Hi Kath - Thank you for replying. Evidently they are New Zealand mud snails which are harmless to the worms except that they are extremely invasive and will reproduce my the thousand within a week or two. One of the people on another forum had them in her aquarium and she had to clean out her aquarium twice with scalding hot water to get rid of them. She had to boil her rocks, etc. as well. So I have to remove all of my worms and cocoons from the bedding and rinse them off with warm water and then place them in fresh new bedding after thoroughly cleaning my bin and trays with super hot water. The only best way to kill the snails is to drop them and their eggs in salt water. So I figure after I remove my worms and eggs I'll dump all of the bedding and compost into a bucket of salt water and then dispose of it. I hope my worms are just slow like yours. :P Maybe it's just the type I have - I have Indian Blues.

"The man that I'm involved with has had 3 failed marriages and done time for drug dealing" Well at least it sounds like you are getting what you deserve. "...since he's found me he's been given a new lease of life" Sure sweetie, he'll be a regular Mother Theresa now that he has you in his life. Reading too many romance novels are we? Sorry if I am coming off harsh, and I realize I don't speak for everyone here, their opinion might be a little more forgiving than mine. But as someone who's been put through the same hell by my piece of sh*t ex-wife that you are putting your husband though, I feel extremely entitled to offer my opinion, since you asked for opinions. I too was a "good honest man" (still am...lol!) who did not deserve it. I was always completely faithful to her. I worked my butt off getting a software business off the ground so my ex could be a stay-at-home for our two kids, which is what we both wanted from the start. And instead of being appreciated for working long days and weekends, then coming home and being a good dad and working on the house and all that, she eventually winds up resenting me for not being around enough and winds up having an affair with someone...which I didn't find out about for 9 months. When I found out, I said I understood (to a point) why she did this and wanted to fix our issues, and resolved to change some things make our marriage better. She said she wanted this too....but her heart was never really in it. Three years later she did it again....this time I told her I was done and we are now amicably divorced (on the surface anyway) and sharing custody or our two kids 50/50. I say "on the surface" because when I think of what she did to me, not only the affairs, but to string me along for years...knowing she wanted out but not having the courage to act like an adult end our marriage the right way before shopping for her next man, my blood freaking boils. I can't explain it, but I feel like I lived years of my life now in some giant lie...I was happy and thought things were pretty good. Good people DO NOT treat people like this. She completely disregarded me as a person, and did what was best for her, with NO regards for my feelings. I didn't matter at all....my pain was just "collateral damage" to her in getting what she wanted. To this day (5 yrs later), while I deal with her respectfully on a daily basis regarding the kids, deep down I wish nothing but bad things for her. The scars of being treated like this, by someone that you loved and treated with nothing but respect for 10+ years, do not heal easily. I suspect they never will. I (half) jokingly tell my friends that I just hope she dies before me so that I can take a big sh*t on her grave, as my final revenge. Well, now you know how your "good honest man" of a husband will feel about you when he finds out. And I hope your daughters do turn on you...you f*cking deserve it. There, you asked for opinions.....oh, and good luck with your new man, he sounds like quite a catch! This post was edited by mkroopy on Fri, Dec 7, 12 at 13:14

Agree with Matt, leaves look rotting but are also sunburned. Rot wasn't visible in other photos. Many of the leaves are sunburned toward the tips... I wouldn't worry much about looking for turface and/or bark unless they are easily found. I went thru all of that (as many others did); found turface but not too lucky with bark (lots available, but is too large - 2" and bigger). So I settled for mix I use, with ingredients I mentioned in previous post (including photo I posted). BTW, I have read all posts by Al. I am very strong 'believer' ...but if you understand principle, you can make excellent mix using materials easily available, without going crazy looking for exactly the same...For example: Al's recipe doesn't call for perlite. But knowing perlites water holding capacity, one can figure out what it is good for and use it as a substitute for substrate not so easily found. There are many other substrates that are excellent if used in making well draining mix.

He gets six and 3/4 days and I get 1/4. I am watching Milk Street even as I type- I intensely dislike this Chris guy. Outside of his serial marrying, affair divorce thing he has going (what women?) he is snide and abrasive. Why are all his co-cooks so short? He tastes a dish somewhere-fabulous! Marvelous! takes it back and makes some sort of bizarre not the same dish. His thing. I neglected to say I am not a Hallmark channel fan but I don't have much opportunity to object to it. PBS, oh mercy. What has gone wrong there? All we get is athon-ing. They are telling us that we are going to get TWO Whole Weeks of no fundraising. Oh GEE. If I send money I get to watch them beg for money. Do they feed it to chickens? We get rerun shows when we get shows and the occasional spate of new stuff shown back to back as late as midnight(?) like glutting on it and don't tell me they don't have ads. They show many of the same ads as mainstream TV plus the special ones for kitchen equipment etc for the cooking shows. Hmmmm. Add a couple more and call it good. Seems like a death spiral as they compete with streaming. Sorry for the diversion. Back to Hallmark-it is the visual version of romance novels so popular with so many. soothing I suppose.