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watered and fed using aeroponic ferts and root gel in the mix added a few viridis cuttings to the aquarium.. added a few successful viridis cuttings to the 'rfb' under plastic fruit snack packaging trimmed the acacias , they just survived spidermites which are finally gone.. dropped self in it telling kids that you can grow citrus plants from supermarket seeds so saved 4 nice chunky grapefruit seeds to try some point in future and have a new mission of limes lemons and several different types of oranges , goodness knows where they're gna grow if not bonsai or something lol

I have some seeds for sale or trade. Say 4 lots to go.... There will be a fair few seeds per pkt. Anyone interested? I'm more looking for edible fruits & bush food & that kinda thing. Picked yesterday off my trees.... Ive never grown this tree from seed so good luck! I'd be interested to see how they go.... The trees the seeds came from are approx 10 yrs old & beautiful! 2nd year of fruiting.

I know there are a couple members here who have written books and I was wondering if anyone could give me a few snippets of advice on how to get started. I have a brain so full of ideas it sometimes feels like it will explode, and after having a three hour long vent to my mum last night about technological entrancement, global conquest by psychopaths, thinly masked dystopian nightmares, collective manipulation, technology that (supposedly) doesn't exist yet, precognitive dreams and the power of myth, I decided I would best put all this data to use in a science fiction/fantasy novel rather than continue to terrify my loved ones with my concerns. I know this is not an easy undertaking, and I'm still not certain I have the required talent to be a decent writer, but I have always loved writing and spent a fair amount of my teens building and perpetuating literary worlds with one of my closest friends. I gave up on the idea of being a writer about 16, when my interests diverged into less wholesome avenues, but my love of language remains, and old dreams which you left down the pipeline sometimes have opportunities to spring up again ...this is one of those. Basically I have no idea where to start or how to even get the ridiculous quantity of ideas out of my head. I was hoping someone might take pity on me and point me in a certain direction. Otherwise my approach will likely be to just start creating multitudes of mind-maps on different aspects I wanna cover and then identify common themes, parallels, polarities and central pillars of importance and weave these together in new mind-maps ...and continue repeating and refining this process over and over until I can see exactly what I'm dealing with. Obviously I'm not expecting to do this overnight, if I'm gonna do it, I want to do it properly. I'm thinking this would be most likely to occur gradually over the next ten years. Any advice would be much appreciated! Cheers

Ok guys n gals here's a poem I wrote a while back. Hope you enjoy it. Otherwise just call it horse shit n start a fight. Every Father, One Son. Written by wert. A new day comes with a birth of a son; this is a great, great, great, grandfather's grandson. Morphing genomes exploit extravagant grand sums before genomics song would soon have been sung. While the clock keeps ticking and hearts still beating, theres a new sound being added to the song. Like the music of life in everyone, I hear a fresh new rhythm of a little heartbeat in a fresh new son... Can you hear me, are you listening, Me in you, we can build anything. Did you hear this, can you believe that, I give you love so you can give it back. open your eyes, look at me clearly, This is within us where we overlap, Reach out to me, take my hand, Together as one we will understand. My father to me, like his father to he, Building your essence from our history. It's your right, this is why I try, Giving to sons before our final sunrise. The art within life, fighting to survive, A fathers a son before his son arrives. Like a reflection of me, just as I see, Your the only thing your sons will ever need. Just as our fathers had taken the lead it was my time now to help a son so he could succeed. It was time to retrieve the tool in me and put it to a son for a son to concieve. And like my father had said, I thought of my son as a father instead as it was here in my hands lay a son's fathers head. Along came a tool from a book not read, the fruit of life from a fruit not fed, our fathers spoke forward upon our son... Don't forget who you are; your your fathers son (as well as our friend) Can you hear me, are you listening, Me in you, we can build anything. Did you hear this, can you believe that, I give you love so you can give it back. Open your eyes, look at me clearly, This is within us, where we overlap. Reach out to me, take my hand, Together as one we will understand. My father to me, like his father to he, Building your essence from our history. It's your right, this is why I try, Giving to sons before our final sunrise. The art within life, fighting to survive, A fathers a son before his son arrives. Like a reflection of me, just as I see, Your the only thing your sons will ever need. As my son emerged from all the fathers and there grand sum, He looked at me and smiled saying daddy thats dumb... As a tear fell from within the sum, he asked "why is it so we are father and son when it's pretty obvious dad we are really only one". And as the tear fell further and my smile widened... I looked deeper into the eyes of my son. Pleased to meet you finally long after it all begun, your my friend, my son, Your just like me... we are only one. And as a tear fell from and eye within our son. A smile grew wider and from within came a sum. Well if I'm one, within such a sum then in knowing this I can now love everyone. And thats the beauty between fathers and a son. The clock keeps ticking while hearts cease to run, Though a page is turned for every son, alongside a tool that can build enough space for us all to become one. Wert. 13/07/2013 there you go, there may be errors in spelling and other shit cause I had to re write it on my phone. Took forever n ever... kindof Wert himself. P.S. has been copyright in a certain way.

Yay, I've been outta action for awhile, am looking forward to seeing y'all! Great that all you Newcastle etc folks are coming down, should be a good 'un.

