So i am moving my VFT outside and hardening it off. it seemed to be doing okay indoors for a few months but then the leaves started turning black and mushy and dying. i am trying to save it. there are still quite a few green leaves and stems on it. Ive only had it about 5 months and it is in the small plastic pot that it came in with that same potting soil. i water it with only distilled water keeping the soil moist. i read that they need high humidity levels and that they normally live in bogs so its pot should be submerged several cm in distilled water at all times mimicking it’s natural habitat. I’m not sure where i read this but i have been doing this. Now im worried that i have drowned my plant. should i repot it in perlite and sphagnum moss and move it outdoors?

Rickey, Of course it was Fred. Who else his age is out driving around visiting gardeners in the middle of the afternoon? LOL If you see Billy Fred, do see if you can find out what he knows because he may know more details. Nowadays, when I ask Fred "who" he is talking about, he often can't remember names and will say something like 'you know...that guy that lives over yonder' and, of course, I have no clue who he means. Having said that, I hope that when I am Fred's age (and I'm not sure what it is but think right around 90?) I still get around as well as he does. Sometimes I do have to get Billy Fred to tell me who his dad is talking about because, while Fred always seems to have his facts straight, he does have trouble remembering names now and then. I had wondered about those goats....about how he keeps them safe because I've never seen any kind of guardian dog like a Great Pyrenees out there with them. I heard a loud growling this morning from the woods oddly enough (and I was inside the house and it sounded like it was right there in the room with me!) and it about scared me to death. As far away as your house is from ours, it is odd we've both heard that growling sound recently. It isn't like we're so close geographically that we'd hear the same growl at the same time. I've never heard this sound before and I pretty much thought I'd heard everything there is to hear around here. The dogs were going nuts in their dog yard, and I ran downstairs and didn't see a thing, but the cats were on the porch wanting to come inside. After that growling sound, I canceled my plans to work in the yard. James, I feel like much of what you say is true, but we have both good and bad government employees and always will. I know sometimes the local wildlife people seem to say whatever the 'official' story line is but their eyes and body language are telling you something else. Our local law enforcement officers are pretty good about telling us to 'do what you have to do' to stay safe, because they know they can't be everywhere at once. They also come as quickly as they can when called, but with only 1 or 2 or 3 county deputies/reserve deputies on duty at a time, their response time can be frustratingly slow. Game bird, I promise, if you tell me you see three dinosaurs crossing the road, I'll believe you. And. on a funnier note....Chris was 15 when we moved here and had a huge iguana named Alex. He built Alex a nice roomy outdoor pen, but somehow Alex would escape and run around although he always came back to the cage when he was hungry. We alerted our neighbors, and I showed Alex to Bill one day. We were watching Alex from the road and he climbed to the top of the pecan tree, which was then losing its leaves for autumn, so you could see Alex very clearly. At that point he was about 5' long. When Bill saw him, he said he needed to warn his wife and daughters because he feared they'd about run off the road and wreck their vehicles if Alex ever ran out into the road in front of them. Bill was afraid the women in his family would think Alex was an alligator. Carol, I do think a lot of people know exactly how to play the system. Tim and Chris both work at D-FW Airport, which is incorporated just like a city, and has a large Department of Public Safety consisting of police, fire and emergency medical personnel employees. Their department has several hundred employees and most are wonderful, but there are a couple that of virtually worthless. How people like that keep their jobs is just beyond me. Dawn

My wife has a beautiful garden with all kinds of lilies and hosta and many other types of flowers which I have no idea. She wins contests for our yard and we've spent a lot of money with irrigation, truckloads of mulch delivered by semi, trips far and wide to various garden stores to buy the elusive flowers... I say all that to make the point that our yard is her passion and she loves to garden. A couple years ago she went on a vacation with a girlfriend for a week or so. She left me in charge (mistake #1). I was given strict instructions on running the irrigation (we hadn't yet installed our final leg of irrigation that summer and it was hot and dry). Oh, and we have a real deer problem - they will eat her garden down to the ground if we don't spray the garden at least once a week with some "deer-away" stuff that smells like two month old horse urine. Soooo... she gave me instructions to spray all the flowers with the nasty urine smelling stuff she had kindly pre-mixed for me in the hand-pumped sprayer in the garage. Well I did my duties just as instructed, watered, and on the allotted day spent probably 30 minutes spraying the deer repellant onto all the flower beds. When I was done I brought the sprayer back into the garage and suddenly realized I hadn't smelled that horrible smell as I was spraying all the flowers. I then noticed that there were TWO sprayers in the garage. Hmm, i thought. I opened up the second one and PHEW what a smell - well that one is clearly deer repellant. So what I had I just sprayed all over the entire garden? Yes, you guessed it. Round-up. Oh my goodness. Panic set in. I ran out with a hose, but then thought, what if that makes it worse. I feverishly called the manufacturer and tried to get information on what I could do - the guy laughed and said pretty much I was screwed; once it was on the leaves there was nothing I could do. I went out and sprayed and sprayed anyway for hours. Ran the sprinkler for I think 2-3 days continuously. Wife came home. I said nothing. Flowers started looking bad in spots. Then worse. Eventually I had to fess up. And then I went out with a HUGE black permanent marker and LABELED the sprayers. Thankfully after her initial anger, she forgave me. And I wrote many checks that summer to replace flowers.

I don't trust companies to do the right thing because history shows that most of them don't. They will if there is something in it for the company...Oh lets see there is a tax break...OK we can do XYZ...no tax break...Oh this thing is impossible to do..we need incentives. The larger the company is the less it can be trusted. The product I create damages humans?....No it can't do that...we test everything...Ever heard that line? Companies are In business to make money - that's it..and what ever good comes from the outcome may trickle down to the consumers...but lets not fool ourselves and think that the first thing a company is thinking about in its meetings is not profits,how to make them... and how to keep making them...everything else comes along for the ride. My personal gut reaction to the problems with the Detroit auto makers is to let them pass out of existence. They are the ones who have not made cars people wanted and they have been at their game for over 20 years. The reason ford is not in as deep of trouble is because they retooled some of their cars sold to foreign markets and were able to sell them to the USA consumer. What about the other auto makers...what were they doing...Oh that's right - offering incentives to buy cheaper gasoline while selling Hummers getting 10 miles per gallon. But on a practical level I don't want the people who work for the auto makers...the folks who did what they were told and followed the car manufacturers design, to get the short end of the stick. It is as unfair to them as it is for taxpayers to foot the bill for the loan. Also what of remaining workers in other companies that are part of the auto supply chain? I am in favor of a loan with conditions. The car makers need to come up with a concrete path forward which includes goals that can be measured and assessed for improvement and achievement. No improvement - no more loans. Even a loan may not help. Loan them the money...people are getting laid off. NO MONEY....so who is going to buy a car next March? THEN WHAT? How about a switch in focus? Let them start manufacturing mass transit vehicles so we can have a good rail system like Europe has. Going to work?...take the train. Back to Downy - I really liked the performance and scent of Downy Advance...This new Downy stuff I mostly avoid because it smells so strong and lingers in the clothes for days, and to me the clothes don't feel good they feel slippery.