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Phaemon'sDog - and all Clan Pat Uri - must agree that Pat Uri is the greatest lover of women in modern times...just ask him. On his behalf. we can quote him as saying that the most appreciated and suitable gift to any woman, of any age or acquaintance is:- "Large sums of cash"... ps - followed by shoes.

P'sDog here - got a copy of Lesser Key of Solomon hardback original pub. you can have for the postage - don't make any sense to me, anymore than why I got it in first place. Got a "black-hilted-knife" - really whacked! - made out of an old bloodstained M16 bayonet from Vietnam that's been carved over by 70's weirdoes - they engrave candles with it or some sh*t. Pack of Crowley's tarot cards and can even dig up an old copper hand sickle... Don't ask me why this dog would be left custodian of such properties - bloody pleased to pass them on to someone who wants them! Something to do with Secret Woman's Business that got gleaned from CQ opportunity shops to get out of public sight. Got copped with Masonic Lodge paraphernalia too - this is hardly appropriate! Why me? - don't know. Happy to get rid of them, really - do me a favour. Like I said - you can have them for the postage - other than that they can stay there! Regards, PhaemonsDog.

Shorty - you still here? - I must admire your tenacity! Your apparatus really depends on what you are refining. For a beginner's exercise I can recommend Corymbia citriodora - lemon scented gum - leaves. Stuff a 4L "paint" tin half full of leaves and young tips and cover with water leaving it about a quarter empty for head space. Take about 1 metre of 8mm - 10mm copper tube and bend it into an L shape with one limb 100mm long. Drill a hole in the lid of the tin and insert the short limb sealing it in place with silicone - inside and outside - so-called - mushroom seal - this will be a basic condenser. Seal the tin with the lid, "condenser" pointing away from the fire's radiant heat. Now build a little fire under the tin. As it boils collect the steam condensate that drips from the copper tube into a jar. Doesn't matter than the waters are steaming hot. You'll notice globs of yellow citronella oil floating on top of the jar's collected water. Steam distilled essential oil. If you want to get a bit more "high tech" you can wrap a wet bandage around the long limb condenser end out of a suspended bucket of water so capillary action keeps the bandage wet and the condenser cool. Watch out - steam is f*cking hot. Don't let it boil dry, but you will have to shut off the fire, allow to cool to open the lid and top up the water. Let the tin go dry and you'll rediscover destructive distillation. Always keep the tin with some water. To harvest your oil you can wait until it floats on top of the collection jar and draw it off with a piece of paper - oil sticks to the paper, but not the water; suck it off with a eye dropper; or put the jar in a deepfreeze until the water ices solid and the oil can be poured off. You can use a baster to suck off the lower water layer from collection and after a few recharges of the leaves the oil will be so thick a layer you can decant it off. "Eucalyptus" essential oils have such low vapour pressure and the trees are so rich a source it can really be that easy and primitive. I've seen the oil come off so thick you could use it as lamp oil but it is useful as a repellent for "scabies dreaming", that is, scrub itch mite. You can get even more "sophisticated" with a "thistle funnel" into the tin going near to the bottom to top up water without breaking the assembly for continuous production until the leaves are extracted. "Foaming" can be stopped by adding a few drops of "Infacol" a polysilicone antifoaming agent available from the pharmacist to stop babies farting. Using several small bore copper tubes - known as a heat exchanger bundled condenser - improves yield too. Camphor laurel is another easy one and its oil can be more interesting. Things like Damascus rose petal don't have much oil - but their watery distillate is fine as is, as "rose water". "Mint water", "lavender water", "orange flower water" and "orange peel water" are just as good fresh from the 'still - as their essential oils have high vapour pressure and potent without further concentration. It gets tricky when you go for essential oils that have low vapour pressure - then you start to need "steam superheaters" and "steam injectors" but I'll mention them later. You might wanna look at water jacketed condensers and other super efficient condensers before you go to those. There's a principle in engineering we call Carnot's Efficiency where the efficiency of a still depends on how hot the input is (steam) and how cold the output is (the waters) - but that'll come later. Others are trickier because they have properties that lock them into the water phase. Free base alkaloids will never steam distil from an acidic solution but come out in abundance from an alkali solution - then you WILL need antifoaming agents. Some free bases are heat sensitive like nicotine and need azeotropic steam distillation or like khat need functional group protection to come over - but start at simple basics for easy success until you have confidence to go for the great stuff. I thoroughly recommend you design off fire heating - it takes a lot of electrical energy to turn water into steam and you'll be needing loads. Plus cheap, flexible fuel fires gives you byproducts of ash, bio-charcoal, etc. and steam is quite safe around fires - electricity and water don't mix - well they do, but you don't wanna know about it. Notice you have some big forum members posting in to help you out - so you'll see far standing on the shoulders of such giants. Steam can even run venturi vacuum pumps...haven't I seen your face before?... Looking forward to more of your efforts! Phaemon'sDog with Scabies. (Postscript - Sorry there Mountain Goat - just reread the thread and made the mistake of thinking Shorty was OP. If I knew it was you I would have written something useful. p'sDog - what'can'i'say? when you are right 99.99% of the time you are wrong 00.01% of the time)

