I am very pleased. A couple of my bulbs have gotten pretty large and have produced a number of offsets, but never flowered before now. I think most of this recent success is due to all the excellent information you guys out there have been writing with respect to plant feeding, soil mixtures, and care during dormancy--mostly after being provoked into writing by TOWs. I think I'm *finally* getting many of my plants into good soil mixtures with good feeding and proper water and dormancy treatment. And they're noticeably responding better. Maybe one of these years I'll even get the kind of growth and flowering that Bill Dijk seems to get with everything he grows. BTW, I saved some pollen from this Paramongaia so I can fertilize the one whose bud is just now climbing up on the other plant. Do I put the pollen in the refrigerator or the freezer? Climate info: We have definitely been Zone 10 the last 5 or 6 years around my area. You can't see them in my photos, but I grow a number of tomato plants every year and I keep my pots around them, so they are my indicator plants. Last winter the plants closest to the garage wall were ripening fruit all the way into February. Some time in January most of the tomato plants died one night, so I assume it got down to 32° F [O° C] for a few hours, but there was no wind. So far this year, none of the tomato plants have died, although a couple of weeks ago it dropped down into the upper 30s F [2-4° C] for a few nights. I keep *all* my winter-growers out in the open exposed to the rain and cold and sun all winter. (I don't have any other place to keep them.) So far, in the past 6-7 years I haven't lost any of them to cold nor seen any kind of freeze damage, even when the tomato plants have turned to mush. Since I've been down here (12 years) the coldest temperature I've seen is 29° F [-2° C]. The average rainfall in this area is about 17-18 inches [43-46 cm], (only 15 inches [38 cm] in downtown Los Angeles--126 year average). But some years (El Niño years) we've gotten double that amount. It tends to come down in 1-2 day storms with 1-3 inches [2.5-7.5 cm] of rain followed by several days of sunshine, mostly in January and February, but starting off in October or November and tapering off by April and sometimes a little in May. --Lee Poulsen Pasadena area, California, USDA Zone 9-10 On Jan 13, 2004, at 4:39 AM, Cynthia Mueller wrote: > Lee: Wow! What a success! You must be really pleased with your > Paramongaia. Can you tell us again whether much rain falls on the > containerized plant during the winter? And how cold is its coldest > exposure outside? > > Cynthia W. Mueller > >>>> wpoulsen@pacbell.net 01/13/04 01:16AM >>> > I can't believe it but two of my Paramongaia weberbauriis are > flowering. One is open and the other is sending up a bud. The flower is > > fantastic! My Hippeastrum aulicum also flowered for the first time. > > --Lee Poulsen > Pasadena area, California, USDA Zone 9-10 > > Paramongaia weberbaurii. This is an amazing flower with a very pleasant > > scent. First flowering for me. These grow outside all winter for me. > Photos taken January 2004 by Lee Poulsen. The first image is of the bid > > before it opened. The citrus in the second image is to get a sense of > the size of the flower (it's a mandarin orange my neighbor just picked > > off his tree). > http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/index.php/… > > Hippeastrum aulicum. This is the first time mine has bloomed for me. > It's kind of nice getting such a pretty Hippeastrum bloom naturally > outdoors in the middle of winter. Photos taken January 2004 by Lee > Poulsen. > http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/index.php/… > > _______________________________________________ > pbs mailing list > pbs@lists.ibiblio.org > http://www.pacificbulbsociety.org/list.php > _______________________________________________ > pbs mailing list > pbs@lists.ibiblio.org > http://www.pacificbulbsociety.org/list.php >