Yes, definitely not Rip Van Winkle. One possibility that it 'might' be is Double Campernelle Van Sion I see is actually a synonym of Telamonius Plenus. Check out the pics of Telamonius Plenus at Daffseek. It also says, "Doubling varies from partial to completely double;" along with a lot of other Daff-speak that I don't comprehend well. I also think that there are some pics of the Telamonius Plenus at Daffseek that are just plain incorrect, but who am I to say such a thing? A couple of those pics look exactly like Rip Van Winkle. If my Telamonius Plenus (aka Van Sion) are still decent, I'll try getting a pic here soon. A pretty reliable source told me that what I had was Telamonius Plenus (aka Van Sion) and I'm thinking mine are different than yours. Sorry to be of such little help and maybe just being confusing. I wish we had a historical daff expert here. Sue

That's another thing... although, I fully expected it... the majority of my new bulbs have shrunk quite a bit from the exertion it takes to bloom two or three consecutive scapes of flowers! Some of those are beginning to recover already, and I'm confident that most, if not all of them, will recover completely by the end of summer. All they need is some decent sunshine and a little food! It's funny, though... my original Minerva has never gone through this shrink and recover ordeal/process... it has remained a green and plump bulb, very firm to the touch. It rarely loses layers, and seems to just keeping growing in girth! Its one and only baby is quite large, sporting at least four big leaves of its own! The babe is so big, in fact, that I'm seriously considering detaching it from Mama this summer. I may keep them both in the same pot, but I think I should at least give the babe more room to spread out... it's so close against Mama that one side is flat! This particular Minerva really astounds me with its health and vigor... and to think that I neglected it for many years, not really quite sure how to care for it properly, other than watering and the occasional feeding. And except for two years out of its eight, it has faithfully bloomed for me! What a bulb! The amount of rot that I've dealt with this past season seems abnormal... although, this being my first year of collecting, what can I consider normal or abnormal? The more I learn and observe, though, the more I'm convinced that it's a problem afflicting certain varieties more than others... in other words, some varieties just seem genetically weaker than others. Captan seems to be doing the trick for rot cure, and carefully monitoring my watering certainly helps. Fungus gnats attacked once over winter, and I got rid of them by swatting the adults and using Schultz's 3-in-1 spray on the bulbs and soil surface. I had to repeat the spray at intervals. Again, keeping the watering at surface level to a minimum helped a lot. This morning, I noticed one lone gnat flitting amongst the bulbs, so I'll have to keep an eye on that. Any bulbs I had that were reluctant to grow roots got a bit of bottom heat from the heat mat... this helped immensely. Bottom heat was also responsible for waking up a couple of bulbs that wanted to nap longer, such as Misty and Amputo. Neither one bloomed for me over winter, and they were both new bulbs. A few of the South African miniatures I got refused to bloom... a couple tried, but failed. Joker and Baby Doll were beautiful, but I didn't get to see Peach Blossom or Vesuvius. They should all bloom nicely next time... the bulbs are growing well. I began last fall with two bulbs... added at least 50 to the collection... enjoyed most of them more than I can say... and look forward to next bloom season with much zeal! The entire experience was beyond anything I could have imagined! My "wish list" with its "must have" section is incredibly long, but due to space restraints, I'll have to pick and choose my next purchases carefully. Most winters are horribly depressing for me, but this past one was positively filled with beauty and wonder, excitement and insight, and to top it all off, I was able to share it all with my new friends here on the forum! From now on, I have a feeling that winter will not be such a bad season!

Same here! This is my first "real" year gardening, and I'm about to give up. Outside of vegetables (and my wall of mg) none of the ws annuals made it. I have one lil petunia that keeps trying too bloom, and it just started a week or two ago. There was one other, cant remember the name right now that put up one bloom then keeled over. My sunflowers (the mamoths) range from 1ft tall to 6ft tall, only 3 out of like 24 are 6ft tall, making for a very uneven sunflower house. My cukes aren't growing, they just finally had a small growth spurt this weekend, and some mole or ground hog decide to dig a huge tunnel under my cuke tunnel!! My pole beans are just starting to grow. No zukes showing yet, only 2 summer squashes. My toms aren't ripening, I thought they were just starting, some were going yellow, but today they're brown mush. My Yellow pear tom stopped growing and went backwards, it only sits 3-4ft tall. I've gotten about 10 toms from that. Gave up on the broccili. It's weird, we got warm weather early this year (been above 70 since end of April, more like above 80, into 90's w/ 100+ heat indexes!) I would've thought things would've grown early w/ the head start and the heat lovers would be going nuts. But it's like everything is just starting to grow, in AUGUST!! My cocks comb is just starting out, well I have one that's 2ft tall and hasn't bloomed, but a few others have (at 4 in tall!) I bought a bunch of young perrenials this spring, they have done NOTHING! Haven't grown a bit!. 1 out of 6 Calla Lily bulbs came up, no blooms from that yet either. The only good things have been my daylilies. All the ones I planted last year gave me, and still are giving me a great show, even the majority of the ones I bought this spring gave me a nice show. And the lovely morning glory foilage that is finally covering my ugly wooden retaining wall, just wish it had more blooms to go w/ the foilage. If I wanted all green I would've planted Ivy! So I guess I should chalk it all up to the weather? I just assumed it was me. Ehh...I still blame my crappy soil!

When we first moved out to our present house in this rural setting about 6 years ago, my daughter was 7. There were all sorts of cool 'bugs' out here we had never seen 'in town' so we went to the bookstore and got a paperback book called "Fabulous Florida Insects" so we would know what we were looking at, know if it stung you, etc. This is a full color book with amazing photos. There is a "Fabulous Florida Butterflies" book that we got as well that shows the caterpillars and adult butterflies for most FL species. We spent our first summer walking around the place with this book trying to identify all our bugs, it was a blast for a 7 year old tomboy. We were sitting out on the patio just last night, my hysband was playing his guitar, and we looked out into the woods and there were fireflies everywhere lighting up. We never had those in town. When my hedychiums really get going in June and July, there are bees and butterflies all over this place, and hummingbirds too. They love them. I found that the best way to attract the natives (and the butterflies) is not to pull out every little wildflower in the flowerbed, but to allow some of the "weeds" that are really wildflowers to co-exist with the store bought stuff. I seem to get a wider variety of visitors that way.