Santos and I thank you for all your positive comments!! One thing I forgot to mention is that the flowers were barely 4" across. Good to hear that the striped leaf trait passes on too! I have started to pollinate a few of the flowers that appear to be ready although nothing appears to have taken yet. I've selfed 2 and 2 x papilio, 1 x Autumn Pink/Rose Lady and the next one that is ready will receive Exotic Star. I was encouraged to hear that Santos is capable of setting seedpods as I've been having a record number of failures this season and a few of my questionable seeds aren't germinating. I guess it doesn't really matter as I have hundreds of seedlings growing from last year that I don't know what I will do with! My biggest success this season was my very first cross of aulicum (Telos) x papilio; which are growing great! Donna These will be the last I promise!

OK, this is how my problem looks like. I was thinking that down the road when the flooring gets refinished and the wear layer becomes thinner, wouldn't the telegrahing effect become even more noticeable? My wife could live with the problem, but I really want to return it, but it will cost me around $400. I'm thinking of possibly taking some sort of legal action to ge reimbursed for the shipping, but will I have a case? I know that this isn't a legal forum, but is anyone aware of any kind of law that protects consumers in cases like these? Here is a link that might be useful:

We are home and fine. Tired, worn out, sore (from walking) and wet, but home. We were in the Roanoke, VA area off I81 at Natural Bridge, so not near the tornado/campground issue. However, we did have terrible rains Wed. night which caused my tent to flood. Then as we were adding additional tarps on Thursday afternoon, more torrential rains with winds. Spent time under the awning keeping it from flooding. Saturday was lovely, but lightening was seen around 10pm. I checked weather, but it said only 10% chance of rain for Sat night/Sun. so I went ahead and removed the extra tarp (for more air, and pre-packing to go home Sun.) WRONG MOVE! around 3am had a horrible storm come through. Took out one of the awnings we had up, and flooded the tent again! While taking refuge, I was able to check radar and turns out there was a Severe Weather Alert for the area...and no immediate end to the rain. So the little girls & I moved to the truck, I packed up the remaining things in the tent to keep them dry (big kids were in their own tent that didn't leak). Packing up this morning was NOT fun! Everything was wet & muddy, and it was still raining. We will definitely have stories to tell about this trip! But we are home now, getting all cleaned up, and waiting until tomorrow to figure out how to dry everything out. Thanks for worrying about us! You're the best!

I got no hippies in bloom right now but got lots of clivias blooming! I saw a bud peaking on one of my Santos so that is something to look forward to. Pity that we can’t post videos here as I have been doing a few and posting them in my Facebook page, Maria’s Garden USA. Come visit me in FB sometime. Anyway, here’s one from Japan that recently bloomed for me. Happy International Women’s Day!!!