard were not hard to care for and would do well on our Eastern bay window. A Peace Lily, four AV-s and two yellow begonias. (I did kill a begonia last year but later, after more reading, I realized I was making mistakes with it). A real gardener I will never be - not with a full-time academic career and two small children; but By God, these few plants must stay alive, do well, and even bloom nicely - this is all I hope for. I don't plan to do any complicated wick watering (at least it sounds complicated to me) or much propagation or anything - I just want to keep my living room looking as pretty as it is now, with lots of healthy blooms, if this is not too much to ask. Since I've heard so much about how important the soil is, I think I am going to change the soil the plants came in pretty soon; at least for the AV-s, I don't know whether I should do the same thing for the begonias, but probably should. Having a month between waterings sounds like a lot to me. These are small pots (4" I believe) and I think all moisture would evaporate altogether from such a small pot well before the 1 month mark; especially if I change the soil to something more airy. I did fertilize the AV-s when I watered them the first time - with some 5-7 drops of liquid fertilizer from MIracle-Gro, as indicated on the package. I am a super novice so I just did the novice thing. I guess changing the soil will also change the present routine. Some of the flowers on my AV-s are starting to fade now- they are starting to have little burnt patches on the petals, but I assume this is the natural cycle of the flower - as I bought them with quite a few blooms from the nursery and it might just be their time to go. I am just hoping they will continue to bloom for a while. Thank you again for the kind welcome, I wil certainly be around because I have been clearly "bitten". :-)

Hello tov. Valeriev, #1 possibly is a cold water - either you watered with cold water or some cold water got on your leaves. As long as you are sure that it is not the sun. # 2- not sure - may be somebody else has a suggestion? #3 - do not see anything wrong with this one - looks like it wants to have lower leaves removed and repotted - you get it out, slice off the bottom quarter of the root ball, add some fresh soil on the bottom and some on the top to cover the neck. If you look at #1 and #3 - a small leaf on the right side sticking out between 2 big leaves. Usually when petioles - the leaf stalks become more pale than the rest of them - the leaf is old and can be removed. One more thing you can do - leach them - run the lukewarm water through the soil in you kitchen sink and give them a good shower. Blot the water from the center and let them dry in a warm and shady spot before putting back to the window. ABout the one you say keeps getting crown suckers - some of them do - reroot one sucker and see what happens. Are you sure it is not a trailing violet? (If you are talking about #3 it is certainly not). BTW - there is a light halo-ing on the edges of old leaves - usually it is nitrogen deficiency. May be your weekly weakly is too week - but most possibly - how long ago did you repot them? You need to leach them once a month and repot every 6-12 months - otherwise the peat in a soil mix desintegrates and Ph of the soil goes out of the best range (around neutral) - and if the Ph is wrong - the plants cannot absorb your fertilzer. Are they in these double ceramic AV pots? When you are leaching them - tip the pot to pur the water out several times - and do not any water in a bottom pot until the dry out a bit. basically - your violets are OK, in a pretty good shape - just need some maitenance. And the blemishes are not bugs, it is a slight culture problem. Good luck Irina

Pale leaves can be caused by lack of sunlight, lack of fertilizer, or a pH imbalance in the potting soil (see http://www.optimara.com/doctoroptimara/10121-10304/10131.html for more info). Since you've ruled out lack of light, I recommend you repot and fertilize the plant. It should actually go into a smaller pot, one that's about 1/3 of the plant's diameter. A good potting mix for African Violets has about 1/3 each of peat, perlite, and vermiculite. Even if you buy African Violet potting soil in the store, add some perlite and vermiculite to it. When repotting remove the flowers, pale leaves, and the ones with brown spots. The brown spots may have been caused by sunlight hitting water drops and burning the leaves. Those leaves will never look like new again. Remove the weird baby leaves too - they are suckers that you can root and grow into new plants! Here's a site with pictures and info on suckers: http://www.creativespill.com/RR/. The growing center of your plant looks good, so with a little TLC your African Violet should really respond and take off growing. Good luck!

Thank you so much. The plants definitely got smaller after the lower leaves fell so I WILL go to a smaller pot because, like you said, even the previous one was slightly big, but they seemed to do OK. I just never understood how the roots would deal with that. I mean, my plant got smaller because the lower leaves fell, but the roots certainly didn't change, right? However, it appears the consensus is that the pot should be 1/3 of the diameter of the plant (so it's about how big the leaves are, not about the roots). As for blooming again, I read that some AV-s do take a break from blooming, particularly in the summer. I also read that a good plant blooms for 9 months and rests for 3. Maybe these two of mine went through their rest period over the summer. Who knows? I'll go back to doing everything by the book and we'll see what happens. Thank you again!