Pistilo, we all wish each other a very Merry Christmas, a happy holiday and a prosperous and safe New Year. Might I just steal a little of your message here for something most dear to me passed along by my husband. My husband notes as a retired Fire Captain we are continually being shaken with news about terrible consequences of fires in the home. We have just had recently one that took the life of a young mother and two children. The simple exclusion of having a smoke alarm in the vicinity of where the fire started may have been directly the cause of the tragedy. I urge readers to check their smoke alarms, make sure they have fresh batteries if that is the type and please, keep lit candles off the Christmas Tree and if so used, please, do not leave young children in the area of the tree for any time alone when lights are on. Merry Christmas.....and to one and all, a happy New Year.

Thanks so much for the warm welcome guys! I come bearing gifts: (please excuse the atrocious housekeeping...... Also the 2 pixel mobile phone camera....) Here's the lady in recovery: And her bulbs, repleat with cinnamon powder to help the rotted ones: And this is my lovely new Colmanara Wildcat, allegedly called 'Bloodshot', but he looks like a Bobcat to me: Sorry to hear that Sheila, they sure are impressive, aren't they? Pure majesty these fellows. Sue, this girl is only slightly smaller, she came in an 8" stretched to 9" pot, I've upped her to 10" now, didn't get her name either, was lucky to find out she was a cym! And to give you guys an idea of the condition she was in, while I was getting rid of a lovely layer of "mulch" I found a cigarette butt in the mix.... The only thing that saved her from tobacco mosaic virus would've been the piece of gum stuck in the end of the thing. I'm not ashamed to say I cried..... Toyo, I was giving absolute max and min temperatures. Our average would be very similar, although it can get quite harsh here, it does sometimes snow ever so slightly up the Mountains, and we get the freezing air down here. And we're in a valley, so in Summer its truly scorching (honestly, I've wished I was in the desert sometimes for a cool change....). But I am planning on keeping them all inside, too beautiful to put out there with the bugs. As for the Oncidiums I'll list them for you: Oncidium Sharry Baby (huge girl, 10 bulbs at least) Colmanara Wildcat Bloodshot (the fella in the pics) And then there's these ones that I picked up bare rooted and hardly more than seedlings: Miltassia Shazam ÂAC DC 1 Beallara Marfitch 'Unicorn Splendor' 2 Beallara Spidermann 'Teflon 2' 3 Colmanara Jungle Monarch 'Tarzan' 4 Colmanara Wildcat 'Florafest' 5 Degamoara Flying High 'Concorde' 6 Miltonia spectabilis var. moreliana 'Big Ben' 7 Miltonidium Bartley Schwarz 'Big Bart' 8 Miltonidium Issaku Nagata 'Red Dove' HCC/AOS 9 Odontocidium Mayfair ÂGolden Gate HCC AOS 10 Oncidium Sharry Baby 'Freckles' At AU$48 for 10 I figured it was worth giving them a go, even if a few aren't perfect.

I had it in the shade in the back yard, shaded by the huge oak trees since I got it. Someone told me it needed to be in full sun to develop color, might have been them. So, I moved it up front in the nearly full sun for the past month, and it is the way you see it. It didn't really start to grow until it was pu in full sun. Same with my ALL GREEN nancy's revenge ee I just gave away. I don't need any more simple green alocasias, I just don't have the room. They told me it needed to get larger to display the color....well I grew it out, wasted my time since I purchased it, and it never changed. If they are mostly reliable, then something went very wrong with my order, and they didn't want to hear anything about it. Bad business in my book. http://banana-plants.com/ were great, fast shipping, great packing, great plants ***** bananaplantation.biz unusual packing with the pots and soil, some plants looked better than others, they were WAY smaller than advertised, the promptly rectified the problem by RESENDING THE ENTIRE ORDER AT NO COST ***** That's the way to do business. I don't expect things to go right all the time, but make AN ATTEMPT to fix the problem.

I spent the day in the public garden I tend working on the last part that I am renewing. What was astonishing was the number of bulbs I dug up ( and put back) as well as the thousands of grape hyacinths. I have been dividing and moving plants today in anticipation of the rain (it just started)since I have no access to water there. Some of them I had underestimated like the Russian sage, so I moved them into sort of a hedge configuration. Also put in perennial chrysanthemums hoping that I can harvest some divisions next year to spread around. Put in orange tiger lilies as an experiment. Actually I divide mined and found twenty bulbs which I had no room for at home and so planted 12 of them there. Interestingly enough this garden is at the edge of a forest full of deer as well as fox and coyote wild turkeysgroundhogs, rabbits etc but the deer have never bothered the garden. They spent a great deal of time trying to get into the fenced vegetable garden there. I hope my luck holds