Poetry, like verse is the communication of an image. If you can picture clearly that which you talk/write about others will see the image too and the communication has been successfull. Ancient poets were called BARD and their flowing words became the law as everybody knew that words straight from the heart were always true. Forget the modern rules and speak from the heart I say. Well done, Wert!

marbles are so hard to take pics of but here are some of mine, The one in front i call my Larry marble, because thats the guy that made it, theyre hard to get pics of and video just dont work good on my phone. But the gold bits is what they called fume. Its kind of invisible unless it has light on it so its like really ghosty 3d clouds. The comet in this one is made from opal so its all reflective with colours and stuff too. I think this is my fave marble, its so deep 3d and kind of layered depth its awesome. I dont know how it seems so deep and just fits into a marble A bit better pic of the fume in my Larry marble, i think he actually uses gold to make it. Behind it is my second fave, i call my bryan marble. The tail on the comet on that one is crazy awesome. totally invisible and totally layered 3d. The worm hole is uv reactive and again all 3d, nothing in these marbles is 2d really so you can see all kind of things from all kind of different angles. The comet and floating rocks are opals so they reflact some kick ass colours too

Here are the survivors from the War of the Molds. Matucana is definitely doing the best, Huancavelica and Rio Lurin are both OK, and only a couple of the tarmaensis and knuthianus left. I'll try to graft a couple soon, but it has been a very cold year, it's still cold, don't know how many will take. Hopefully I'll have a few ready for the spring sun in a month or two.

Try this, it's so cool and you'll love it, trust me! Get some jars or glasses, fill about a third of the way with water, then another third of vegetable oil. Put some different colour food colouring in. This part looks cool already, but wait for the trick... Plop an aspro clear tablet (or an alka seltzer for you US readers) and watch it go nuts! Voila, instant lava lamps. If you could find colours that glow in blacklight I imagine that might just blow your mind!

I don't think I've posted here in a long time, so here's a little update :-------) Trichocereus pachanoi monstrose (believed to be Altmans Monstrose) got a pup that terminated and then decided to un-terminate and go tastily inermis This is a graft of a pup from the monstrose that was all brain-like which has now crested Trichocereus pachanoi PC variegate reaaaaallly slightly variegated, very hard to capture with a camera, especially a phone camera TBM Long Form all grown up : ' -- ) and getting nice and fat Fricii Monstrose/Cristata suffered a nice cocktail of spidermite, scale and sunburn but getting better with the tasty new growth

comment: these cuts have been rooting in pure coir since day one, scarcely fed and in 7 liter pots ( small now). A 50% extra girth at the base can be seen forming a circle ( thats peruvian grown tissue) compared to the tips. Transplanting is time consuming and I have done other things, this winter I am taking more care. Its spines are very short and the tip is quite flat headed. spines are red,orange/yellow. 6-8 ribs. The color of the original material was more in the lines of One, as Mauve said.

And I would love to see it growing in Australia.

Seed grown Trichocereus peruvianus crest.

I made a couple of planter boxes at work on Friday out of an old pallet and put them up yesterday, adding the last of my cuttings this morn 👍

Yeah, it is important to keep in mind that crosses are sibling groups and not expected to be clones, or nearly so. When I grew out the LC00x non-PC pachanoi & bridgesii crosses even in the F1 they produced three different spine lengths in the plants. One of the parents must have itself been a cross. That happens a lot in cacti, so sequential crosses are never entirely reproducible and even one cross is only reproducible in large numbers. 3/4 off topic but I have a side question. Zelly, I was drooling over your trich seed inventory and I saw you have one pachanoi cross named 'PC pachanoi X ...' does that mean that all other pachanoi crosses you have are non-PC?

Hi Zelly, yes, I always start again from let´s say 1-500 per year. So the 53th cross in 2015 it´s EG 53/2015 Tr. whateverensis x examplensis. The 3rd from 2015 would be 3/2015. After I am done with my crosses for 2015, I´d start countin from 1 again in 2016. So EG 1/2016 to as many crosses I made that year. This system helps to trace back everything, including the sister plants that were grown from the same seed. Later, after raising the seedlings from a particular cross, I also use this system to keep track of the sister plants: When I have a large number of sister plants raised from one cross, I usually do it like that: EG 53/2015-1 Yowie x Tr. huanucoensis, EG 53/2015/1 Yowie x Tr. huanucoensis or EG 53/2015 Yowie x Tr. huanucoensis-1. The bold "1" stands for the first seedling from that cross. The second would have a "2", and so on. This system was originally intended to keep track of flower hybrids, because when raising hybrids for an optimal flower, every seedling can have a different one. So you can very well observe the number of crosses that produced the highest number of successful flowers. There are crosses were plenty of sister plants are great and there are some others where only one or two deserve to be propagated. Or none.

Yup.

After over 2 months traveling in SA I'm home!

This reflects an interesting concept, while some people I know are removing their tags and disregarding names and collection data. One person also commented to me that after several years many clones that initially appeared distinct grew so identical looking that they were hard to discern. Several interesting clones are emerging that are of hybrid origin, I know that I make selections for specific traits out of hybrid stock, I tend to favor fast growth rates. Some of my favorite plants are hybrids of pach, per and bri or all three. I used to keep a single notebook with all my plant data, names, origin of clone, growth rates over time etc, but over the years I stopped doing this. Now in regard to buying, selling and breeding, this is very interesting. Breeding in particular benefits from knowledge of ancestry, however buying and selling are arguably only affected by repute, as opposed to origin information. People want clones that are well known and popular, but knowing the name and source of a clone does not give that much information, nor does it change anything about the cactus. It is sort of in the mind of the buyer and seller alone, as to the value of identity, many sellers want to use data as a sales point for hype, some argue authenticity to an absurd degree, while totally ignoring efficacy... but collection data does not affect efficacy. One trend that seems to be occurring in some collections is that the less desirable plants are getting phased out, that is to say that people who are disregarding names and origins are also removing the less desirable plants from their collections. SS01 was found in a yard, it is a peruvianoid plant with a prostrate growth tendency when larger. SS02 Wad found/sourced from a private collection put together by a man named Gay, it is a somewhat unique bridgesioid. Both of these are clones that have been used in extensive breeding in the USA.