Hmmm it seems pretty good to me (especially for cymbidium culture), but then again, it's in Mandarin Chinese, so it might be difficult for non-Chinese speakers to understand what is going on. It's pretty interesting to get a perspective on how people in Asia grow their Cymbidiums.

Does anyone else find this book hard to read? While the first chapter or two held my interest. I found that he digresses a bit to much for my taste. I like more of a story line. Maybe my problem was sticking with it. Not usually a problem for me. The type in my copy is small and hard for me to read for long. My eyes get tired, so I have trouble picking it up again. I will finish it but may not keep up with you all. Except for a couple of short peroids while I was growing up, we have always lived in rural areas. The yards never amounted to much. Maybe a few shrubs and fruit trees. A vegetable garden most of the time due to necessity. My paternal grandmother lived with us from the time I was nine and she did the gardening, and picked wild blackeberries for perserves and pies. My dad was an over the road trucker and wasn't home much. My mother was leagally blind and though she tried to have a few flowers it didn't amount to much. I did have to help in the vegie garden and a couple of my uncles had a large scale strawberry patch that a couple of my cousins, myself and a friend were payed a small sum for helping to weed and pick. We always managed to have a little fun there. I didn't do much with the yard in our first house. To busy with three little ones. Once we moved to the place before this one and all the kids were in school I started with a small vegie garden and strawberry patch. We always had horses around so had plenty of good fertilizer. There was a steep bank in front of the house that I worked with over the years. Strawberries did well there then I started adding the flowers. Mostly simple annuals at first and then started adding perennials. The neighbors always commented on how nice it looked and how much time I spent out there.LOL. As that area started to develope to the point it wasn't safe to ride the horses there. We longed for more privacy and space. We certainly lucked into finding this place. Fifty two acres mostly wooded. About eighteen acres of pasture, but that is down a steep hill and across one of the creeks. It was hard to even pick a spot to build the house since everything was pretty overgrown. I finally looked for a spot with the biggest trees nearby. The property had been logged and there weren't a lot of big trees. But I found and area that did have and is near the center of the property. Cedars were abundant, but so were dogwoods. Needless to say the earth is not good. A hard packed sandy clay. I have had to incorporate a lot of organic matter. Lucky for me their is an large animal humane society nearby. Lots of bedding and manure. Anyway I have managed to have a vegetable garden and several flower beds. The vegetable garden keeps shrinking. But lo and behold DH was browsing a garden catalog the other day and says he is ready to plant more things. I doubt that it will happen this year but as soon as he retires more power to him. He can sit out there and keep the squirrels from carrying off all the tomatoes. Heck they don't even carry them off. They just take a bite out of them and drop them. grrrr Yes the woods will readily encroach on everything you clear if it gets half a chance. There are several old foundations of log houses on the property. One had a rock walled cellar. There is even a tree growing in that. The whole area is overgrown with vinca. Very pretty in spring when in bloom but quite invasive. I mow paths through it and around it trying to keep it contained. The creeks had no crossings when we bought the property. Luckily DH had access to heavy equipment. He had to redo the crossings many times as the power of nature took them out with heavy rains. He has widen them enough now that they can carry most of the water without to much damage. But its one of the first things I go check after heavy rains. Well I didn't mean to write a book. I am going to make an effort to read a couple more chapters of this one. I know there is some good stories in there yet. Norma

I have a very alternative view to public VS. private school. I am currently 18 and have attended both forms of schooling, and am currently in Home/Online Schooling. For me, Public School was not an option. I found that bullies were slapped on the wrist and pushed back out on the playing field where they could do it again and again, and the cycle was never broken...many a times there were "anti-bully" movements at our school, but very few were actually effective in treating the issue...if they stopped in school, it'd pick back up out of school... Many children in class were unwilling to pay attention and participate, and a long time was spent listening to them get lectured, instead of focusing on the curriculum. Not a lot was accomplished in class so we were expected to use a great amount of out-of-school time to focus on school projects and get them completed... I just wasn't happy. I also started hanging out with "the wrong crowd" and doing drugs and drinking under age, etc. Not every kid will do this, and if you stay on top of things and maintain good lines of communication and a FRIENDSHIP as well as a parent-child relationship with your children, you probably won't have an issue with this. My mom refused to see on an eye-to-eye level with me, and we had a very poor time getting along at home...my dad was always away at work so our relationship didn't account for much during my high school years. The upside, however, was that I was able to socialize and engage in extracurricular activities such as volley ball and track and field. Since joining online school, I have noticed that my grades are much higher...they make the courses so that anyone and everyone can understand them (so that they don't get a flood of questions every 10 minutes about different topics that are difficult to comprehend.) They provide online real-time tutoring, free of charge. There are still field trips for many of the distance education schools that help everyone get together and develop/enhance their social skills. You work at your own pace (I finished a single grade in half the time it takes public school to finish...this is excellent since I am a 2x drop out it means I have the ability to catch up with my peers more quickly.) you set your own schedule...as long as you are doing 4hrs of work per day you will be on par with the public system. I do 6+ hours which means I am surpassing them...since I should've graduated last year I will not graduate before my peers at this point, but I will definitely not be too far behind...a year at most. It really depends on the situation. I would say online schooling takes a lot of dedication, and if you are unable to supervise and ensure that work is getting done, public school would probably be a better bet. It is super easy for a student to say they are completing the work, when they in fact aren't. (Hence my second "drop out"....got kicked out of online school for not completing work in a timely manner...did nothing to re-enroll until recently.) I think if you are home daily and have enough time to contribute and make sure that the work is being completed and they are grasping concepts, online/home schooling is excellent. I like that I can decide who I interact with and who I don't, I have time to manage a work life as well as my school life...I get the social skills I need out of my work life, as many of us know we often interact with people we both like and dislike throughout our work days. Sorry this is so all over the place LOL, I'd edit through it but I am off to apply for a new job and need to get going . . . Hopefully I got my point across about the pros & cons of both! Both are extremely beneficial It just hugely depends on your situation at hand. OH another key point - if the kids are younger I think public school is definitely a good idea - it gives them a chance to establish a circle of friends and to learn how to interact in various positive and negative social situations, if they are too young to extract those experiences from a work life. :)

@Buehl: at this link: https://web.archive.org/web/20150313175317/http://ths.gardenweb.com:80/discussions/2699586/getting-there-from-here-or-how-did-it-go-so-wrong? I can scroll down to see the thread. You have to scroll past all the text menu items. LMK if it doesn't work for you; I printed it as a PDF and can send to you. ETA: ugh I see now that the original picture that she used as inspiration is no longer there. But some other pictures and responses are there.