Just remembered I took pics of this bucket Tuesday... (I pasted the update info below from a recent thread where I was babbling about this plant, so don't feel crazy if you think you already read about this.) It is apparently a great scratching post for kitties. The barn cats at the farm have multiplied and the kitties are determined to make sure all of the plants look like strange Monstera cousins, with holes in every leaf. The flower stalks on the Callisia fragrans are gone, broken off. But the plants don't look like they are too bothered by it, and/or determined to outgrow the playful kitties. He is enjoying it so much he gave me an empty bucket and asked me to fill it with whatever plants I could spare that would enjoy his porch, and asked me to put all of the Callisia stolons the kitties have broken in another bucket. He had half a dozen plastic cups of water for them on his kitchen table, each with a tangle of roots already. This past Monday, as we sat there and ate McDonald's with the Callisia cups, he talked about these plants the whole time. All he ever used to talk about before was what an idiot his boss is, what scammers the politicians are, how his family only comes around when they want something, and just a lot of negativity in general. The next time anyone encounters a lonely old guy (or gal!) and you have a tough plant or two to spare, give it to them and say you need help with an experiment to see how it will grow at their house... Amazing!

We do not post publicly how the Stout vote breaks down by region since that is not a requirement to win the Award. You can find the HM and AM results posted by region, since votes must come from 4 regions for the HM and 8 regions for the AM. But with the Stout,it is simply the cultivar that gets the most votes. The number of judges varies by region. There are more judges in the regions with the most AHS members. Region 2 has our largest number of members, and also the largest number of judges. Region 4 is the second largest region and it has the second largest number of judges. Some regions with low numbers of AHS members ( Regions 7, 8,9) also have fewer judges.I don't think that having the largest regions represented by the largest number of judges would skew the vote. It would just give an accurate representation of what our membership reflects. Most, but not all, judges vote each year!

Claudia, My DH's brother and my SIL didn't care about their ancestry either. Then, a couple years ago my SIL's mother passed away & a couple months ago I got a call asking me how to get started researching her genealogy. So, you never know. People get interested for such a wide variety of reasons. Now, my BIL and his wife are headed to Wales in June to vacation & do some research on DH's family that I've asked them to dig up. BTDT, my experience with the accuracy of LDS info has been poor, at best. There's stuff on LDS's website pertaining to my family that's just not true. My grandmother's name is even wrong. There is a German-Russian Historical Society that has been working with the Russian government for over a decade now & their work is invaluable for researchers. I never would have found the Russian professor if not for the GRHS. Time will tell on the LDS project. For now, I'll wait & see how they document their information. Here's a couple pictures of 'Family Ties', the book on Mom's genealogy. I wrote well over a hundred articles for the book describing the history behind the people. A bunch of dates and places don't really tell the story of a family. I wanted to make the story come alive. I wrote the Introduction last believing it would be a slam dunk after all the research. Wrong. It took 3-4 months & ended up 31 pages. rofl Revolutionary War (I used various flags depending on the war) Just an example of an article and picture of a family crest. There are over 200 pictures... In order to make Dad's book come alive I decided to write a short novel as an introduction to the nuts & bolts of the genealogy. I used my grandfather's life as the foundation. I thought this book would be substantially shorter since I cut off research in 1767 but it's going to be close...I'm about 640 pages now & unfinished. It's hard to stop. Fortunately, binding contraints impose limits or you end up with multiple volumes. lol /tricia

Who do You Think You Are is one of my favorite shows! I wish the average Joe would have all that "extra" help if they'd go to all those libraries and county offices, etc. My family is aware that our grandfather was orphaned at age 2 and lived with another family (whose name we have). But when we found the adoption papers a few years ago we saw that they adopted him at age 17 1/2. We wonder why, or for what reason would they wait for until he was almost an adult?