Did anyone bring rue, Ruta graveolens? That looks like another possibility. If you put on disposable gloves or something else to keep the sap off your hands, you can test it. Crush a few leaves, and if it is rue, you will notice a strong, unpleasant smell. The hand protection is necessary because the sap of rue leaves could cause a rash. Your plant also looks like Corydalis lutea, but for me the seedlings bloom the first year wherever they pop up.

Hi everyone. Dave - I know these displays aren't everyone's "cup of tea" but I just thought I'd show the work put in by one very dedicated member every year. Our spring show is just part of a much larger fair and is not a stand alone bromeliad show, so we have to cater to not only bromeliad growers, but also the general public, and of course children who are after all our bromeliad growers of the future. I do have pictures of the exhibition plants which I'll show a few at a time for those people like yourself who are more interested in the "nitty gritty" of the competition part of the show. Ours is only a small society compared to other societies and likewise our show is small also. Personally, although I do show my plants, I don't think it's so much about winning prizes but more the thrill of being able to share and discus your plants with interested members of the public. All the best, Nev.

My bean report: This year we had kind of strange weather (though with every year now being strange in a new way, I guess that makes it a "normal" year). Like drloyd, here we had an early, very warm spring, and are currently in a late, very warm autumn (going to be 70 degrees all this week!), but the summer in between was unusually cool and almost completely missed any of the heatwaves rolling over the rest of the country. The coolness made beans slow and tomatoes a full month late to bear. Anyway: --Alma Whitaker Cornfield-- A bit on the late side but did very very well, healthy tall vines totally loaded with handfuls of pods. Smallish, curved pods tightly packed with small, pinto-patterned seeds. I ate some as full beans and they stringed easily and cooked up pretty quick. Got these from Remy of Sample Seeds. Planted 6 May, flowered 8 Aug, dry seed 14 Sep. --Blue Shackamaxon-- A favorite of mine and in my opinion a real winner. Did very well, as always. Tall plants with shiny black seeds and pods that turn purple at maturity. Great-flavored dry bean. My seed was getting low so I grew a bunch out at my folks' place well away from any other beans, since this variety seems to cross very readily, both as a pollen recipient and donor. --Clarendon Wonder-- Stringless snap bush with large bright red seeds. Australian heritage variety bred by Hawkesbury Agricultural College in the early 1900s. Did pretty well in a container. Planted 4 May, dry seed 24 July. --Gunlik-- Dual-purpose bush bean. Small black seeds look just like Midnight/Black Turtle, but the pods are sweet. Did pretty well despite being grown in a container in a shady spot. Planted 6 May, dry seed 30 June, and all of the plants survived the first harvest and are currently loaded with a second crop just past the shelly stage. --Inka Pea Bean-- Did quite well despite being in a shady spot. Relatively short vines ( petered out at 6'), and seed in the usual pea-bean bicolor red & white pattern, but with pretty pinkish streaks inside the red part. Planted 4 May, dry seed 1 Aug. --Kaiser Friedrich-- Did very well. Fairly tall but well-behaved vines; when they outgrew their trellis I looped them down to the bottom and grew them back up the same way again, making approx. 9' feet of vine total. Pods stringless, flattish, yellow at first getting a neon pink blush, and purplish when dry. Bright purple seeds. Old German variety. Planted 6 May, dry seed 2 Sep. --Kuma Anna's Charcoal Grey-- Got utterly smothered by the Apios growing in the same bed, so I only got out 3x the seed I put in! Pole snap. Planted 2 May, dry seed 30 July. --Lavender Bush German-- Bush dual-purpose variety with seeds a unique lilac color I haven't seen on any other bean. Did pretty well in a container. Planted 4 May, dry seed 25 July. --Mariazeller Bush-- Pretty seed, but didn't seem to like being container-grown and hardly made anything. --Mountain Pima Burro & Caballito-- Poor germination from old seed, I'll have to grow this out again next year to bring numbers back up. Weakly climbing plants, beautiful seeds, tasty thin-skinned dry beans, wish I'd got enough to actually eat any this year. --Norridgewock-- Usual-looking red & white pea bean. Short vines. Didn't have many seed to start with and had damping-off issues, so only got replacement seed for a harvest. --Riesenkorn aus Omsk-- "Giant-seed from Omsk," which sounded intriguing. Summer-planted bush plants that weren't very happy with the container I grew them in. Seeds like large kidney bean size. Limas: --Black Cave Dweller-- Bush lima that turned out to be day-length-sensitive, so I haven't gotten any seed off them yet. --Madagascar-- Large-seeded pole lima. Planted late, so just maturing pods now. Plants doing well despite tomato competition. --Ping Zebra-- Finally deigned to make flowers this month, so I'll see if anything actually comes of them. Cowpeas/Yard-longs: --Washday-- mostly-bush cowpea that did pretty well despite being smothered by Apios. Seed coats tend to split. This is supposed to be fast-cooking, and I think would be considered a "lady pea," but I haven't tried any yet. Seeds small and ivory with some red speckling around the hilum. --Tiger-striped-- Yard-long with red stripes on green. I have a bit of trouble with yard-longs due to the cool nights here, but this one did pretty well for a yard-long. Not day-length-sensitive, and made a couple big handfuls of snaps. Didn't eat any yet but it's still producing. P. coccineus Runner Beans: --Ayocote Amarillo & Ayocote Morado-- Some beans from dinner planted on a whim, they made nothing at all in the summer but perked up slightly in the autumn to give me a very small harvest (like half a handful per plant). --Tucomares Mixed-- Complete crop failure this year. Every legume in their planter shriveled up and died and I'm not sure if it was blight, fungus, herbicide-contaminated potting soil, or what (all-new store-bought soil in only that planter). Misc: --adzuki beans Buff, and Blue Speckled-- both did pretty good this year, making a decent number of pods with seeds of the proper size. Seed for both from Anpetu Oihankesni. Planted 2 May, dry seed 30 July. --unnamed buff-seeded rice bean (Vigna umbellata)-- Second year growing this, and it again did well sprawling over a short trellis. The seed pods corkscrew open explosively when fully ripe, so I've taken to picking them either in the shelly stage or over a deep bucket. Going to try a dal recipe with these next week. --unnamed hyacinth beans-- A veritable explosion of neon purple flowers and pods on horizontally-greedy vines (were quite useful for separating P. vulgaris bean varieties from each other). Seed looks like tiny Oreos. Planted early May, dry seed 12 Sep. --unnamed red-seeded sword bean-- Made tall thick vines, but seems to be day-length-sensitive as it didn't bloom until well into fall. Currently ripening a few thick pods that look like they'll have only 1-2 seeds each. --groundnut/Apios americana-- Went utterly mad this year and swallowed all in their path to form a very leafy 4'x4'x5' hedge out of their 4'x4' raised bed. Flowered a lot (and smells like your great-great-aunt's perfume, pyew) but I don't think set seed. I can see some tubers poking up from the soil a bit and it looks like there're going to be masses of them to try out some recipes.

