Nice plant & Pic Jane! I could live in your yard! Looks so pretty! When I contacted OHG since many of us were in the same boat with Twinkle. Their response: "Be patient. Many varieties send out spikes (or sheaths, in the case of Cattleyas) prematurely, well before blooming season. The Twinkles bloom usually between Thanksgiving and Christmas, so it is way too early to expect buds at this time. Keep the plants on the cool side at night to provide some temperature fluctuation, and give good light. And don't stress out about it" I also met with a couple from Canada a few weeks ago. G/H growers. Same story. They told me Twinkles can take months to bloom. They are a tease aren't they? Thinking back on my winter outings to OHG and Hausermann's, I remember a sea of Twinkles being in bloom in winter and continuing into early spring. Mine developed a spike during the last bloom cycle. Thought for sure it would bloom, still sitting there. More spikes developed over the summer. There is just no way I have found to push Twinkle to bloom. Mine has been in full sun all summer. It's still outside since we have been experiencing summer weather and cooler nights. Not bringing the rest of the "roof rats" in until month's end. Seems to be the summer pattern for many Oncids (species and Intergens) well anything with a bulb; throwing early and holding. Oncid "Ortho-novum" the parent of Twinkle is in the same condition. So is my Tenuifolia Many spikes/buds & holding. Same for 2 of my SB's. Wondering if the cooler early summer did that? Don't feel bad about breaking spikes. They are tiny and sooo easy to break. I broke the top of one spike. Scotch taped it. It branched. Cut the taped part off. Looks like nothing ever happened. I was cutting the dead spikes off and accidentally cut a new one off ... What a "blonde moment"! You'll have a really sweet flowers for the holidays! I bet that you'll have more spikes before bloom time. Mine has plenty of mature PB's that have not produced a spike yet. I took the opportunity to repot them into some cool pots. The roots really took off this summer. Clara

Ah, Champlain I know, and I hope this one is as tough! The colors are like Champlain, but the petals aren't as tidy when the buds open. They're sort of wavy, if that makes any sense. I need to find some time to rifle through my rose book and see if I can find something to help me describe it. Thanks though! At least it's a fun mystery.

I got my first horse for my 11th birthday. He was a bay gelding, an old cow horse, named Prince. Nothing fazed him. When you wanted to leave him somewhere, just drop the reins, and he would "ground tie"...wouldn't move from the spot. I used to ride with my friends, and they would tie their horses to my saddle and Prince would stand there and hold them all. I could ride him with no saddle, bridle, halter...nothing on him at all. Used to ride him to the post office like that. A lumberyard was next door and I would stop him next to some concrete steps on display for sale, and he would wait until I got back and got on and away we'd go. I used to ride him standing up...could do it at a lope too. My father nearly had a fit when he saw me doing that, and I had to stop...except when no one was watching. A few years later, I wanted to raise a foal, and I saved up my money and bought a mare named Little Maude. She was supposedly in foal but she wasn't. A wealthy rancher friend of my family, kept her all summer one year to try to get her in foal to a Thoroughbred stallion he had named Dublin Star, but she never settled. She wasn't old....she was ancient. My senior year in high school, I saved my money again and bought a big black, part Thoroughbred gelding. He was 16 and a half hands high. His name was Dan...and I added Collins to it, after my future husband. He was just green broke, but a wonderful horse. A few months later, Jody, my future husband, bought Trouble, a half Arab for my Christmas present. When I married, I raised horses and had many registered quarter horses. I will always have a horse, and today I have four horses. Two of them are almost 30 years old, one is 19 and one is 7. Here is their picture.

Oh, that is fabulous, Annie! Definitely a jolt of happiness on those walls! I love it, but then again, I'm an "orange" girl and adore the color in all forms. Are walls in adjacent rooms also painted in other colors, or do you have the same paint throughout in the rest of your home? I keep wondering how it will look to have just that one tiny room in our house painted a different color. It's right off the hallways extending from the foyer before you enter the open living/kitchen/dining area. Not that its location really matters, but I'm trying to wrap my head around how it would look to have a brilliantly-hued little "cave" behind that one door.