"Do not fear the garbage can". I needed to remind myself of that on a couple of occasions recently. Good advice. Purple, sounds like you'd need to trim roots very drastically in a lot of repottings I've done recently if you are looking for the roots to "fit back in a pot without bending or curling". Just bought plants are often so pot-bound, that even if you step up the size of the pot the normally-recommended 2 inches, you'd need to trim more than half the length of the roots. Do I read you right? A pothos I repotted recently had these long streaks of roots. I can't imagine trimming them to half the diameter of the pot. I trimmed a bit, but not even close to this, I would just lay them randomly bent on a layer of the mix before adding more mix on top and calling it a day. What does anybody else do? With this hoya I repotted, I did not trim the roots on purpose at all, thinking some definitely ripped off while separating the plants, and I did not want to do more damage. Would you have? And I wonder about this: "I arrange the roots going straight out from the crown, spread out as much as possible, then start scooping in 'dirt,' then jiggle/raise it a bit, which I figure places the roots is the best possible position to regrow throughout the pot, mostly out but a little bit down, and plenty of material falls between them to end up under the crown." This mostly makes sense to me, except I wonder when you raise the plant a bit to get the roots to point down slightly, aren't you also raising the mix on top of the roots, thus forming an undesirable air bubble underneath? I guess the "jiggling" part hopefully fills that space somewhat, although to do that completely would require the mix to form a small hill underneath the roots, and I can't imagine any amount of jiggling could do that with the way gravity works. More broadly, I am very interested in what people do to avoid big air pockets - not the little beneficial ones that aerate the roots (I guess that is more of a question of the mix structure, not repotting techniques), but big ones where roots will never get water and eventually just dry out because of sub-optimal repotting. This clivia I repotted comes to mind here. The roots grew very vigorously in a pot like this (http://www.containerstore.com/shop/containers/openBinsBaskets?productId=10018611) to the point where the plant started raising itself very visibly from out of the pot. When I lifted the roots to see what was happening, I saw that because of the structure of the pot and strength of the roots of this particular plant, they would find the wall of the pot, and then they would go straight down (couldn't circle because of those zig-zagged walls). When they reached the bottom, the plant would literally raise itself up on its root tippy-toes like a ballerina, leaving the mix underneath, especially with my lifting the root ball to check, yet more mix would drop to the bottom. I did not get to repot right away, and eventually (soon), the roots not on the walls of the pot all died because they were not in contact with the mix anymore. So, at repotting pictured here, I got myself a plant with very meaty and tight roots basically forming a dome with empty space underneath. Getting the mix in there was my concern, so let's just say there was a lot of shaking and tilting the pot. :-) But that was not the last repotting of the plant. When I made gritty mix recently, I thought I'd replace the mix, as clivias like it on the dry side. To my disappointment, the roots that time looked less healthy than at previous repotting (pictured) - unfortunately I did not take a pic this last time. Not only did the roots not grow back in the middle of the root ball / under the stem, but also one side of the roots, maybe a 30 degree segment of the root ball, was all rotted away. I guess I did not get enough mix into the center to get new roots to regenerate, AND my mix before gritty mix was too moisture-retentive. Lessons learned: * that zig zag pot was inappropriate for clivia root structure and the growth rate (the pot is still ok with drilled holes for a lot of other plants, I think); * repot sooner when you identify a problem, especially with a vigorously growing plant; * to fill the void in the middle with mix that new roots could repopulate, I could prune many roots right down to the stem, so that there is some space next to the stems into which some mix could fall through into the space underneath I as trying to fill. This would require much more than half of the roots to be cut off right at the stem (see the pic), which seems very drastic. * I guess another idea to fill that space without such drastic root-pruning is too take a pot with a big drain hole, not cover the drain hole with anything, to repot as usually, as if that empty space was not a concern, then duct-tape the whole top of the pot tight, so that it can be turned over without the mix spilling out, and then pour as much mix into the drain hole as it would take, while periodically shaking the pot a bit to settle it. This last idea gives me an itch to repot yet again, perhaps next year - although I hope very much the space in the middle got filled through that rotted-away 30 degree segment on the side. I am just glad this clivia seems to be a real trooper, taking all my "learning" (or "abuse" when looked from the plant's perspective) in strides, growing through much of this turmoil. Any more comments/ideas are very much welcome. (Also how I can write more briefly, haha).

So glad you like your box, spacific! I'm also glad it got there so quickly :-) I'm glad you like the colours, I rather like turquoise myself and it just all sort of fell into place :-) The chopsticks are really pretty, they have a sort of lighter tiny spotty effect in the wood, now I know Customs will let them in, if I ever go back to Bali I must try to get some for myself :-) If you're ever wondering what a food word is and can't find it, just yell, I'm culinarily bilingual :-)

Here is an Okonomiyaki recipe very similar to what I had, and it is essentially a Japanese cabbage pancake! I'm going to try to make this myself - it was extremely tasty and I think it healthy also. I saw Nagaimo (Japanese mountain yam) at the market across the street from the restaurant and almost bought some, but now I know how to use it. Ellen, I was thinking of you when I was at the restaurant - I'm sure your DH would love it - it's on the west side of Sawtelle in the mini-mall that runs north from Olympic to Mississippi. It's easy to enter from Mississippi. Unfortunately, it is not a good restaurant for groups, as seating is limited and tables are small. There are several interesting restaurants in that mini-mall, including a Japanese beef restaurant, Korean tofu restaurant, and several others that I can't remember at the moment, but there was a Hurry Curry and another Korean restaurant specializing in soups, I think. Kevin and I were in Tucson from Thurs May 23 through Sunday May 26, and we went to the Desert Museum on the day we left. We both bought very nice pottery at the gift shop, and I will post photos of those some time this week. Dcarch, if you are interested in meeting the L.A. group, we could possibly get a gathering together. Annie, grilled chicken sounds good, and we'll be having this probably this week-end, now that we have more time to prepare for it. Monday we just wanted to relax and do some shopping. Lars Here is a link that might be useful: Mini-mall map

That would be me, LOL.