Ok so I've sent the seeds out - will not be making up any other packages as it's been an enormous effort and the giveaway has been closed for awhile now. However, some 55 SAB people are receiving seeds, and some 40 of those people are in Oz. They will also potentially be available through a couple other members of SAB - one of them is Zelly, who has a few of the crosses available as add-ons to orders of his seeds.. Down the road I may make provisions to have more of these seeds distributed through other members, but for now I'm just going to kick back

Alrighty everyone, the seeds are in the mail - woo! The seed code is as follows: 1. Lumberjackus x TPM 2. Psycho0 x TPM 3. Sharxx Blue x TPM 4. TPM x Sharxx Blue 5. TPM x Huarazensis 6. Lumberjackus x Sharxx Blue enjoy!

I would like to take you for a walk around my small garden. It has slowly build up over the years and will continue to grow into the distant future. I have started most of my plants from seed or small cutting, give or take a few trades and purchases Ss hybrid seeds i got from amozonion, plus a few randoms Except for the crest incognito gifted me the trichos. Native finger lime is flowering Lophophora Defenders of the veggie patch. Well sort of Blue corn from hillbilly Caapi Gold from doublebenno, staghorn,tasmanian mountain peppers m/f, Brazilian grape tree, tamarillo and some azaleas that will get the chop and trained as bonsai once their flowers drop Some future bonsai and a Adriatic fig Fruit trees Lemon/lime, blueberries, peaches, apricots and grapes Hamiltons crest? Got from bunnings years ago Sarracenia olive's pod giveaway seeds in takeaway nepenthes Grafted superkabuto Edit. Removed a double pic. Added some more txt to pics

Thes best of us plod along thunderhorse (hehe no pun intended) I did try to make a cube once for a custom order in a vial...it sorta looked realistic but alas i just always end up with a bit of that comical look Yay thanks deadstar happy to be here! It was well worth the 5 week wait!

You won't find them at a library but anything by Starhawk is great reading... "The Spiral Dance" has lists of correspondences which include traditional pagan plants.. "The earth path" is another really good one which blends paganism and earth/nature beautifully I would photocopy and send some bits but im not sure if that would be legal? Definitely good books though (it is a more dianic stream of wicca - so more goddess and feminine divine focused but she may like that)

pm'ed

PhaemonsDog again - should mention that groups like Santo Daime are devoted to moral practises. So the good guys are out there. The Original American Native People didn't even have a word for "sin" until the Christian missionaries introduced the concept - you can't have "redemption" without a sense of "sin" it seems. For them things like torturing an enemy, "headhunting" etc. was quite honourable. So a lot of their original Gods seemed to be into a lot of "ungodly" habits and had all the vices of humans too. Even the Creator Father would occasionally make deformed babies when he was on the piss - so deformed people were especially sacred. Seems that the Perfect get it wrong occasionally too and the Great Father must be a little partial to wine. Still is according to the Catholics. Having Gods that understood sin is probably why those old religions never vanished. You can hardly go to your Catholic Priest for advice after getting your girlfriend pregnant...that is when you consult the Obeah of your ancestors. Religion is too heavy a trip - I'll stick to the simpler ones of Nature for me. Regards. P'sDog.

I believe their immune systems may be what is keeping things like that at bay and I'm pretty sure I have read that the mushroom keeps it's self sterile somewhere.. wish I could link you to that info I don't remember where I got it. i think if the surrounding area is clean and kept well it may be less of an issue but it's a good point. maybe someone else can chime in with the precision specifics for you? and good luck either way mate.

found me fave separable gelatinous pellicle today (the one that i first learned on)

hmm so they do actually exist then ...

erm...

brr cold out now , slight frost too , so much for pointies being the most common eh? must be their final week somewhere around ..... wherever that is? in the meantime...

