OK. I am brand new here and not even an orchid grower. I would not know how to pot one up if you paid me the current Lottery Prize. But sometimes, I come on over here and read a bit and see your stunning photos. I am, however, a gardener myself. I grow sweet peas, hippeastrums, narcissus, and many other things. I once went to a professional orchid show just to see what the fuss was about. There were many, many different types of orchids and colours and arrangements of them. It really was quite a show. I remember most of all some yellow and velvety brown ones and they were something! But the memory that most stands out in my mind is that of a visit to my hairdresser. On this occasion, there were three Cattleyas in an amethyst bowl on the nearby credenza. They were pure white and very large and had a very frilly, deep purple throat (almost the same colour as the bowl). The picture is still in my mind: that is what an orchid is to me. If I could grow them, I would get that one. I read this thread just to see what kind of remarks you had to make about general tips for beginners. I must say that you all are one polite and nice bunch. I have seen some people get some nasty remarks from others on some forums but so far this one is as you say, very decent. As one member said: just because this is the internet it is not an excuse to forget your manners. I was raised with them too; and I appreciate all of your helpful advice and polite and friendly manner. One should not have to defend oneself on a visit to GardenWeb, after all. You have a great Forum here in the orchid section.

Pax, we have communicated about it already in e-mail, but I promised you to make a note here too, that your package has arrived today very neatly packed, each bulb in its own newspaper so it wouldn't get bored during shipment. I have already told Maria that her Santana is in a safe place now. Everything is green and wonderful, and I can't wait to plant your huge bulbs. It is interesting, that the bulbs in my area were so small compared to these huge monsters I am getting from Illinois and Virginia. Interesting. Thank you for the time and energy you spent on me. I hope, I can send your bulbs soon to you too. Thank you again.

I just reviewed them and I don't see any that were deleted, the one on varieties should be since it's quite obsolete, and I don't see any major chages in ones that were here before but I do see several that were uploaded by Tamara who is the Moderator here. Tamara, when I list them and indicate that some of yours I feel are incomplete I think it's fair to say that you did try to recruit some folks and I guess no one did, and I certainly didn't b'c I was heavily involved with the addition of all the ones you see that were uploaded by Paul and have the list of user names indicating who helped with each FAQ. And that was a serious and long process that I wouldn't wish on anyone b/c of the need for the inclusion of everyone ( see below). What happened was back in maybe 1999 or 2000 the participants here decided that some new FAQ's should be done. No one volunteered to coordinate, so I did. So first we made a list of the FAQ's we thought needed to be done, then tackled them one by one. We never completed the suggested FAQ's b'c just doing the ones we did took forever. The major problem was that I'm an egalitarian and wanted input from ALL who were GW members at the time and wanted to help which was also the opinion of most here at the time, while there were a few who wanted the FAQ's to be written by one person, with no input from anyone, and almost all of us did not want to do that at all. Even though at some sites someone will do that so all you get is one person's opinion on various FAQ's. With that background I'll just go thru them in order: Det vs indet, that was here when I came BER, ditto Varieties, ditto and should be deleted IMO Blossom Drop, here when I came Prune, here already, I think Tomato Pests, maybe here, can't remember, but belongs in that Forum, not here, IMO Different Leaves, I wrote most and Paul uploaded Cross pollination, we did that and paul uploaded it Start From Seed, we did it, uploaded by Paul Seed Starting II, uploaded by Tamara, new and takes the above to the garden in a somewhat abbreviated manner Upside down, new, uploaded by Tamara Cracking, new, uploaded by Tamara and in my opinion is incomplete b'c there are three kinds of splitting, some genetic, some not Ferts, new, uploaded by Tamara, ditto on incomplete So that's how I see it and again, when I say incomplete I guess it's my own darn fault for not volunteering to generate a list of new FAQ's to be done and then coordinating the writing of them and uploading. But not JUST my fault b'c it's clear that none of the participants who read/post here volunteered so Tamara decided to do it herself. One clarification. Even where I said I wrote most of the leaf one, the final FAQ's that we did here and were uploaded were initially approved, after some serious haggling, LOL, by EVERYONE so that all opinions were taken under consideration in the final form of each uploaded FAQ. Carolyn

This is a test of the "new" Appliances Forum FAQ system. FAQ stands for Frequently Asked (or Answered) questions. As you may know, the Appliances Forum is one of the busiest places on THS/GW, and with the present limit of 300 active threads (and no archive section), things have started to get a bit overwhelming in recent months - so MANY threads full of incredibly helpful and useful info, and so little available space! And thus, it's my hope that by storing some of the most commonly referenced data here, we'll be able to relieve much of the repetition in the main Forum, making this a better and easier-to-use site for everyone. Many thanks to Spike (the webmaster hereabouts) for working to make this happen, as well as to all the knowledgeable and generous posters in the Appliances Forum, who have shared so much outstanding information, wisdom, and offbeat humor over the past couple years! This project has been many months in the works (Spike originally set up the (THS) FAQ system back in March '02), and with a little luck (and a lot of help from other Forum participants!), I'll be able to make this one of the more useful Appliance "reference databases" on the Web! The structure of these files will doubtless be in something of a state of flux over the coming weeks, as I continue to upload new info and edit the data already posted... please bear with me, and as always, please feel free to post additional suggestions and comments in the most current "Creating a FAQ" thread in the main Appliances Forum. Thanks everyone! --Tom. [added to FAQ: 1 October 2002]