I second amaryll's advice. Just let it keep growing, and it'll probably bloom more than once a year, especially if it gets plenty of light and fertilzer over the summer. (I have good luck with them in a greenhouse, where they get almost full sun; you did the right thing to keep yours outside in the summer to get maximum sun exposure during its main growing period.) If you need it to bloom at a specific time, you can force dormancy by withholding water, and when the leaves start to go yellow, cut them off and store it in cooler temps (I think I read 40-50F somewhere). You can pull the bulb out of the pot at this time if you don't have room in the fridge (don't cut off the roots!). After about a month of cooling, you can repot the bulb and start watering it, at which point it should go into a blooming cycle. Different types of amaryllis take different amounts of time to bloom after breaking dormancy, but 6-10 weeks is the range that I recall.

Sorry you lost your chick. :( First time mamas can sometimes be clueless or just have some aspects of mothering missing, others take to it like a duck to water. You never know until you try. Are mama and eggs in a nice, soft, PRIVATE ground-level nesting area that offers NO barriers to the chicks moving around? I agree on the shavings thing, straw is too hard for new chicks to move around in and they can become entangled too easily. It's ridiculous how easily chicks can hurt or kill themselves. Make sure no other hens or roos can get in there and fight over the chicks and eggs. When are the rest of the eggs due to hatch? Chicken eggs take 21 days to incubate. How many eggs is she sitting on? Velvet ~:>

oh, snowbunny, so sorry!! The glass flowers have been my downfall, too! My friend and I even thought about using the plate hangers and attaching them that way too, but the hangers were too small to hold the plate, guess we could of went back and got some bigger ones, but we were just about tired of them and had to back away. I had trouble with the GEII, but after posting here, I think I just got a bad tube. I dont think they are supposed to spin, but I agree with luna, I think some of the plates can be very weakened by the drilling. Good luck next time, dont give up, maybe just walk away for awhile! blessings-sherri

I was reading some of these stories to my hubby tonight and he reminded me of our neighbor Jen's story and I decided I needed to share it with the stupid garden tricks... Our neighbor across the street has been divorced for about three years or so..and let his lawn go to pot as a result..he is a really nice guy, but lost interest when his family moved out. About 6 months ago, he fell in love with a girl about ten years younger than him, she was just 19...and she moved in. He aplogized all over the place to everyone that would listen about his robbing the cradle and that she was so young, but begging everyone to give them a chance and accept it because he loved her. She is JUST 19 and niave....but quickly we learned to love her too..she is a big sweetheart, even if a bit naive sometimes. Late this spring, when my hubby and I pulled in the driveway she followed behind us on foot and asked what we thought of what she had done to the yard. She had pulled and piled his mountains of weeds. I am not kidding in the back yard, the weeds were taller than cars and unused lawn equipement had sat there for years and they had grown around them while he grieved his lost marriage. What was once a nice yard had become an eyesore. She had done a ton of work and we were amazed..she said her hands had blistered even with gloves because the weeds in the back were as thick as saplings. She then asked if we had any weed killer and a sprayer she could borrow. My husband impressed with her work so far said he sure did..it was even already mixed up and it was extra good stuff. He walked with her to our garage and got it for her, and I went in the house. In the meantime, my daughter called and we began idle chit chat, I heard my hubby come in and sit in front of the tube and never thought a thing of it. I talk on the phone and walk about the house and found myself near a window. I looked out, and there was that Jen out there spraying her yard away in the front. I never thought a thing about it, admiring her determination at such a young age with the lost yard. Then she happened to turn towards me and I gasped when I saw which sprayer she had. My husband had given her the roundup sprayer...assuming she was killing the big weeds around the fence and dead lawn equipment in the back that she had been complained about..but instead she was spraying her front yard randomly. I quick hung up the phone and hollared at him to go stop her. He felt terrible...she was mortified and felt young and stupid..she didn't know there was such a thing as roundup..she thought it would only kill weeds,not grass..so she was spraying every weed she saw in the front yard. My husband told her to water quickly and see what happened..he felt terrible that he had misunderstood what she wanted. He always uses granular on the lawn weeds, not liquid so he was not even thinking that way. About two weeks later, these HUGE brown smiley faces of grass began appearing in the lawn. We walked over to apolgize to them but they were laughing bout it. Being just 19 and silly..every weed she had seen, she said..GOTTCHA and after she spritzed it with "weed killer" she drew a smiley face around it... it wasn't bad enough she had sprayed weeds in the grass with roundup but she had drawn prety faces to announce she was in power now....there were dozens of dead grass smiley faces all over the front lawn for passerbys to see. My husband couldnt even look each time we left home. He felt partly responsible. I just chucked..what else can you do? :)