Luckygal, it's just pure luck with me, you should have seen the mess I used to make when making an arrangement for one of our garden club parlour shows. It's more monkey see monkey do with me LOL. Flora, couldn't you amend your soil to suit one, mine might not be in chalky soil but competes with the roots of a Robinia tree and without any special care I might add. I first saw Cardiocrinums in the University of B.C.'s botanical garden, several of us were over for their first mother's day plant sale. I spotted one in a gallon pot and snapped it up, it was a bit pricey I thought ($18) but at that time this was the only place you would see never mind buy one. It took two more years before that first one I bought bloomed, it was well worth the wait though, it's perfume filled my garden with it's lovely scent making me not want to go in at night. I didn't feel to bad about that $18 when a few years later a nursery where I bought most of my must have plants from introduced them as new on the market and were asking $100 for a small bulb. Now you can buy small bulbs for less than $10. For those who are not familiar cardiocrinums, it takes 7 or so years from seed to bloom and then it dies but not before producing offsets, these offsets take 3 or 4 years before they will bloom. I now have two varieties, here's a picture of the foliage so even when you are waiting for it to bloom the foliage is attractive. Annette

This has nothing to do with my new camera. I wanted to show the difference from June 24 to August 8th in this Drop Dead Red container rose. My roses are doing good. I don't think it is any thing I've done, we've had a decent summer and I think the milder weather has helped. I'm also wondering if the Mills Rose Magic and Mills Easy Feed have helped? I know where I live this is a rare thing and I'm enjoying it while it lasts.

Well, I've been taking photos, but can't download them on my computer. We thought it was due to the old computer not having a USB 3.0 port, but.... My older son bought me some new computer called a Gigabyte that's a tiny box, and a new monitor. He put a Linux program on it again instead of Windows. I've had like 4 different Linux operating systems in the last couple of yrs. He's always playing around. They are good because you don't have to worry about viruses, but not everything works on them. They don't have the drivers or the support for alot of things... like my new camera. I keep getting error messages that it "failed to mount." or something like that. Sooo... he's going to try and see if there's anything he can find to fix it. Otherwise he said he'll have to put Windows on the computer. The camera downloads fine on my other son's computer and the one at my shop. Both have Windows. I did get these pics downloaded the other day at work. Christmas decoration shots... These were all in basically in just Xmas lights and maybe some light from the TV. No flash. This is our dog KYA. She was about 12ft away on the couch. No flash again, and the viewfinder looked almost pitch black. Hard to focus on a dark object in darkness. Not bad. And here's my favorite cat, Ginger.... the psycho kitty. I'll try to get some outdoor pics tomorrow if it doesn't rain again.

Hi The naming system for this family leaves a lot to be desired lol The common names in particular . Love the family but hate the winter dormancy i find globbas ,zingerber ,curcuma kaempferia all go dormant no matter what the weather so I grow them in pots otherwise I have big holes for long periods. Alpinia will remain evergreen except for cold or drought induced dormancy. Have one identified as A. zerumbet but is well over 20 feet tall while the flowers emerge from the leaf tips feel it is an alpinia but not zerumbet though again there are dozens of varieties not to mention hybrids. Etlingera flowers from separate stalks much like zingerber(pine cone) Have always wanted to try them if they are evergreen and with over 100 members in the genus there must be some that don't grow into trees?? They were selling some at the Fairchild sale that they referred to as "glass roses" they wouldn't go beyond etlingera but the flowers were pink /white a foot wide and did look like they were made of glass !! Was excited until I found they only had seeds at 5 bucks each!!! I have since tracked down an ID Etlingera venusta but have never found them again. gary