I year ago a friend of mine and I jointly purchased a 13 cane plant from DUNU who delivered it to us in Santa Barbara. I had to sell on of my grand kids to pay for it. I got the numbers of canes wrong in my initial blurb. We split it into 7 cane and 6 cane plants and I won the coin toss and ended up with the 7 cane piece. As I said the last 2 canes were tenuous, leafless and poorly attached to the plant. It took major soul searching but I eventually separated them, they immediately fell apart and I now had 2 sorry looking canes. They sat there for a year and now are sporting a new growth each. Both my main plant and my friend's have a strong new growth and seem to be well on their way. It will take a couple of years until the 2 new plants will be worth looking at but maybe then I can recover some of my cost or make some very strong trades. In the mean time there is another Australian FCC making waves. D spec Yondi Tina Goliath FCC/AOC etc apparently was cloned and the small plants are now on the market. I got one for relatively little and have both the FCCs sitting side by side. The Yondi has 3 juvenile canes and is making a new one. My friend also got one. Because of the cloning I think we will see a lot of them. The Daylight Moon is still much more difficult to get so hopefully my 2 newbies will still be worth something when they are old enough to sell or trade. We have a few D speciosum nuts in Southern California so I'm sure there will be a demand for the plants. I have my eyes on a guy who has a nice collection of Avril's Gold and there is someone in San Diego who also has outstanding D speciosums. I'm keeping ny fingers crossed that the 2 new growths will thrive as that is not always the case. They represent the reason why one should never discard a worth wile orchid piece until it is truly dead. I'm also not a believer in the sphagnum in bag trick. If the cane has neither roots nor leaves, I believe it should be left to its own devices and water will only rot it. I mounted mine without moss or any other media and they got sprayed daily but dried off immediately after. Nick

I love your pig stories. When they have personalities and names it sure would be hard to eat them. They sound like they really like to ride in the van....who would have thunk it??? LOL!!! After finding a gold mine of food in the van, they will really try to go for a ride!! Thanks for sharing your story and hope you continue to feel better! I included a link of a pig that would not walk on the dirt unless they put it boots on it. It even has pictures. Thought you might enjoy it. Joyce Here is a link that might be useful: Pig in Boots

Happy Spring! Today as the snow melted, the iris reticulata poked through... And the first crocuses survived the snow I am late with starting seeds. I have snapdragons, violas, calandulas and poppies going so far. More to go.

On my project I countersunk the holes for the phillips head screws. I think the occasionaly screw would have wound up sticking up, so I took the extra time. I got some bundled strapping from a lumber yard and they weren't too bad. I used dabs of the foam adhesive to tack up the foam to the concrete, but in retrospect, that stuff is kinda of lumpy and didn't flow too well and required holding til it stuck, although I didn't hold it too long. I've been messing with a glue gun lately and it seems to work okay for sticking one layer of foam to another and it also seemed to work on concrete on a little sample. Advantage is that it sticks fast and doesn't have vapors like some line of contact cement or spray glue. I drove the tapcons with an old electric drill that I have. Make sure you get the right Phillips head bit (#2?), for a good fit. I went with 5 tapcons per strip, but I was strapping the 2" tongue in groove stuff.