I guess I should explain my "52 buds" to the newbies. I have a business selling cut flowers. I started growing amaryllis when I read that they make good cuts. We (I work with my best friend) were looking for something to keep our customers through the winter. Therefore, I generally buy bulb varieties 3 at a time. That makes enough flowers to use for some beautiful church arrangements and still leave some for me to enjoy! I bought just about 100 bulbs last year...my first to go nuts with them! (Last year I had both knees replaced and was desparate for new color adventures during my convelescence! I was also too weak and bored to resist temptation, LOL). I am afraid I spent about $1000 on this new hobby which I am still paying for on my credit card! In the meantime, the bottom fell out of our economy and I sold far fewer flowers then usual (And raised fewer too, because of my surgeries). So I am still paying for those beauties along with interest! I do not regret any of them except for a few sale ones that taught me not to buy late in the season! I ended the year with 100 bulbs, about 80 of them new last year. This year I went only for the ones that I did not have yet, and some of the new ones from S.A., and a few replacements for bulbs that were too sickly to live last year and gave me only a tantalizing hint of what they were capable of. I summered my bulbs outside under insect-proof fabric, with good results and lost very few...only those already struggling. I think I repotted 97 bulbs and since then have lost a few that were barely hanging on. I hope eventually to master this and be producing my own varieties for sales to our small local public. Hubby has promised me a bigger, permanent greenhouse by next winter and I am excited about having a real one! My fold up plastic one died in our very unusual 14" of snow that came too soon after our winter vacation for me to focus on getting it down (Besides, I could never remember how to refold it!) I am thinking of cutting away the good plastic and using it to build cold frames for this spring...I usually have it packed with plants from Feb through May. I start all new dahlias and lily bulbs in pots to get them tall enough to withstand our slugs before putting them out, as well as rows of seedling flats. Maybe this will be the year that I start all the seeds in the ground and hope the ducks have eaten the slugs and slug eggs. In fact, I think I will go out and turn them into the garden now....

Larry, thanks for that bit of information about not wetting the leaves when grown indoors. I have geraniums that I started from seed and I keep losing them when they seem to get 3 or 4 leaves. I do get the leaves wet and I do mist, and I have killed so many of them. Thanks to you, I realize that getting those little leaves wet must be what is doing it. My Confetti is in the process of dying along with my Midnight Reiter and I tried so hard to get them to grow!

You water it daily! That's your problem. Geraniums are one plant that needs to be grown on the dry side.A daily watering is setting it up for rot. Cut out the watering for a couple of weeks

Nice little plant you have there. I am in zone 5, but will tell you that these are tough little plants and can do well in full sun or in partial sun. I like to keep some in both scenarios. The partial sun grown plants flower less in terms of overall number of flowers on the plant at once, but have a softer appearance. Maybe some people in your zone will weigh in on this as well, but here is my experience. I water when the top of the soil looks dry which can be everyday during the hottest summer days. Your pot is pretty big for the size of your plant so you may not need to water as much. Geraniums are pretty drought resistant so less is better than overwatering. They do start to droop when they need watering so you can watch for that. They are not like some plants though that are fine one moment and totally wilted the next. But it will be trial and error for you. The good thing is that they are not hard to come by unless you are looking for a specific variety or this one has special meaning for you in terms of who gave it to you for instance. Geraniums are one of my favourite plants. Here in Ontario they are considered annuals but can be brought in and overwintered in a few different ways. Just to show you how tough they can actually be, one of the ways of overwintering is to shake off all the dirt and hang them upside down in a cool location which will keep them dormant for the winter. All the leaves dry up and it looks dead. In late winter/early spring new growth starts and they can be potted back up and lightly watered. I haven't tried this but I did put some pots in an attached unheated garage over the winter. The tops did look dead but in the spring, new growth was starting. I brought them out and put them in a sunny spot and started lightly watering. I end up with some beautiful big geraniums. Note: because I do not have a greenhouse or indoor plant lights, my overwintered ones take a while to look as lush and full as the ones you can buy at the garden centres in early spring. I always end up buying some new ones anyway as new colours and new varieties come out but there are a few scentimental ones I like to keep from year to year. They also will overwinter here potted up in a sunny window like a houseplant which I do for a few as well. Yours looks like a pretty soft pink. Can you take a picture of the flower head on? I will post a few pics of some of mine later today. :) Patty