Josh, ah yes. The sad and lonely bluebonnet. I've never grown them from seed, but I know the TX highway department has done so. Texas A & M developed a strain of maroon "bluebonnets" (lupines) which are quite pretty, too. I think Kippy is spot on with the mustard ID. I grow clover, oxalis, wild geranium, mallow, Queen Anne's lace, fireweed, scarlet pimpernel and many other "weeds" that have traveled into my garden on the wind and rain. Re your other post: be sure to post pics of your friend's garden when all is done...and good luck with the Bermuda(?) grass. Eventually I'll post pics of my garden. I'm rearranging a chunk of it bit by bit, a couple hours here and there. I just hacked out two gallicas, the mother ships, and moved them. I'm in the process of digging out all the stoloniferous offspring that sprouted from the mother ships and putting them by the curb as freebies. A painful reminder to always stay on top of own-root OGRs that spread. May the predator bugs continue in force (the gardener's version of "may the force be with you")--Carol

Sounds like protien/tds build up. Probably some crud you disturbed and released from the substrate if you don't do the vacuuming regularly. Test the water to make sure you didn't harm the "biofilter" bacterias. If not just sludge you may have turned up cleaning. could also be some sort of decor or rock that hadn't been touched for a while, then with the disturbance it is starting to disintergrate. I had some shale do this to me a while back,

I'm just reading this thread for the first time. I've never seen cyclamen mites but I, personally, see no reason to ever look to see them. They show themselves by their damage. On gesneriphiles, some years ago, someone posted that they searched and searched for them, and finally found them under the skin of the plant, inside rather than outside. I don't know if this is the case, but I certainly have heard lots anecdotal commentary that they are very hard to see with magnification. So, my methodology is to concentrate on damage, as that is much easier to diagnose. African Violets are notorious for cyclamen mite susceptability. A late friend of mine, who for a while was commercially growing mini violets, found he had to spray frequently to keep them under control, although thrips were probably even more difficult to control. Now, in a greenhouse mass-propagation situation bugs become much more of a chronic problem than in a small collection. They come back fast whereas in our collections we can get rid of them for a long time between infestations. But, what I have noticed, having a mixed gesneriad collection with a small part being AV's, is that cyclamen mite damage has always made itself apparent first with episcias. In fact I noticed that episcias will get quite a bit of obvious damage before I see anything on the violets. So, keep your episcias happy, so that when they get mites, you will be able to quickly ID the situation. Once you suspect or actually know you have an infestation, then treatment is simple and effective. I have had three or four infestations in the last five or more years. Each time I sprayed with one application of Avid, and had complete and lasting supression of the mites. The badly damaged episcias showed recovery by putting out new crowns from the axils of the leaves. Stolons sometimes were dead, and sometimes recovered. Violets that didn't show damage, did not later develop damage. They just regained normal vigor. I would go as far as to suggest, that if you think you have mites, you have two options. One--you can wait until you are certain that the conditions you are seeing are from mite damage, and then spray. This methodology will result in more damage, and a longer period for recovery; but it will teach you first hand what the damage looks like, and what the pattern of damage and time frame of development is like. Then, at least, the next time you will know more about what is happening with your plants--whether a problem is mites or something else. The second option is to spray if you suspect damage. Then if the problem continues you will know that it isn't mites. But, if the plants soon begin to show increased vigor, and lose the problem foliage that concerned you then you can suspect that mites might have been at fault. Either way, you will have dealt with mites and succeeded. I found Avid was very effective. It has an odor, that is apparent and not too dissimilar to some natural plant odors--Kohleria allenii comes to mind. It is something like the natural scent of Nematanthus albus too. It shouldn't be objectionable unless you are especially susceptable to changes in room odors. A small quantitiy of Avid will last a long time. One shouldn't need to use it very often (less than once a year, mol), and a quarter teaspoon will make a gallon, which is about four times + what one would typically need to treat two or three multi-level lightstands. So, that is my methodology, Jon

Hi Glenda, When I used to tell daughter's Female Canine to "sit" she didn't seem to pay a lot of attention. ______________________ Chemocurl, Well done. I didn't know the purchase price. I calculate, though, that one share grew to 144 ... which would make the 100 shares grow to 14,400. ... for better than $969,000. If the guy had started with 104 shares, which would have grown to 14,976 ... at Tuesday's closing price of $66.94 (somewhat lower than when you calculated earlier that day) ... today's value would have been $1,002,493.40. At your quote, it would have been $1,008,034.50 ... $5,541.10 more (a reasonably decent month's pay). Plus ... the dividend rate grew, over the years, more or less in tandem with the share price. Iva Mae, When you go to the "Stock quotes" on Yahoo->Finance, put in "RY.TO", for Royal Bank. If on Yahoo Canada, if you put in "RY" the ".TO" will be added on its own. Try "ENB" for Enbridge, "BCE" for BCE, "GWO" for Great-West Life, "TCK-B" for Teck Cominco, "TA" for TransAlta Utilities, "TD" for TD Canada Trust. There's a place where they offer "Symbol lookup" and if you write the company name in there, it'll tell you the symbol. If you ask for "Bar" chArts, instead of a line joining the daily closing prices over a period, it will give a bar linking the highest and lowest prices at which transactions took place that day, with a little line to the left showing the opening price that day, and one to the right showing the closing price. If, when you have a page where the price information of a given stock is showing, you look over to the left, near the top, there's a place where you can click on "Historical prices" and it will allow you to check the daily, weekly, monthly, etc. price levels of that stock over a given period. As a matter of fact, the price list for JNJ goes back to Jan 2, 1970. And, believe it or not, I didn't know that when I set up the project in the first place. The criteria that I used was to start a couple of years before the first split that appeared on the database that I was using. And not far from the 40-year period that I've heard to be the period during which they increased dividend rate every year. I must confess that I thought it more relevant to put this thread over on "Money Saving Tips" or "Household Finance" ... but thought that it would receive greater exposure here. And that a number of the residents here might find it interesting. Good wishes for managing your income and assets with increasing skilfullness. ole joyful