Ho'omaika'i Laura! All apologies for taking a while in getting back to you. It's boating season & I've been taking some time to prep our boat for her spring launch. It's finally raining here, after over 3 wks of no precipitation. My lawn & flowers are doing the happy dance :)(: Amen! I believe spending time in & around nature is a soul, body, & mind soother. It gives one pause & perspective amidst the busyness of life & reminds us to take time to stop & smell the Plumeria ;). I meant to ask you, what would you say is your favorite specimen out of your entire flora & fauna collection in general? Thank you for the advice on watering in the gritty mix! I had a feeling my method was flawed o_O. O.K. now I know: rim watering is for dormancy & if I'm using a more water-retentive mix. It's only been about a week since my Plumies have been in the gritty mix & it seems like they can't put out enough claws now :). Still have another week or two to go before I try rooting the baby Plumie after I found it had a mushy tushy ;P. I knew something was up with it when it stopped putting leaves out while the rest were. Going to root it in the mix in a water bottle & place it outside on the black tarp I've been using for the big Plumeria. I really like the water bottle rooting method. Much easier to monitor their progress. Will follow your advice & keep you posted. Whoa! What a pleasure that must've been to meet Bud Guillot! & at 91 years young... God bless him. I love hearing about the success & even failures that the long-time growers have experienced. I'm always looking to learn something new & consider it a blessing when someone shares their knowledge with me ;). So again dear Laura, a humble thank you. Appreciate the advice on pot sizes. Looking at my Plumies in the pot they're in now & I really don't feel comfortable leaving them in there; they're way taller than the pot itself & are already pretty crooked thanks to their previous owner not staking them during the years she had them - but I also don't want to disturb their roots again - so I guess I'll just wait things out till they need to be repotted or potted up. I discovered that staking them doesn't work too well in the gritty mix so I'll have to tie them down & secure them to the rim of the pot for stability until their roots have a chance to colonize the pot. You brought up a good point: since I also live where I have to bring my plants in before the first frost, it makes it easier on my back to keep them in a manageable sized pot. I don't blame you for not wanting to go any bigger than a 5 gal pot! I regret putting my mama Brug in a 12 gal but it was all I had available to me at the time. Now I have to wheel her around the yard on a hand cart. GMTA: I've been doing the toilet paper/paper towel roll thing for my Plumies too. If you have a picture to demonstrate what you've been doing with your tips & TP roll assembly so I can try to copy it I would be most grateful. Stupid me should've specified that my multi-tipped one has small tips that are only about 2 inches long but fully clawed with 1 inch leaves starting to leaf out. In the meantime, surprisingly enough, I discovered wrapping a paper plate around the base (so it looks like a bouquet cone) & then securing it with gardening twine has been working thus far to keep the full sun at bay until it's ready to go full steam ahead. Yes, I also wonder at times what others think when they read what everyone posts on here about some of the more "unconventional" ways they grow & care for their Plumies (as well as all the other plants we tend to) & no doubt think we've got some black sheep in the family lol. Those who have been doing this for years are inured to all the craziness & probably get a kick out of some of the questions & comments. I know when I got my first cutting & started doing research online how to care for it, I came upon this site & would read some of the posts & think, "The cheese has definitely slid off that cracker!", "I could never handle that many plants!" or, "They do what for that plant!?" Now, after my 5th year of doing the Plumie thing, I emphatically understand ;). & I'm right there with you; I also do not ever sell any of my plants. I did it a few years ago when I was doing cannas & medicinal herbs & it turned into a royal nightmare. Now I only keep a small personal collection & if a friend likes something I give it to them with a little care packet I print up with all the info I've collected over the years on how to care for their new plant friend along with some extra soilless mix if there's any around. Some folks I'm loathe to give anything to being I know their track record with things & don't want to get into the headache with them when their plant dies so I purposely don't put anything out when I know they're coming over that I know they might want ;). Naughty I know but it helps me sleep better at night lol. I hope & pray this day finds you well & wonderful my friend! Again, words cannot express how utterly grateful I am for you taking the time to respond to my queries as well as brighten my day with your kind words & loving spirit. You are a gem Laura & I thank God for people like you :). A hui hou kakou ~ Angharand This post was edited by MissMudPuppy on Thu, May 9, 13 at 17:06

