@stormy Maybe I was :D. The sterilized soil I got was from a nursery far away. I don't know. But they said there will be no fungus or anything else growing. :(

@stormy Right. But unlike plants, we cannot propagate ourselves from our cuttings :O :D

@NiallC. Remember a while ago when you said to ask in here if we thought something was spam? I'm curious about this gardening.stackexchange.com/a/29707/7305... It answers the question, but is obviously here to promote their company so it doesn't look right. It does disclose affiliation though. I could flag as spam; edit and only leave the actual answer part; come in here and ask you. I chose the latter! Even if it's already gone, maybe when you're bored you could let me know! Thanks!

Hi to all my friends in here - nice to see this room so lively! I'm not pinging anyone because I don't have time to chat, but wanted to say for the next time you all come in! Animal pictures coming too! stormy, I'm so glad you didn't erase what your cat wrote. Cats deserve a voice too!!!!!!

@Sue Hi! Not spam, IMO. It's not trying to sell something, there's no link to any site selling things, and there is disclosure of who the respondent is.

The signature could go, and "Is X edible" questions are supposed to be off-topic though

@NiallC. Thanks, that's why I asked you. I almost asked about the question being off-topic too. I'm glad you clarified that. :)

@stormy - on the subject of bonsai, I've got this theory that most bonsai nuts are men - its just the sort of thing men would like, being in control of something and making it bend to their will in an obsessive way-I;ve no evidence to support this theory though, just basing it on men;s tendency to become obsessive about lawns and other things...

@stormy like growing the largest marrow or biggest leeks/pumpkins - go on,now tell me you're a bonsai freak, that;ll put my theory off immediately;-))

@stormy - having read through your exchange with Stephie cv stands for curriculum vitae, which is a latin expression meaning a chronological history of your education and employment, you probably call it something else over there - if I wrote my cv, it;d date back to the dark ages now...

@stormy - also,it's never women out in the garden with a foot ruler measuring out precisely where to place the summer bedding plants like geraniums, its only men who do that - I'm generalising of course, not all men do it, but I've met a few who did...

@Bamboo Oh, I am in a fit of laughter!! You are so very correct! I'd never thought of Bonsai that way. I just know that the Japanese are an ancient bunch of gardeners that have the right to practice their skills with Bonsai. If one can keep a bonsai healthy and alive, then they must have learned a few things about plants. I have killed a few of these guys. One thing I was told by a Master Bonsai dude is that Bonsai needs to be watered everyday. No drainage holes?

@stormy that's right, someone bought me one about 4 years ago, someone's brother who only knew I was a gardener - my heart sank when I saw it, fortunately, I managed to kill it within 4 months.. what a pain they are

@Bamboo Can you imagine Landscape Architects sitting in an office dictating where to place plants?? Working for the city or any government just turned me off. A plan is but a place to start...laying out plants planting plants setting pathways lighting design, original grading as well all depend on having to get hands dirty!

I love and admire truly old Bonsai. But to sell these beautiful hundreds of years old plants to people who know nothing is a sin.

What time is it over there for you...?

@stormy oh tell me about it, I used to work part time in an architects office and the often asked me to say which plants would do where - after I discovered one architect designating 'ceanothus' for a particular area without specifying the variety, not realising the huge variation in size ... but really, they don't think about what's suitable to put plants in, I mean, what are you supposed to plant ina triangle no bigger than a foot in deep shade under a tree

I want something colourful in there, he said - my reply is unprintable in polite society...

One little plant of impatiens?

@Bamboo Same here, I could not be in government anything!! Tough enough being in the employ of anyone else. Just am unable to turn off my brain to make money. Thus self employment worked well!!

no,that;d only last the summer, he wanted permanent planting - they;re as bad a some designers, I mean, why has my oven got two grooves either side ofthe handle which fill up with muck and are impossible to clean?

I;ll tell you why, because it looks good as a design - I prefer simple design and practicality myself

@stormy the top boss at the architects told me I was unemployable (I was in my late thirties) and he was right - I'd been at home with two kids and started a small gardening business, and now wasn't prepared to take orders from anyone, and that;s what he meant - but they were useful to me to top up my income during quiet periods, specially in winter

@Bamboo Gotta get myself pulled together here!!! Tears and snot laughter!! Love your example!! This 'little' field of life knowledge is being so damaged for the laymen out there. Almost as bad as human physiology, exercise and nutrition! 'tis the reason I go on and on and repeat ad nauseum because to answer their question which clearly shows they know nothing is irresponsible. Something is gonna die!

@Bamboo 'Unemployable' simply means the owner or boss is STUPID. To have employees that actually think and one doesn't have to babysit their every move is just like Bonsai. Too much frickin' energy spent to be 'in control'! Sad. The best boss is the one that doesn't have to be better than his/her employees!

