JG-- The cuttings you show above that you put into your mix are normal, in my opinion. The roots you had previously are too mangled and stuck together to do much more growing in gritty mix, in my opinion. I've had some like this coming out of peat mix soils and for those, whereas others, I was able to cleanly pull apart, prune and plant as is. For yours, I'd have snipped off the roots, pulled off the leaves below the new roots and stood them in gritty mix. As you can see, forming roots in GM is not an issue, as shown by the new roots you have. A month or two like this and you have a fully established cutting. I have not used anything but Turface with GM since reading Al's posts, but it seems a lot of people claim the Napa product works just as well. Screening Turface, in my opinion, is THE most important step as those small bits can really make for a mess. The gritty mix will hold water, and despite how gritty it is, you still need to control watering. I don't think I can overwater to the point of drowning a plant to death like I could in regular potting mixes but I am certain I could overwater some succulents still, to the point of them not being at their best. Case in point: these were from two different small pots I bought where these particular cuttings were really hopeless as far as roots go. Just one small blob that I couldn't separate, so I chopped them off and put them into gritty mix with a couple other cuttings I took. I must water these once a week indoors or so and they look happy, as happy as plants can look anyway. Lol. FWIW, the mix is fir bark, screened Turface and small pebbles as I could not find chicken grit to save my life. Apparently, raising chicken is not popular in SF, haha. :-) I did find crushed granite but it was way too much dust for my liking. Good luck and I wouldn't toss the Napa stuff just yet! :-) Grace

Hey Carol If you want seeds - just ask! I'm sure there are lots of people around here that would send them to you for free (or posteage) so you can learn. We all want you to have fun with this! I can probably send you some - let me see what the deer have left me, the stupid hooved devils denuded a bunch of my plants last night :-( As far as growing instructions, there are as many ways to start them as there are hosta growers. Truth be known, tse seeds have sprouts in them that WANT to grow. We just need to provide an opportunity for them. I am attachgin a link to Bob Axemears site - great info on growing hosta seeds here. Here is a link that might be useful: Hosta Seed Starting by Bob Axemear

Herb - I think we have the same shingles! Darker will absorb heat - lighter reflects but need to match the character of the house - now we picked our shingles and then 2 years later, painted the outside a very different color - I might have picked a different color if I had known that I was going to change colors - but the driftwood has both brown and gray - so we were covered! Also CT has a website and you can look at different options - pick the color and style of shingle and it pops it on the roof!

Tracy and others- I reached out to Houzz regarding your dilemma as I've seen the same question come up before here. This is the response I received from my contact. Hi @tedbixby, after checking with the related team, the Q/A UI was removed intentionally because of the low usage and also the low responses by the vendor/seller.