Anna, believe it or not I'm not particularly worried about the fact that your plant hasn't grown leaves. See: Lower than adequate light would cause your plant to grow narrowed, shorter/smaller, weak, limper leaves, but wouldn't prevent it from growing. Under no circumstances will a flower spike prevent new leaves from growing. That is unless the spike is coming up directly from the center of the crown. This happens occasionally, and does ultimately result in the death of the plant because it cannot grow anymore leaves. Assuming your spike is not coming from the center of the crown, and the plant otherwise looks healthy, I suspect this is just a waiting game for you. Have patience. Orchid growing is anything but a sprint! I agree with the advice to move them closer to the light. "Too much light" under weak lights such as fluorescents will result in the leaves bleaching, or turning a white color. But you won't see that under fluorescent tubes.

Hi, Last fall I dug out and constucted a 15 by 15 foot pond with a waterfall on one end. The deep end is about three foot but then it tapers to about 6 inches. I have kept goldfish out there this winter by leaving a hole in the ice and a pump running. Of course over the winter I have been bitten by the Koi bug and have been given a beautiful platinum one and also purchased 3 others. Just mutts. But from what I am reading should I be concerned about them jumping out in the shallow end. If this will be a problem should I use netting at water level or higher and also what kind? Seems kind of annoying to have it showing. I think I can anchor my water lilies with alot of rocks but then if I need to use a net how will they come up? Any help for a newbie would be much appreciated. I live in southern Minnesota. At what temapture does the water have to be to put the Koi out and will they fight with the goldfish? They are all about the same size. Happy gardening! :) gardin angel

Well, I'm almost afraid to say this but I haven't seen a moth in 2 weeks. Of course I still have my HVAC registers covered with insect screen but I haven't seen any behind the screen either, as I was seeing before. This happy state of affairs could be due to one or more of the following factors: 1. When the pest control guy applied a little bit of spray in about four places (without drilling the walls... heck, he hasn't even called me back about that...what am I paying these people for anyway??), by incredible good luck the spray happened to hit exactly where the larva were (yeah right). 2. My sealing up of every opening I could find from those two walls into the house, was a better job than I thought. 3. The moths are "between flights"; meaning that one generation is finished, and I won't see any more until the next generation of larva pupate into adult fliers. That could take anywhere from 3 weeks to almost a year. About the pheromone traps, when the pest control guys first came out they did try those, although they explained that normally they only work on the smaller moth species such as meal moths, clothes moths, and such. The big brown suckers usually aren't attracted to them. I think they were correct because I had adults flying in the same rooms as the pheromone traps and none went anywhere near them. Mona, how are you doing? Who is winning, Team Mothra or Team Charlotte? (okay I read 'Charlotte's Web' a long time ago but I still don't like spiders much)

benjesbride, raebutt (what a name?! lol) - sorry; I'm a bad contributor here -- I used to lurk way too much some while ago but am completely out of the habit now .... My experience - it was actually a really long time ago now and I don't remember well. What I bought though was not "hermetically sealed" - I'm not sure, to tell you the truth, what that means practically speaking. What I bought at first was a whole large bunch of small to huge (and expensive) glass jars with those wire snaps and a gasket about the glass lid. I thought those would keep the air out but it's not so. Or at least those moths got around. As others have noted, they can and seem to "worm" their way in and around jar top threads even. They are so gross I hate thinking about this.... I honestly don't remember what happened long ago. I remember giving up on buying those jars because it wasn't helping. I think I had OK luck with just taking juice jars and screwing them mind-bogglingly tight. But it wasn't reliable and it sure wasn't fun to open those things. That's when I had The Conversation. They recommended Cambro food service containers. I was skeptical because they don't pretend to be air-tight. Again, it's seemingly worked for me though I'm sure the instant I type this we'll be invaded. You can buy these containers large enough to hold a 25lb bag of flour, which I do. I hesitate to confess this here because - speaking of gross - I'm sure many of you will be hugely disapproving of many aspects of the following story. But here goes: we left the country for a year and I left a bunch - maybe a half dozen - of these containers with grains and food stuffs in them, with those trusty bay leaves: not a speck. Again, I swear I can hear those little wings get fired up by the challenge to hear this! lol So that's my experience. As mentioned I did have that infestation recently in rice that was not protected. At the advice of a friend I tossed that stuff in the freezer in a bag, shook it and sieved it (talk about gross) and then since rice gets washed before using anyway, I ate the stuff up. Protein's protein, right?