Hi Tony, So glad you got some plumeria from Matthew, and had a good selection. Super on the one you got. My daughter and I did not get there until about 3 P.M..late.. went to another craft show. I know I should have went early.. By the time I found him, he didn't hardly have anything. Several commons on the left side. Yes, Kimo, penang peach, but all sold. I went to grab a aztec gold, lady came over, said she had bought it. so I wasn't able to get anything. Matthew did say he would have more plants Sunday, will try and go back. I wanted a couple of the ones blooming. Didn't see a Marinos rainbow, did not know about that one..saw a maui beauty? YEs, did question him too on his loss too, said he was not prepared for it..said 19 degrees in his area. shame.. Karen

Just to fill in the missing data on battery storage, I think I may now understand the numbers that "SolarPowered" presented. They are accurate, in terms of the numbers and the math, but don't represent the situation correctly. Let's say you needed about twelve killowatts of energy storage (a modest amount, but certainly possible with a small amount of conservation). Surrette 6CS-17PS Battery 546 Amp-Hours, 6 Volt DC Regular price: $992.00 Sale price: $791.76, 4/$3,120.00 Let's round this off and say 500 amp hours at 6 volts times 4 batteries = $3000/500 * 6 * 4 = $0.25 per killowatt hour of storage. So the total cost of your storage for the ten to fifteen years that you will get out of these industrial quality batteries is 25 cents per killowatt hour...per day, times 10 years... So in actual fact, since you will be putting 12 KW-hours of energy into and out of the batteries many times during those ten years. Each killowatt-hour only costs about .25/365*10, or about 0.007 cents per killowatt hour. So, while it is a significant cost in setting up your solar power system, it is not, contrary to solar Powered, going to make it impossible for you to make your own energy cheaper than the power company can. I think $30K is a more realistic number for an off grid system for a whole normal sized house. If we take off the $20k we don't have to pay the electric company to string a wire to our property, we are looking to generate more than $10K worth of energy in the same time we would pay that much in monthly bills. Using very round numbers, let's say a typical monthly electric bill might be $100. At that rate, our power is free after the first 8 years. So the $20k we're not paying the electric company doesn't pay for our whole system, but it reduces our payback time from an impractical 24 years to just 8 years. Since the solar panels and many other parts of the system are expected to last twice that long, I think it's a pretty fair bet that the system will save money in the very long run. That, coupled with the fact that you get to send your favorite obscene gesture in the general direction of "Big Power", and operate your home with a near zero CO2 output and you are free of concern over power outages and rising costs...I would say it is a no-brainer. If you don't have the big up-front cost to connect, it could easily go the other way though. jp

I got 3 Sansevierias but I am strongly tempted by the African geophytes (e.g. whatever that first pic is and they have boophane, pricey though). She's getting a new shipment of Sans soon. They go to AZ to pick up plants I heard. I'll be going back for hand-thrown pots, some are really nice for not too much $$, and top dressings. I've been to California Cactus Center, this nursery is very similar but it has a gift shop too and more Sans plus it's very close to me. I'm all for shopping at all of them to keep them all afloat - more selection & price competition that way. There is a 3rd C&S nursery on Saticoy in Reseda, I forgot the name but it has huge sheet metal dinosaur sculptures out front. No top dressings or anything, I think it's wholesale but open for retail a couple days a week.

I'd hardly blame Columbus for ALL the ways native people were hurt during the period of European exploration, conquest and subjugation. He was one guy and not even the first, as was incorrectly glossed over at school when we studied it in elementary school. I was in fact taught a fairy tale which wasn't a very good idea because it was all about Columbus being the person who "Discovered" America and he didn't even come close to the US, and all about how he "proved" that you wouldn't fall off the ends of the earth if you sailed west to try and get east, that the world was not flat. Educated people always knew the world was round using math to figure that out. They did not know how large it was, and people either didn't know or refused to believe the science back in that day just as much as today. Columbus Day coming just ahead of Thanksgiving, I also got the incorrect idea that the "Pilgrims" followed him soon after . . . based on the way we studied history in elementary school, which was basically mythical stories and craft projects. I got over that misconception but I'm a stickler for details . . . A simplified story about Columbus discovering America and proving the world wasn't flat and then a craft activity making a model of the Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria plus maybe a fictionalized storybook account didn't scar me for life, I learned the more accurate version in jr. high and high school. I think there was room for improvement and besides, why celebrate that one explorer or historical scenario . . . I was told that it was instituted by the Knights of Columbus to give Italian immigrants a positive spin. Nothing wrong with that, but why not then have "Immigration Day" and celebrate our diverse ethnic heritage. Also maybe "Italian American" day for those of Italian descent. Or would others get jealous? I come from a Dutch area and there are local celebrations of Dutch heritage, never really felt the need for a national holiday. And I'm fine with my Jewish side not having their holiday considered the "normal" one. Lot of energy expended and for little benefit. I would however, like to see people stop playing "Indian" during Thanksgiving and having white people go on and on about how the Indians used to live. It's sad. I participated in such educational programs, and although we went out of our way to be culturally appropriate . . . there was something weird about it. Maybe I have had my Jewish culture "explained" to me too many times by well-meaning fundamentalist Christians . . . it ends up being a tad hollow.