Lisaclv...thanks for the link...great pics. I've grown a few kinds,and they all did very well,and are good offset producers,with the original plant holding its shape and color long after it blooms. One of my "easy" growers. There is one I prefer,Ae.'parati',which has a nice shape similar to an Ae.chantinii,and develops a nice purple/red color with silver bars when exposed to a lot of sunshine.The one thing that was a good clue in catkim's post, was how the bloom appeared like overnite. All mine did the same,so I guess its a trait of this particular plant. Surprise !! This aechema could easily be mistaken for a billbergia when young,and before blooming. Bob C.

WOW...I don't visit this side of the forum often enough and so sorry I missed this earlier. Wonderful, delicious and thoughtful package Jessy!! You will love the LC bakingware, I use mine all the time, only I do need some smaller ones like yours!!! The fruit jams...what could be better!! Enjoy and I know you did/are!!! Michelle

Understand, we skype often, but never done it via a phone. Mine doesn't have that capability... I am to cheap, to have such a phone and the charges connected with it. However, my daughter and her husband have. Thus, I got to see everyone, and talk to everyone, and watch the kids play, and let them show me their gifts. :) Moni

So far, we have only had 0.05" but it is pretty cloudy and we might get more. Amy, I never, ever get the same amount of rainfall as that at our mesonet station or that recorded by our local cooperative weather observer, who just lives a couple of miles away as the crow flies (though much farther by actual roadways). That's why I have a rain gauge. Actually, we have three and they don't even always agree with one another. Rainfall can vary a great deal even over a relatively small distance. There's been times we have had a quarter-inch in the rain gauge closest to the house, and a half-inch in the rain gauge 150' away in the front garden. None of our gauges are set up where they get rain dripping off any sort of plant or structure, or where any sort of plant or structure prevents rain from falling freely into them, so I believe they all accurately record what falls. I just think rain varies a great deal more than we realize over a relatively small area. One day a few years back we sat in lawn chairs and watched it rain heavily on most of the property directly adjacent to ours, but not a drop fell on our place. It was during drought and that little popup shower didn't cover a very big area---our next-door neighbors were lucky that day, and we weren't. They recorded rain that day, but we didn't and neither did our mesonet station. The oddest thing I have noticed, and I've tracked our rain ever since we moved here in 1999, is that no matter how much our rainfall at our house varies from the Mesonet station's rainfall on a daily or monthly basis, by the end of the year, there's never much difference between what it recorded and what we recorded---maybe an inch or two at most, and sometimes not much difference at all. I guess it all evens out in the end. Dawn