I can't find info on "port afras" is there another name? Here's a few more Tumbleweed - I keep threatening my neighbors with this. Can you imagine a cool autumn night when the town is silent, you're standing on your porch enjoying the cool air. All of a sudden you see a tumbleweed or two blow by and you can practically hear the Spaghetti Western theme music in your head. Hemlock both varieties for the name sake and toxicity. Catnip and Valerian for their effect on cats and people. Cats go crazy to both, people relax. Nature is strange to produce a plant with such striking effects and even more strange to make those effects vary so much by species. Anytime you see a cat go crazy rolling in a plant you'll agree that it is something remarkable. Also that tree that attaches it's seeds to a wing counts but I can't recall what it is right now.

Very very nice I love the pitchers, you have tons of flowers and real good looking pitchers sticking up. Cant wait for mine to get to that, my S. Flava's seem to be recovering quite well, the Judith Hindle is growing but far slower. Then I have a S. Rubra which has developed a deformed pitcher for some reason, Im not sure but it looks like it has been stung, anyhow the other pitchers its forming seem to be 100%. Then my last plant "Cobra hood" is growing outdoors as well in full sun but very very very slowly for some reason. I thought that they where "vigorous" plants that grew quickly. It is with all the other plants in my insulated pot, with a deep water dish (about half the height of the huge pot) and it sits in full sun. Does anyone know if this one has any special requirements. Cheers Sheldon

Ah, yes, grandpa. In 1989 I moved into the house that grandpa built. It was quite a dump, with nothing but overgrown oleanders and head-high weeds. Straight out of graduate school, with no money, I scraped together my nickles for a walnut tree for the front yard, to replace grandpa's tree, which had died. When I was small, we used to sit under the tree at the redwood picnic bench and clean enough walnuts to pay the property taxes every year! The new tree is not nearly as much of an economic asset, but the walnut husk flies and the squirrels appreciate it. It is my favorite tree, and the scent is of late summers and grandpa. Second favorite: the descendants of grandpa's old-fashioned purple German irises. When I first moved in, I found rhizomes under one of the oleanders, still alive after over 20 years of neglect! They now grace my back garden, and I cut them every year to fill the house with grandpa perfume. Renee

So. 1 Year in. Where are we? I am actually moving out of my house into an apartment. The apartment will apparently have significantly less sunlight, although I am not sure. My roommate got a "Top Fin" 30 Gallon Aquarium Kit from the local Petsmart, apparently they have a smaller kit that's just a 30 Gallon Aquarium and the Light. It's a single light, about 2 feet long -- I have to wonder if a similar kit would make a serviceable terrarium in an emergency. I split apart my two White Trumpets. The drainless planter they are in was killing them, their media stunk to high heaven. I instead got a second drainless planter and put a plastic pot in each one. This lets me pick the plastic pot out and check the water levels -- in essence, the drainless planters are saucers in this setup. Still, it works, and they still look nice. I repotted my D. Adelae, my Cape Sundew 'Alba', and my D. spatulata in a 7" plastic terrarium bowl that I have had laying around for a long time. I put too much soil in it, so I'm hoping to dig a little out -- and with the help of a little water to make it a bit malleable -- lower the soil level tomorrow. As it stands they're all right at the rim, but... I'd like them to have a little room to grow. The D. Adelae had a stupidly huge root system. It was growing in pure LFS, never repotted from the Deathcube pot. It wasn't doing too great, it was growing great leaves but it's dew wouldn't stick around. I am hoping a better environment will work. The D. spatulata was actually a colony of about 6 plants, I put two back in it's original container and 4 in the terrarium. No sense not keeping a backup. ;) Decided to steal one of my Monkey Cup's guest plants, a Cape Sundew seedling. It's now in the Terrarium too. If my Pygmys do any gemmae, I may sprinkle some in the terrarium between the other plants. Heck, once I have a better idea of my new living situation, I might just move those plants out into individual plants or a more traditional great big 7.5 or 12" pot and fill the plastic fishbowl thing with Pygmy gemmae. Speaking of Pygmys, I repotted mine about a week ago. Took my 2 Butterworts (P. moranensis and P. grandiflora) and my 2 Pygmy Drosera (D. pulchella x nitidula and my lone surviving D. scorpioides) and put them all in a nice big mix of Sphagnum, Perlite, and White Horticultural sand in a huge 7.5" pot. It was kinda scary repotting the pygmys, but I just took them out soil and all and plopped them on top of the soil in the pot, and worked them in. They did not seem to have the huge roots I associate with pygmys, for some reason. The sickly butterwort (Grandiflora, I believe) had stinky media, I think it was approaching root rot. It's very tiny, has died back to just 2 leaves half an inch thick. The other Butterwort lost a leaf in the move, but seems to be ok. It's odd -- wherever the leaves actually touch the ground, they brown up and die. As long as they're not on the ground directly, they're fine. The scorpioides seems to be happier, it has put out 2 or 3 new branches. I was worried because it was doing what it's 4 brothers did -- the tips of it's branches turn crispy and brown and never do anything, then eventually it spreads to the main plant. Similarly, I had lost some of the p. x n. but the majority of them have perked right up since being moved to the bigger pot. About when should I start looking for the signs of Gemmae production? And what are those signs? The main part of the plant swells up a bit and then I see green "peas" in the middle?