Your baseline is Bl. Yellow Bird which is three quarters B. nodosa and one quarter L. milleri. For some reason Bl. Yellow Bird is much easier to grow and bloom than B. nodosa in my conditions and both are now in bloom. Bl. Yellow Bird spent last winter in an unheated glasshouse and is growing in a pot with treated pine bark mix while B. nodosa is growing on a hardwood slab stuck in a large shallow pot without any mixture (it has outgrown its mount) and spent the winter in a glasshouse with some heating. So??? go to somewhere such as Jay's species site, read up on the three species and maybe the information there will give some clues as to where to position your new plant.

This open pollenated seedling showed up between Paul's Glory and Old Glory where I'd had my daughters potted Loyalist the previous summer. Later is the season the green/greeen variegation is barely visible. I am waiting to see what this year brings, being its 3rd season. Note the leaf shape is not like either 'Glory'. They are more like Loyalist. Anyway, I call it Theresa's Glory. Les

India is so big and has such a rich regional variety of dishes that if you travel great distances like I did on my recent trip there, you can experience foods you would swear come from totally different parts of the world, and they do - in the Himalayan states you might, for example, encounter local dishes that resemble Nepalese or even Tibetan food, while in Goa you will find food that is heavily influenced by Portuguese cooking. You can also, if you wish, eat the same dishes everywhere, because restaurants that cater to tourists generally seem to have the same 30 or so dishes on their menus, shuffled in a slightly different order (you would, for example, almost always find aloo gobi, several biryanis and pilafs, one or more kebabs, banana lassi and gulab jamuns on these menus). Indian table manners are interesting to someone from the West. The Indians I stayed with generally didn't drink anything with their meals, rather having a glass of water after the meal, often followed by chai. Although these people belong to the educated and rather westernised middle class, they still prefer to eat with their fingers. I followed suit and found that it adds an extra dimension to the eating experience. Flat breads like chappatis are used to scoop up the food. A spoon might be used to help eat dal and curries with lots of sauce, but curries would also be mixed with rice and either scooped up with bread or with the fingers. The right hand is used for eating, and it is quite interesting to see bread being torn skilfully with one hand while the left hand rests in the person's lap or on the table. Guidebooks give the reason that the left hand is considered unclean, but among educated people the (almost) exclusive use of the right hand is surely by now more of a tradition than anything else. In Indian restaurants outside India the food tends to taste milder than it does in India. By that I don't just mean less chili, but less spiciness in general, although my favourite Indian restaurant in Reykjavík gives you a choice between genuine and mild. Another difference is that stews/curries where meat would be just one of many flavourings in India, have heaps more meat in them, which can alter the flavour and texture of dishes quite a bit. I long for the day when someone opens a south Indian restaurant in Reykjavík. We are currently well served in the northern Indian, mughal and Pakistani varieties, but I would love to be able to order dosas and idlis. If you want to try cooking Indian foods at home, try any of Madhur Jaffrey's Indian cookbooks, or Julie Sahni's Classic Indian Cooking. Both not only give recipes but also regional and technical background to the recipes.

Wild Swan is probably my favorite book on China - fiction or non. The stories of her grandmother, mother and herself read like good fiction, and I came away with a much better understanding of modern Chinese history and culture then I had before. I agree - I don't think you can really make any generalization about any country, but esp not one so big. Yes we export some of our most glaring stereotypes for all to see. But its so very different between regions, states, rural/urban/suburban, and so dependent on class, race or nationalities. Rather an interesting mix, actually. Im in a website that has a language forum, and people from all over the country pop in with their favorite regionalisms, and comments on others. Makes me remember how really diverse this huge nation is, and makes me wonder how in the world we managed to all stick together for so long!