I think if your plant is so root bound you feel it needs to be repotted, then do it. I’ve repotted all of my orchids (I have to phal, a zygopetalum and a beallara) when they were blooming and they didn’t miss a beat. It’s in how you handle them when repotting. Be careful of the leaves, don’t break roots, etc. I hold the plant in one hand while repotting- i don’t set the plant down unless it’s in a stable pot so that doesn’t tip over and allow the plant to hit the ground. Prep work is important. Get all set up beforehand so you don’t have to stop during repot. But if you do have to stop to get something, make sure you have a temporary landing spot set up for the orchid where it’ll be safe from mechanical damage (tipping, bumping things, etc). And have fun during the repot. You’re helping a plant have future (healthy) blooms that you can enjoy!! PS Jersey Girl- while I don’t like sphagnum as a potting medium that I would add, one of my orchids came packed in sphagnum. It’s doing well, but I wouldn’t wait too long to repot in a bark mix. I waited almost too long, and the roots were rubbery feeling. It was close to the edge of thinking about rotting. A little sphagnum is ok, not a lot for long term- like in your photo.

There's Molie and Ms. Swan! So glad you're not floating down the river, Molie. And your photos of the swan have me considering how amazing it actually is, that birds and animals manage to figure out how to get through such awful weather. You would think they are so lightweight and small that they would just get tossed up into the sky, but they know just what to do. Bill, I did remember you were in RI, I just thought aside from Carl, you might be the southernmost member of the forum. Glad you got through it in good shape! Another 37 hr power outage, Jane?! Well, I guess it was an improvement from last year. Glad you are back in business. I think we did fairly well in our neighborhood too, in part because last year, we lost so many branches and after the power outage last October, NStar was here for a week trimming any tree branches that were near the wires. I thought the whole neighborhood did very well, then this afternoon, I had a service man here for an appliance and as he came in, he was saying ...'wow, I see your neighbor has a tree on their car.' I was shocked, because I had not seen it. They live on the corner of a street that is only a block away, but we never drive that way. (g) I had to go out and look and sure enough, there was a Spruce laying right across their car in the driveway. I imagine they are waiting for an insurance adjuster to get there. We didn't get the microburst in our area, but wow, the rain came down in a sheet of water for about half an hour about 10:30pm last night. More rain than we had in the previous two days. Thunder and lightning too. And today the sun was in and out. It was so great to see sunshine! Glad everyone is okay. Fingers crossed for Carl.

anna, lavenderlace, aztcqn: There is something weird with this site due to which the posts do not show up in time. Most weird thing is that if I make a post from a new device (a new loptop, mobile phone etc), it is not visible even to me when I login from a different device. I can only see my own posts, immediately after posting, if I log on from the same machine..... I haven't understood how this happens. Feeding during monsoon has been a problem for me since past few years and I have tried different models. Since I wanted to be 100% organic, most solutions that I tried didn't work that well and my roses would stand exhausted and depleted by the end of monsoon. This year, I fed them after the monsoon in August and September with a doze that comprised 1 tea spoon each of Potash, gypsum, a water soluble 36-0-12 nitrogen fertilizer and a trace element supplement that contained Fe, Zn, Cu, Mn, Co and Mb mixed in 18 liters of water (capacity of the bucket). This had a good effect on the roses in pots that you can see in my threads of that time. There is also lot of discussion about the pros and cons of various methods... Fall Roses in Islamabad......zone 9b, October Roses.........zone 9b & September Roses, zone 9b Islamabad best regards