LOL, Liz. Your clivia story is (please forgive) too funny. I'm glad it's recovering. Actually, I did something like that to a phal spike a month or so ago. Meant to keep a spike on a violacea hybrid, and in a mindless moment, snip! What a coincidence! Great minds and all that. I just this second started a thread inspired by this one. Please add your clivia story to it. You can get tree ferm from Carter and Holmes or from Cal West. Get the coarse or medium kind. The fine is too powdery. If it's too long, you can break small portions of it with your hands or by pushing on a pile of it with something like a clay pot. The smaller pieces then fall to the bottom. I use pieces broken down to app two inches or so. You can also get various sizes of perlite from Cal West. They call it Rok, I think. However, I confess I couldn't figure out their grading system as they offer grades by number, so I'm not sure I really got the biggest kind. It was a little bigger than the HD kind. However, the HD kind seems ok to me. I had a bag around that I used before buying more. It's not terribly expensive if you are going to do a number of orchids. 1/4 cubic foot of either tree fern or perlite will do a lot of orchids. And you use less sphag. I think just the act of mixing the sphag with the tree fern and perlite fluffs it up so you use a lot less sphag. Which is mostly good, unless you are a severe underwaterer.

Caterpillars are supposed to have eyes/tiny openings arranged in a semi-circle shape on both sides of their heads, but I'm not sure I've ever seen them. Here's a close-up picture of a gulf frit caterpillar, and maybe the dark areas on the head in the shape of a "C" (backwards on one side) are the eyes? Your caterpillar isn't green yet, so it's probably one of the first three instars, and by the yellowy color I think I see - probably the yellow "eyes" showing through - it's probably a third instar cat. Cats have a total of five instars. I made a picture of what I think is a third instar spicebush swallowtail caterpillar - actually, I've never tried to count instars - which looks like yours - Sherry

Hi, LOL Daniella that is so true about the DH. He keeps finding my stash too....I hope to have enough one day we will be sleeping with them. Okay maybe not that much. LOL Hi Ladylotus funny finding you here..heheheh I am so glad you are around. Nice to see a familar face. I love mini binds cant go wrong with them. I like paint pens a little better though. Nice to see you. Hi karen I had them in there with water as cuttings. OOPS I wont do that again. Thansk for the tips about the pots and growing I did not know that. I have tons of plastic pots but wanted to overwinter them as cuttings. I found also that if you are keeping cutting through the winter that empty plastic coffee cans work they must like caffeine like me. Much better than metal stock pots. Smile Barb

Geez, what a nightmare. Why can't people just be honest and treat others like they'd like to be treated? I just don't get it, it's not that hard. I really wanted to bid on some beautiful RL bedding, a rare style, but I really had to read between the lines and push to get info. Apparently with the shams the seller mentioned although never used, she did launder one "by mistake", but it went right back in the package. Saw no logic in that whatsoever... Since it was cotton and lace (delicate), I wondered if she dried it (which would ruin it). I emailed her asking if the washed sham had been distorted or shrank as a result. No reply. I wait a few days, auction is nearing and end, and basically email her a 'hey, I'd really like to bid, but have not received a reply to my question so I'm giving it one more try here.' That generated a response from her, she admitted that the laundered sham was 'snug' and corners 'curled', but suggested ironing would make it fit properly again. Good grief. (She failed to include that significant detail in her description, even after I asked, she didn't post my question and her answer.) Very cat and mouse. I'm glad I took time to push it, because although it was a beautiful set I might well be out the $, and it would be worthless with only one good sham (and it garnered pretty high $$). I'm watching to see what kind of feedback occurs once the buyer receives it. Anyway, back to valinsv's guy. Clearly there are major issues with some items he sells. Is he too ignorant to realize that having integrity would only bolster his business that much more? That's the part I just don't get. Treat people right, they'll keep coming back. Treat them badly as a habit and sooner or later he's going to lose. Seems to me with the type of volume he does he'd be a lot further ahead if he'd just be honest. Just curious mona if you might know: if he does get kicked off, is his IP address banned, or just his ebay ID? He seems to have such a huge system set up and selling high volume, can't see him just walking away. Could he just come back under a new ID? (Although given his business and volume and listing style, it would be easy to recognize it might be him.)