Hello forum P'sDog here with words-of-wisdom from cranky old Pat Uri. Seriously since he's given up the pot he's been a misery. If there was ever a case to legalise it, he'd be it. The Old Man has put up and build off some bad business over last years with Cyclone Larry and Marcia, but 'Sasha' moving on, has really knocked him. That's what happens when you're old but He will be back. Anyway nice to meet you Anodyne - 'fraid new chum there ain't much "traditional" about smoking baccy and less about Nicotiana tabacum, it hasn't been around long enough. See -What do you mean by "traditional"? 50 years? 100years? 200? 300? 400? 500? A millinia? Prehistoric? Dreamtime? Seriously tobacco hasn't been around that long. There's about eighty species in Genus Nicotiana growing wild since prehistory in Australia and America, and only one species isn't found in the wild, and that's N.tabacum. Seems it's an allotetraploid virilised hybrid of diploid mother N.sylvestris and diploid father N.tomentosiformis, with a possible intermediate bit-on-the-side with N.otophora (I just know what Elder Pat Uri taught me) These wild ancestors occur in Bolivia, but not together. How it hybridised, let alone polypoided is anyone's guess - about as strange as how B.caapi and P.viridis got together. N.tabacum marks human civilisation:- highland Mayans Tzeltal and Tzotzil of Mexico threw good seed along trails and "where the spirit is strong it will grow" and looked for the pinkest flowers, to mash green leaves with lime for snuff and kept in a special mini gourd. They called it Sayri meaning "nine times beaten" and considered it the "Male". The "Female" was N.rustica Mapacho that they traded for, widely enough for the highest grade to be found in Trinidad by John Rolfe, of Pocohontas fame. But those Carib people are pretty much extinct. Maybe the Spanish were in on crossbreeding, who knows. "Smoking" comes from a near universal story about how the Great Spirit Holy Father Most High was so busy with creation that he forgot to pack his baccy and now he was up in the sky couldn't do much about it. So he said to the lesser spirit angels he'd get man to sacrifice tobacco to him by smoking it for the spirits to eat and they would listen to the prayers of man. The clouds would see the smoke and tell the sky spirits. Then there was the White Buffalo Woman that went like this:- two cousins from different tribes met up after years apart as young braves on a vision quest. As much as they loved eachother, there were too many cultural differences and rivalry would set in and they'd end up arguing and fighting. They hated it, but they couldn't help themselves bickering. So they continued on in sulky silence, until they saw through a heat haze what appeared to be a white buffalo standing on a white clay lens hill. As they approached the aparition changed into a tall statuesque woman dressed in pure white buckskin. Then back into a buffalo and then back into a woman in a white outfit and decked with ropes of shining, white wumpam. They decided it was a woman. One said, "Such a wonderful woman! I shall steal her and make her my wife!". The other said, "No. See her fine clothes? She must be very important to her people, I will pay her my respect." Finally at her feet they both realised she was an angel. She looked at them and said, "One of you has a hard heart and the other has a tender heart - but I will not tell you which is which. Instead I will teach you how to keep your hearts and still keep council together." She gathered up some white clay, fashioned a smoking pipe bowl and showed them how to make a calumet, or peacepipe. Then she taught them to smoke and the rules of diplomacy and statesmanship for all Nations to obey. In one variation or another this too is a universal story. The site itself is in the Great and Respect worthy Lakota People's country and they allowed access to it for all tribes to send pilgrims to gather some clay for sacred pipes. Quite a few native species were used for the smoking rituals, mixed with other herbs, like lobelia and deer's tongue. Prime leaves were for trade and passed around and looked at for years before use. Lesser stuff was for chew and snuff, to clean wounds, repel parasites, prevent food spoilage, purge medicine, sacrificed to a tree spirit for use of its wood, thrown to a river spirit for successful crossing, etc. Often kept hanging - aircuring - on display in smokey dwellings they became somewhat firecured, stretched out, folded, massaged and admired greasy fingers "sauced" them as well as packing them in smoke tanned leather bags and medicine pouches. They were above all trading currency and spiritual currency, passed on to the clan for a lot of time. Annually keeping the flower tops and "suckers" (lateral and adventurous shoots) to maximise set leaf growth and store next years seed, the seed separated, what was left - buds etc. - dried light bodied and brown and was massaged with a little animal fat, precursor of modern glycerol, then packed into green hide bags that would shrink near the fire compressing the material. They appreciated the mellow, woody, sometimes resiny flavour of the smoke. Mostly N.sylvestris here - the woodland sweet tobacco. Another traditional technique well worth mention comes from the Chickasaw people. They would chop down a sassafras tree - yes, that sassafras! - and drill a vertical hole in the stump with a quartz crystal drill bit and bow saw to make a "barrel". Then whittle a stick as a tight fitting piston mated to this barrel. Well fertilized N.tomentos and .longiflora plants topped early at about eight big lug leaves were primed, picked and sauced in sweet berry mash, before rolling tightly into a "stick" and packed in the stump "barrel". The piston was pushed in and heavy pressure applied with a class 2 lever arrangement and heavy rock weight. At least a year, usually several, later the tobacco "stick" was withdrawn having compressed and fermented in its own juices, and dried into a highly sort after black tobacco the Acadian traders called Perique - because it looked and smelt like a "buhda" in our dialect. Good smoke that too - you find it in "Three Nuns". Gee! Folk. I think that's enough for now, I want to go have some lunch. Next time, I tell you a bit about what happened next, with the white fellas and the black fellas baccy. OK. P's Dog signing off. For Pat Uri and old mate Donkey Wang.

some more ... love this time of year so much!

An LED thread would be nice, I'd love to read more about people's experiences with them before deciding to go all electro. I take back the LED threat, a thread would be much more useful. Or I could threaten my seedlings with LEDs, see what they do.

bugger! ... I wish i had time to explain more , just got a few mins b4 the school run .. umm those yellowy things .. that you thunk the gyms were .. I'll explain better when i has time - the ones you thought the gyms were-

Hey man, there's no kind of shitty feels that don't deserve a whole bunch'a good vibes. Sending much aroha your way bud, lively shiny golden sunshine rays, silliness in the spring, them kinda vibes. May your knowing of them brighten your times.

My finds during a local walk in July 2013 after a period of light rain. I have no experience with identifying fungi so any ids would be appreciated. These are from SW Sydney area.