Well, it's hard to believe fall is already here. The summer flew by. Those spring/early summer nighttime headaches got better and eventually stopped for the most part. I still have them about once a week, but rarely as intense as they were over those weeks. The cucumber thing continued to be quite amazing - better than sleeping pills! About 5 chunky slices and I sleep like the dead!


Let's see - Mark's aunt (Gail) passed away. It wasn't terribly unexpected. She'd been ill for sometime, on oxygen for at least a couple years. Aunt Judy came to visit and she, Mom, Merry & I all went down to KC to an Abraham workshop. It was AWSOME! And to finish off the summer with a shocker, distant cousin/family friend Ray committed suicide. I don't think we'll ever really know what that was about... But Mom says Jenny, his wife, is holding her own and it sounds like she'll be ok. After this happened, I told Mark, "Dude, #1 - never kill yourself!! #2 - if you do, don't do it in our house so I have to be the one to find your dead body! That's just the ultimate "screw you" as far as I'm concerned.

As for my plants... I think I got carried away! I think I got 20 cuttings from the Liddle order. All but one made it, and (as it turns out) the one that didn't make it was one I already had (not sure how that happened...) But earlier (I think in April) I got 5 from Thailand - I'm sure I mentioned it in an earlier post. One croaked, but the other 4 were in great shape and took off almost immediately. I decided to order 5 more from the same vendor and was utterly disappointed to find they cooked. The vendor replaced them, but the 2nd package wasn't in great shape either. He or she (not sure which!) has offered to replace it again, but I said to wait until spring. We'll see I might end up salvaging some of them. "Never give up until the fat lady sings" I always say!


The Liddle cuttings came particularly late - late July - so few of them have grown at all, though most of them rooted fine. I think I'm going to have to behave next year and just enjoy growing what I have. I have offically run out of space! I've been buying those long "s" hooks and hanging them from the curtain rods. And so many in the GH have gotten so large and/or rootbound, I really have to consider either restarting some of them or up-potting them. Like australis ssp. tenuipes AND ssp. australis. Also fungii, nicholsoniae, rubra...


Today, I whacked at my 'Krimsom Princess'. There was SO much new, all green growth. I got a potfull of green growth. And I decided to go ahead and take cuttings of the variegated growth, too, to try to get a new pot of variegated-only. Damn 'KP' is such a weak variegate that it's a struggle to keep it from turning green! I may chop it the rest of the way back and share the cuttings with the cactus club.