These aren't water marks (like one would find with wax finishes). These white events are the appearance of the layers of finish separating from one another. The "white" is actually air. The finish has failed - almost completely. There is nothing that will fix this save sanding it down to raw wood. As for deep cleaning before a buff and coat, it can involve "floor stripper" (the chemical floor strippers used in hospitals, etc.) or even screening machines used to remove "gunk" from the surface. The gunk I'm referring to = cleaning products, cooking oils, skin oils, soap, detergents, etc. Another issue is the time between COATS. Bona is like all other polyurethanes...it LOVES having a second coat applied INSIDE of 24 hours. In fact it is beneficial to have coat #1 and #2 applied rapidly one after another. Chemically the fresh coat is very "tacky". It GRABS the second coat incredibly well. It is the same idea as getting freshly chewed bubble gum to stick to freshly chewed bubble gum. The longer you leave the time between coats, the greater the chances of adhesion failures. If more than 24 hours has passed, then another round of buffing is REQUIRED. Yep. Required. That adds more money to the job because it adds more steps. This is all under the assumption that a second buff and coat on a floor that had one only 3 years before is considered "normal". From what I understand to be standard procedure, a single buff and coat is performed around about middle age of the floor (between year 10 through year 15). The cleaning/screening/buffing is the preparation and then the SINGLE coat of polyurethane is put down. A second buff and coat so soon after the first = unusual. If you want to tidy up the floor once again, you then move to the FULL SAND AND REFINISH. a Buff and coat is only a short term solution. Once done the buff and coat will help the original finish look "good" for another 5-7 years. That would bring the floors to the 20 - 25 year range. In other words, a second buff and coat applied without doing a full sand and refinish is not the norm. And a single coat of finish is the norm...not two. And the cure time is too short - especially for 2 coats. And the time between coats (4 days) is FAR too long without extra precautions. I would ask why the contractor agreed to perform a buff and coat only 3 years after the last one? And was the suggestion of a full sand/refinish ever discussed? Why or why not? And what was it that required a floor that appears to be less than 10 years old to require all these treatments? My apologies if I have misinterpreted your statements. It sounds like the floors were installed in 2011...Am I correct? I'm sorry but this is a complete redo. I mean sand and refinish down to raw wood. So many things that could go wrong have certainly gone wrong. Brazilian Cherry (Jatoba) is a dark floor. It is photosensitive. It darkens when exposed to "light". It can bleach out in DIRECT sunlight...but normally it turns dark. And then it stays dark. Dark floors show scuffs and scratches. It is the nature of the beast. A buff and coat (or in this case a second buff and coat inside of 3 years) isn't going to change that.