It would definitely benefit from a change to a more appropriate soil and room for roots to run. Everyone has their own view about what makes a bonsai. Some are only happy if the proportions are approximate to established guidelines, and others are perfectly happy with a liner in a pot. Whatever you feel is a bonsai should be a bonsai to all of us, even if only for the sake of encouragement. It's always been my philosophy that the more experienced of us shouldn't steal your budding joy by criticizing you for not conforming to our own arbitrary set of standards, that we should see your trees through YOUR eyes instead of our own. It's ok for me to tell you what I would do, but at the same time I think I should encourage you to do what YOU want to do, and that's what I'm doing. If it pleases you to trim it up and make it more compact, then go ahead. It will slow the growth, but if you get more enjoyment out of looking at it, then do it. Have fun and don't worry about what everyone thinks. If you stay with bonsai, there will come a time when you'll want to reach a little further and strive to improve the visual impact of your trees. You'll know when that is, so don't let anyone push you toward it prematurely. Al

It looks like the original problem on that one was codling moth, and then brown rot got in where the worm ate. The tunnel through the apple is where the worm went. Start by controlling the codling moth. Some of the flesh doesn't look good; I'm not sure it is not just natural browning or if its some other problem. More generally keep an eye on your apples throughout the growing season. You can see when the codling moth hits because you will see frass on the outside of a hole. Take down those apples and cut open and check out the worm trail. After observing a couple hundred of those you will instinctively be able to recognize a codling moth entry and will be able to monitor how your spray program is going throughout the season. You don't want to only learn of things after the season is all over. Scott

Different bromeliads bloom yearly, once every two years, etc, etc. New plants (called pups) come up from the base of the plant (generally). When they are about a third the size of the original plant take them off with a serrated knife and plant in a new pot. Most plants send up several pups. Cut the flower stalk off the old 'mother plant' and keep the old plant. Even after you have temoved several pups the old mother might still send up more for quite some time, so I never discard the old mothers. Hopes this helps.

As it happens, things have changed. The technician Dell sent came with the replacement hard drive (with pre-installed XP and drivers). He installed it - booted - and the same hard drive warning occurred. Turns out it was my second internal hard drive (that I use for data) that was going bad. It was a good thing I already had the 2TB replacement. So he put the 2TB drive in - returned my original hard drive - and all functioned well - no hard drive error messages. Now I do have work ahead of me - but this changes the nature of it. Much better scenario - but still requires thinking through. There are probably just a few video files on the second internal hard drive that I don't have copies of. I think they're still accessible - so I will either get a docking station - or better yet an enclosure (since I will need one anyway - as I'll describe later) to put it in - and see if I can transfer those video files to my new 2TB internal drive. I think it makes sense to test that drive to see what's wrong with it - if it's repairable by Windows XP (I think if I run chkdsk there are possibilities to repair some damage?). Should I do this? Or are there other methods to safely test out the health of my hard drive? It is also a Western Digital. The timing of the hard drive failure is now making more sense. I had spent the previous weekend backing up lots of data files onto this second internal 1.5 TB hard drive. I think some of those transferred Tivo files might be problematic. (I say that for 2 reasons - when I've tried to defrag the hard drive, I recall a few files that couldn't be defragged - and while it was hard to see the path, I think they were the Tivo videos. Also, there were a few Tivo videos that failed to work properly when I tried to run VideoRedo to remove commercials. Some just seemed to be bad files - of course, I don't recall which those ones were - but it makes me wonder if it's the sources of the problem on that second hard drive.) Next step is call Dell - I bought that second hard drive from them 1 1/2 yrs ago. It has a 3 yr warranty. I'm not sure if the warranty will be honored by Dell or Western Digital (the brand of drive). So I figure I'll be getting a replacement 1.5 TB hard drive - which I can either install internally - use it as program drive or data drive. I can use the original 500GB drive externally. Or maybe I should keep it the way it is now. Original 500GB internal hard drive, second 2 TB internal hard drive - and put the replacement 1.5 TB hard drive in an enclosure and use for back-ups. One reason I'd like to use the 2TB drive as a program/boot drive (or master drive - I'm not sure of the language) is bc. it's supposed to be a faster drive - Western Digital Black Caviar 2TB drive - 7200rpm and 64MB Cache that was a bit pricier, but I thought it was worth it for quality and speed. It's this one: http://www.amazon.co...ref=oss_product (although I paid less than the price listed online) I'm new enough at all this that I don't understand everything about hard drive speed. I think that a larger drive can potentially slow things down a bit as it has to work to see date over a larger area/amount of data - but that the 7200rpm and 64MB cache will offer more speed - and the reviews suggest this thing is fast. I'd love any guidance in weighing these factors as I decide which to make the primary drive. I also want to clarify what to do with this drive. I don't know how to partition. And if I did, how large a partition should I create on this 2TB drive - if it were to hold the operating systems and programs? I don't know how much room that takes - and how to be sure to take the appropriate sections of my original drive to place into this partition. I can figure out what size each portion of my original hard drive is? I just don't know which folders go into the partition for programs/software? I don't want to leave any out - and I'm concerned I will miss some folders bc. I do not recognize what they are. If I partition the drive, I gather I don't clone it - but do it in sections. I also don't know if I should format it first. Or partition first. Disk management is fairly new to me although I did format a couple of drives. I didn't get into partitions and copying from one drive to another. Does it make sense to use this 2TB drive (which I bought for it's speed and good functioning) as the main drive? If so, I don't know the order of operations? Clone my original drive to this drive? Format and partition first (in which case I'll need to know how to get the proper system files vs. data files into the right partitions). I think I know that if I make this 2TB the master, I have to either switch the cables - but since I think they won't stretch to the second hard drive bay, I'll probably have to swap them. I am so relieved not to have lost my original drive. Although it consumed the better part of last weekend, I did learn plenty - and feel more confident cutting my "recovery" teeth on recovering data from the bad second drive which only has some video at stake. Just as a reminder my original drive has about 350GB data. Thanks everyone. Lynn. PS - I did learn a couple of important things from this technician. First, he updated the bios in my computer (which was several versions old). And he told me where to go to update the bios on my daughter's computer. That was useful. It's a question I've had for a while when I see people on this forum ask whether someone has updated their bios.