Hi, never heard of it, but I just googled a picture and it looks beautiful (all those flowers!). Why not try it out? Just be sure you know its particular growing needs such as water, light, location, etc. Um... I just read your note again - have you never done bonsai? If so, I wouldn't try any tree yet as you really need to do some serious reading and/or find a local bonsai club to help out. You're in the UK, but is the tree a real tropical (which would need indoor care)? Or would it grow outdoors for life in your climate? You need to know that answer before anything else as, if it's tropical, you'll need to provide all the warmth, humidity (2 sprays a day won't do!) and high light (generally specialty lighting is involved) that it'll need just to keep it alive, along with knowledge of the right soil mix and watering needs.

The easiest way is to open a free Photobucket.com account. Upload you pictures there. You do not need to re-size them. Copy the html line beneath each photo and paste here in the message portion of the post. You can paste multiple pictures within the message.

Hi Hazel & Gill. I haven't seen either of you around lately. I hope all is well. I usually get very good germination from Pride of Barbados and the larger Royal Poincianna. They always look terrible when I move them but recover. Mine drop their foliage when the temps drop (I keep it in the 50's at night in the greenhouse during the winter) but it grows back when it warms up. The problem is that I usually end up forgetting about them and they freeze outside. This year I gave my saplings away before I ended up killing them. I've kept POB and RP's started in the fall/winter in the greenhouse in 4" pots until it was warm enough to move them outside. They get somewhat root bound but take off when I transplant into larger containers. Since it's cool at night in the GH they are dormant and don't put on much growth, if any. My plumies didn't bloom well this year. We had such a long cold spring they broke dormancy almost a month later then average. I'm storing half of them bareroot this winter. I had 30 pots and they were just taking up way too much space. Hopefully they'll survive. If they do I'll store all of them bareroot next year. Have a happy holiday and New Year.

When my dad died, I used several of his plaid flannel shirts to make two star quilts - the brown tones for my brother, and the red tones for myself and my sons. With the pockets from the brown shirt in the upper right and lower left of the nine-square wall-hanging, I then put a picture of my dad, my brother, my nephew & his son in the middle. (Representing 4 generations of our family name.) Upper left dark brown flannel had the word "Legacy" embroidered. The lower right had the names of the four generations embroidered - with the year born & died under my dad's name. I gave that wall-hanging to my mom, who lives with my brother. Then, after my mom is gone, my brother has a matching set.