Over the past week, Organic Consumers Association network members have deluged the U.S. congress with over 45,000 emails and 10,000 telephone calls. Thank you for your support. This nearly unprecedented grassroots upsurge has temporarily rattled Congress and the industry, delaying the initial Sneak Attack in the Senate on organic standards, resulting in a compromise amendment (H.R. 2744) September 21 calling for "further study of the issue." Unfortunately we expect another, possibly even more serious, Sneak Attack in the House/Senate Conference Committee over the next week as Congress members put the final wording together for the 2006 Congressional Agriculture Appropriations Bill . Therefore OCA is now calling on consumers and the organic community to apply pressure to their House of Representatives members as well as their Senators to stop the Conference Committee from degrading the standards. In addition we urge everyone to start applying pressure to the Organic Trade Association, who are unfortunately spearheading this Sneak Attack. We ask everyone who has read our SOS Action Alert and signed our petition to Congress to call your House of Representative member at this toll free number: 877-762-8762, as well as the OTA: 413-774-7511. Here is a link that might be useful: sign here please.

I know almost nothing about lilies but do know what you've already learned about the top soil not being right. So I would repot the lily as you did the other plants and I add chunks of Jobe's fruit tree fertilizer spikes. The only reason I would do this is because it covers a lot of bases. Allows me to check the condition of the rhizome, maybe it's starting to rot in that wrong soil. Maybe switching to the proper soil is the issue. Maybe the nutrients have leached out of the soil, or there's too much rot going on in there and some harmful chemical like ammonia has built up. Basically I wouldn't know what else to do. If you don't get some good responses here there are forums more specific to water lilies which have people I've always thought knew what they were talking about. I've read the "Water Garden" section at another forum...unfortunately GardenWeb doesn't allow members to mention other forums so I can't direct you further. Forum owners want to keep eyeballs, actual help apparently isn't as important.

Hard to say since lots of things can damage leaves: my purple coneflower had some leaf damage from sap-sucking insects that produced curled leaves, but it has grown past the damage now and looks normal after I nuked the bugs. I wonder if it could be something related to aster yellows since that can do freaky things to coneflowers and other plants... Good idea on not buying the messed-up flowers.

I do like that opuntia in the picture. I have what people call an "old Mexico", or frog foot opuntia. I have never found a name for it. It is cold hardy to about 14 F. It gets cold damaged at that point and lays down on the ground, I have the spineless Opuntia cacanapa var ellisiana Z 6 or 7.I have a opuntia chenille AKA Opuntia aciculata. You can get ahold of me through my member page if you are interested