Hi. I too have been getting LOTS of e mails but if I don't recognize the e mail I just delete it without having a look. Generally I have had less than nice GW trade experiences. The *very* nice people in the carnivorous plants forum are OUTSTANDING with the things they trade! All beautiful, healthy and very cool kinds of plants. Two very nice and generous people in the Tropical and Brommie forums have fantastic plants and give far more than what would be normally considered as a trade. More gift giving! :-) Other people ....... I have sent plants o' plenty to several people and although they did e mail me a thank you and how great my plants were and promised me seeds and or plants they had promised .... YEARS later I am still waiting. (Not really) but they did promise many times and there was always some excuse for the delay. I sent someone many very nice orchids, some were even either in spike or bloom, and in return I go a banana plant that was severely damaged admittedly by the sender due to poor technique in digging the pup. It wasn't even the kind of banana I had been promised! :-( I do have lots of plants but have severely limited the people to whom I will send them. I'm not even doing the planty trade thing any more. Just sharing some interesting plants with people who I consider friends. I think other people have had less than great trades too but there are very nice and honest people out there. Sometimes ya just gotta get lucky. Hope you find someone who is honest and you get nice healthy plants from your next trade! C3D

Lavender does not like being moved around. I have had great luck with lavender until 2 years ago when we had over 50 " of rain. I was out of the country and I came back to mildew and I cut it back and it was alright. I then cut the rest back in January. WRONG!!!!! But then we had half our normal rain, 13" total the next year. I think the rains rotted the deep roots on some and they then did not have a way to get the moisture when they needed it. I had some death. I have had them for 6 years so I bought more plants and layered some branches. I love that spanish lavender. I ain't giving up on it yet. It is about the only thing that grows in the rocky gravel without water. I don't water plants , or hardly at all, so I expect some death occasionally. Right now the spanish lavender is COVERED in blooms and bees next to the vibrant coral gregii.

Heather--whether you like it or not, there is medical evidence that our brains don't fully mature until we're in our mid-20's. Before that, the brain is capable of making emotional decisions, but the logical thinking portion of the brain isn't fully matured. Yes, we tell 18 year olds they're legally adults. Yes, we let them work, join the military, make decisions about their future, get married--but they aren't truly equipped for those jobs. Some get lucky--I got engaged and married in my early 20's and am still married to the love of my life 35+ years later. But yes, at 23, he's still a kid in a lot of ways, and still in a stage of life where he's likely to make poor decisions. Add to that his own personal limitations, I don't think you can come down too hard on him. As I said, I wasn't overly surprised by this, and personally--I don't like people in the public eye setting a poor example that children may think is 'cool', but I also think we have to understand that this fellow is still a child, with learning issues, and the same right as the rest of us to do stupid things at inopportune times.

> They are awful -- the light they give off is hideous. You must be buying the cheap ones. Good quality CFs are essentially indistinguishable from incandescents when installed in fixtures where the bulb is behind a shade or diffuser. I have asked guests to tell me which of my table lamps has an incandescent and which has a CF. Most can't tell the difference, and the others guess wrong about as often as they guess right. CF lifespan is an average. If the rated life is 6 years, some will fail in 1 month, some 6 months, some 3 years, some 9 years, some 12 years ... you get the idea. The fact that one or two you put in failed early is mostly likely just your bad luck. I probably got the ones that balance out yours, because I've have very few premature failures. :-) You can't really tell whether the brand is reaching its lifespan claims until you've bought and used a few dozen. To find out what's really going on, mark the installation date on the base. Keep records. Don't just get upset and give up because a couple of them failed early. Also consider how you use the CF. If you turn the light on and off more than 2 or 3 times a day, that shortens its lifespan. If you fit it into a fixture that traps heat in the bulb's electronic base, because the bulb is enclosed by a shade and/or is upside down, that shortens its lifespan. So don't do those things if you can avoid them. Try to install the CF in an open fixture, with the base to the side or bottom. LEDs sold for home use are still less efficient than CFs (lumens per watt) and cost much more. Be warned that there is a fair bit of fudging going on with manufacturer's claims of incandescent equivalence, just as there was in the early days of CFs. I've seen LED retrofits claim equivalence to 40 or 60 watt incandescents - but when I checked the actual lumen output buried in the spec sheet, it was closer to 15 or 25 watt incandescents' lumen output. Caveat emptor. Someday LEDs will no doubt be better than CFs and may even be cheaper. But they are not yet ready for prime time. They may nevertheless be good for commercial situations where replacement is by highly-paid workers. There the longer life makes a real difference. LEDs also excel right now for extremely dim lights, such as night lights, where both fluorescent and incandescent lights have relatively poor efficiency. Bottom line on CFs: anybody can cite specific cases where one or two specific CFs didn't save him money. That's interesting information, but not very helpful in making a yea or nay decision. On average, when you consider the reduction in electricity use, CFs are almost always a winner.