SayN

Wendy Whitely's Secret Garden

yep - I know people in the US that have died - a husband and wife. Whilst admittedly they were in their late 60's, it's still pretty tragic. Dying in isolation and all. I feel pretty sure the pics of mass graves and reports coming from all media sources plus the body count being recorded by JHU aren't all fake either. yes, there's hysteria for sure. When isn't there these days. But to think it's all cobbled together by our forlorn and somewhat dysfunctional government seems... unlikely. Maybe it's 5G?

i dislike perlite too. I confess I usually get the Scotts Osmocote from Bunnings and sieve it for smaller cactus. (The sieved bark is great for mushroom substrate ). Theres another cactus mix made by Brunnings that has less bark but much more sand - better for seedlings. Whichever I get, I mix it with my own compost. Final mix is usually 25% compost, 50% cactus mix and 25% whatever else have at hand - which might be seed raising mix, dirt from the garden or just general organic potting mix.

^ that one holds a special place in my heart. The MP3 version I have in my collection was ripped off a radio show with some pommie geezer dj talking over the tail end about a particular goal scored in the weekend football. good times.

i'm hoping that a couple of things at least might come out of all this: 1. Society will have a greater awareness of their fellow human beings and a deeper appreciation of how similar we all are. The virus doesn't discriminate, and nor should we. Sure it's cliche, but we really are all in this together (Life. Not the virus). 2. Society will live a little more moderately. Who needs all that useless shit in there lives anyway? Just buy the stuff you need to get by.

this is just absolute perfection. how did i ever miss it:

The other night I was abseiling in the Blue Mountains with... Boris Johnson!?!

Something I whipped up recently - TP x TPM grafted on to an old battered chunk of PC (that originally came from @Yeti101 before he headed south a few years back). I'm really excited to see what this is going to do over the next few years.

the usual. more repotting. hoping to leave these guys for at least a year or two in these

Different species admittedly in this example but all tricho crosses of something or another. It's good to know it doesn't all come down to soil quality as I think i'm pretty consistent with my mix these days. Would it be reasonable to speculate that a bigger species might try and scope out a larger area before it even begins to think about growing?

I have several cacti seedlings that stall and simply seem to stop growing. Take this guy below. When I unearthed it for repotting, the root system is enormous for its relative size. Compare that to these healthy seedlings that are not much different in size, but their root systems are microscopic in comparison. The root ball on these would be no bigger than a ping pong ball. Now I don't think my grow medium would be too different from each other - and they would receive pretty similar watering and environment. What gives? Why the massive root systems for so little result?