Guten tag mein freund Christian, Welcome to this forum. I lived in Mannheim, Germany for 3 years and traveled to Italy were my father was born. I am also back on this fig forum with many of my good fig friends, Christian, Rafed, Art, Martin, Mario, Giuseppe, Aaron and many others. All of us here have been very helpful to each other in the past years and now here again at GARDENWEB-HOUZZ in the future years. It is cold here -3 degrees F. daytime temperature Phil from Northern Ohio

You want a soil that has good drainage. I usually end up mixing up my own. Even MG's so-calle Cacti and succulent mix seems peaty to me. I guess they just want to lighten the load--so you basically seem to get peat moss. I like the brand Hyponix better to use as a starting base, you can add some coarse sand, perlite and orchid bark. Palms love water, but their roots also want oxygen so with a loose soil you can freely water especially in the growing season, and especially if you put them outside as many here do. In the summer, mine get hosed down every day.

well because it takes time to go through and remove all that junk that no one wants anyway and yes often times stuff does get left behind. If they wanted to offer that junk they could include it on a disc so you can install it if you want it but pretty much all of it is just a trail version anyway so you end up having to either buy it or remove it. I use pc decrapifier on the computers I set up to get rid of that stuff. Yes you are right you can go through the time and effort to google each one and see what it is and if you might want it then take the time to fully remove it which means installing a good removal tool. And why? you never wanted it to begin with. The pc manufacturers are making money off us anyway with our purchase but they want to make even more by putting a ton of garbage on there too. That was one of the reasons I really like the new vizio computers they don't do that. Many people get a new pc and immediately wipe the entire hard drive and do a clean reinstall of just the Operating system to be fully rid of the extra junk.

I have received a few more of my birthday blocks so here is an updated list of whose I have so far: mom-Vicky4x4 Marie-wynative Kate-solstice98 Bill-lockeb Nancy-Stitches Dianne-diane57 Helen-hlac Grace-amazingcm Janet-alabamajanet Rebecca- yours did not arrive yet but I'm sure that it will be here in the next day or two and I will let you know when it does.Thanks. Thank you all for such wonderful blocks! I can't wait to start putting them together, I have couple of different ideas for them. I plan to post a picture on Thursday of all the ones that have by then. Thanks again!! Shannon