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!

Did you ever get one? I can recommend my installer (who I think has NYC in his service area). Mine is inside my second floor apartment and has caused no issues. I have a large kitchen and a two oven aga; I did keep my conventional range too but only use it very rarely. It is handy to have for large or complicated meals and for cakes which need a longer bake at a moderate temperature. The Aga does make the kitchen extremely hot in summer; I plan to shut it off for June-August moving forward. It uses a fairly significant amount of gas too, costs me about $50 monthly to run it. As a cooking tool it is fabulous! Excellent breads and incredible roast meats or veg. I don't understand the 'moist heat' comment but think she means that the radiant heat keeps the foods moist inside; my sense is that the ovens sear the outside of foods very quickly so the insides remain moist. There is also (I think) less air exchange in the ovens so vapors from cooking linger which may also help prevent drying out of food. Basic things like rice or potatoes (boiled, baked, or roasted) are so easy and almost impossible to screw up. Brings large pots of water to the boil incredibly fast (admittedly, it can only do this once and then needs time to recover). The ovens are small but can be filled right up; you cook stuff right on the floors and can pile pots on top of each other. The Aga cookware slides on the tracks on the sides of the ovens so you don't need to use shelves; I keep one shelf on the bottom of my simmering oven but otherwise don't use racks at all for the most part. It is also lovely for keeping dry towels and dish rags and keeping the kitchen warm and drying shoes and damp coats etc. The three oven adds a useful addition of 50% capacity over my two oven, plus a more moderate temperature for baking. I have heard that the baking oven tends to approach roasting oven temperatures when cooking a large meal but using the cold shelf and the large roasting tin helps to create a cooler micro-climate within the oven for things that need less intense heat. If you have a good air conditioning system, you might be fine with just the three oven to run year-round. If you throw a lot of large dinner parties or think you might want to shut it off in summer, I would only install if you have space for a small conventional range or cooktop/wall-oven combo elsewhere in the kitchen. A couple of burners (electric or gas) would be useful. The extra cooking facilities are not required but are likely helpful. Here is a link that might be useful: my Aga

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?

Well, I know that my Great Great Grandmother was a Spanish Marquesa. A Marquesa is one step below a Duchess and one step above a Countess. My Great Great Granfather is Edmund Stephenson and he is the one who got the railroads up and running in Mexico.