Oh boy . We will have you playing poker next. I had some great fun playing auctions too when I lived in England. Trouble is you think you are smart. There are a lot of other smart bidders too. Brits are just smart. You may be luckier where you are. I got outbid most of the time. Here in Brazil you don't have to think about such stuff. You just find some grower somewhere in the forest who sells about 5 plants a month and that's where you get your bargains.....!

78, with 5 more in shipping, not counting about 75 babies from several flasks. I grow on a lanai behind screening. I just brought about 20 inside and the rest into a makeshift greenhouse.(an el off the lanai, closed off with soloflex and a used patio door). Now I have to get a heater quickly, as it's supposed to drop to the 30's & 40's this weekend. (Port Saint Lucie,Fl)The 20 moved inside, are either blooming, in bud, or spiking.

Kate, thats a tough problem, being sensitive to noise in a noisy world. One reason people move to the suburbs and buy a house is because its a lot quieter. People buy large properties so that they don't have any possibility of having noisy neighbors. We are living in an apartment while we remodel our house, and the noise is the biggest difference. Our apt is in the Los Angeles area. We have a car wash next door thats self serve and limos clean up in the middle of the night,people who wash their cars insist on playing their favorite music and you almost pray for somebody to switch from hip hop to country; some people come off the late shift at 3 a.m. and doors slam, etc. Its just as bad in Ontario and when we were in Paris there was a shooting next to the hotel. So my point is--its noisy all over unless you want to live in the suburbs or a rural area. You have a year--start planning where you want to move to and check back to see that it stays the way you want it. In the meantime, you are going to get used to some of the noise. If you continue to feel shaky and panicky I suggest you may want to give some thought to getting counseling. Life is simpler at your age--it gets noisier and more complicated as you get older, especially if you have kids and they have pets, etc. Good luck.

I grow almost all of my orchids outdoors, but mine are mostly cold-hardy like epidendrums, dendrobiums, cattelayas, cymbidiums, etc, and people here plant cymbidiums and epidendrums in the ground, especially since they get too large to bring indoors. I keep phalaenopsis indoors during the winter because they are not cold hardy, but I put them in a very shady area outdoors from April through November. They seem to like having somewhat cooler temperatures at night, and this can stimulate blooming. They need very little fertilizer, but what I use most is 20-20-20 in very small amounts and only feed them about once a month. I've had more trouble getting phals to rebloom than any other orchids, and so perhaps I am not giving them enough humidity when I put them outdoors. One that I had bloomed for eight months, and I got bored with it before it stopped blooming. They do best in clear plastic pots that have slits in the sides so that the roots can get some light, but I put some of mine in the regular orchid pots that have small holes in the sides, as they are prettier. Don't repot until it is done flowering, and remove the flower stem as noted above. I use an orchid mix from Home Depot, and I add a bit of perlite to it. You can also put styrofoam packing peanuts in the bottom of the pot, but make sure they are white.