Thanks folks, glad you enjoyed my bright spot today. :) Ellie, I've lost so many buds to this drought, I can't tell you how many empty scapes I've cut off, some will give me 1, maybe 2 blooms if I'm lucky, then others drop all their buds. It's heartbreaking watching the buds shrivel up and drop off. I hope you don't lose as many as I have. :( Jan

Most of the durian we tried was very good. Kop Maethao, Chanee, Kan Yao, Enark were all good. I even had a small piece of Montong at one of the festivals and it was pretty good...even though we stayed away from this variety the entire trip...trying to keep with the better or odd varieties. Not my favorite and I certainly couldn't eat a lot of it at once, but I did enjoy it. Warren, on the other hand, was fanatical about it. We called him "durian boy"! Coralred...we had mangosteens available no matter when or where. Father-in-law kept fruit with us everywhere we went, even when we went out to dinner. Soon as the meal was over, out came the fruit!! As much as I love them? I was almost mangosteen'd to death! Also, the weather contributed to a bunch of very bad mangosteens this season. We learned that heavy rains at certain times of fruit development will lead to either gamboge invading the flesh, or flesh turning hard and transluscent. I was throwing away 1 out of maybe 5 or so mangosteens, sometimes more. When eating mangosteens, we always looked for the larger seeds. We also stopped trying to use our teeth trying to remove all the flesh from the seed. The seed coat would stain your upper and lower teeth. So when you smiled or showed your teeth, you looked like you've been chewing tobacco or something!! It's nasty looking. However, you'd be surprised at how many fruit did not have seeds or were immature. I emailed Gardenweb to remove that other post. Hopefully they will get rid of it soon to avoid confusion. Wife's sister loaded up the "forgotten" pics to DVD and shipping out today. So we'll all just have to wait for them! I'll continue to post the rest as soon as I get them loaded up.

Jodi, See where the lable is, there is a 3 sided opening under that. It opens like a door. Just cut the 3 sides with an exacto knife. Flip it back and put the stuff in. I put a strip of packing tape over it then taped the lable over that. You can't see the slits until the lable is removed. Since he is 6, I really wanted to put something to embarrass him a bit, like a pair of underwear. I settled for sox. I put in small toys and dollars and change, and some candy. The person who introduced this on here, sent it in the mail, without wrapping it (just the lable.)

Oh wow, gorgeous pictures!!