@stormy well, a little pragmatism is probably called for here - everything dies - I heard something on radio 4 yesterday, but can't remember who said it, some figure in history centuries ago - he said 'we're all dead; the living are just on holiday' - gave me quite a jolt, that but maybe he was someonewho believed in reincarnation, wish I could remember who it was said it originally

@stormy that particular boss was Mr. Bully at itmes - when he was stressed, you knew to keep clear, and the whole office wasn't a nice place to work - what's at the top filters down, its not the other way around when iot comes to human emotions, so a bully boss means fearful or spiteful staff

they offered me a permanent job on three occasions, but no way was I working there - good money, local job,no travel, but really, such a nasty atmosphere are times, plus I was fed up doing all the real work and my boss getting all the credit

anyway, I couldn't have borne to give up gardening...

@Bamboo Reincarnation...I have seen just one little documentary on this little boy who eerily knew what no kid should know about the war in Japan. Supposedly he was a young, 20, and got shot down in his plane. This was an amazing, believable article, documentary. Wouldn't that be nice? I'd have to insist I get to keep this mind!

@stormy - I dunno, it terrifies me, the thought of rebirth - I mean its been okay this time round, bornin the UK in the sixties, no war here, no starvation, civilized (wellsort of ) society, but next time who knows - not sure I wanna be born as a member of the Untouchable caste in India and live on a rubbish tip sorting through everyone';s rubbish, thanks...

@Bamboo Dang, we are truly kindred, I walked away from a $110 dollar per hour job for some microsoft people. My blood pressure had gone up from low to too high!

@stormy I worked as a PA in offices before I had children - after I'd had them and they started nursery, I'd already got into gardening, and that was it, no way back to office work for me, just couldn't bear it, so yea, we're the same for that, but we're not alone - many people change career between arouidn 28 and 35

@stormy back to rebirth - you know, the world isn't really a nice place, or rather, the people in it aren't, its pretty frightening thinking about having to negotiate it all again, all that dang suffering and angst, its exhausting - and that's juist in a normal average life - the things that happen to some people are just unbearable

@Bamboo And I think that changing careers a few times is absolutely healthy! My goodness, one of the more surest ways to see if on has actually grown up is when one looks back and is kinda embarrassed of the person they used to be! Hard to do.

@Bamboo I so very much agree. This has been so frickin' much work!! Angst, yes, major heartache, yes, trials and trials and trials and physical pain to boot. All of this precious knowledge then DIES with us. Not fair not fair at all. Have I mentioned my 'near death experience'?

@stormy depends on the person - there are small things I can think -of which are embarrassing, but I was always old in my head - my grandmother used to say I;d got an old head on young shoulders, far too sensible for my own good most of the time - what is your birth date (not the year,just the day and month) and yes you did tell me about your NDE

@stormy comes of having irresponsible and hopeless parents in my case - they were nice, but completely focused on themselves, we just sort of grew up on our own my sis and I - and I was the oldest, and that makes for grtowing up really, really quick...

I;m guessing you're a fire sign, and that;s why I wanted to know your birth day and month!

@Bamboo At age 8, in Japan, darted out from between two parked cars looking first left then right (they drove in Japan at that time mostly on the left...and then just being above the accident about 30 feet to see some dude praying? with a bunch of people a dozen or so standing around the front of this teal blue 4 door sedan where under the front tire was a little girls body? Oh, good. I didn't even think about this as anything until I was an adult.

@Bamboo I am water! Aquarius...February 7.

@stormy okay I was wrong then - but I bet you've a fire ascendent... can;t tell you that without time, place and full dob though...

and only then if the site I use is working, which it wasn't yesterday...

@Bamboo I grew up alone even though I was the oldest of 4!! I was incredibly immature however and didn't know it until much later...like now...grins!

@stormy well I still had a lot to learn - I was very fearful from a child up to having children and then therapy in my thirties - naturally cautious and a worrier, me, probably why I;m not rich, not a risk taker

@stormy - you really fancy doing it all again, living I mean? I;d like a nice long,quiet rest in a lovely garden full of birds, butterflies and bees myself...

@Bamboo In Japan, only 6 years old, I was constantly walking off base to a nearby horse riding facility, plopping down a wad of bills (I thought grew in this pagoda jar my mom actually used for the maid's money)...and was put up on a huge horse (Japanese love their tall horses)...can you imagine not knowing your kid was riding horses and running around Tokyo alone at 6??

@stormy no, I;m nearly having a fit thinking about it... one good thing about being reborn though - having a new body that doesn't hurt all the time and won't cooperate with me like it used to, and doesn't make enough noise to wake the dead when I get up in the mornings, all that clicking and cracking of joints, not to mention me groaning till the aches wear off...

@Bamboo There isn't a Garden in Heaven that I know about! Grins, or an oasis with virgins, or a condominium, or a castle. I know that I'd like a chance to do it all over again, using less energy for the society and more for appreciation of life around me!

@stormy but you knoiw you won't do that if you come back again - you'll be rooted in the physical right up to your forties, just like we all are, and looking around at what';s always there isn't what we do...

@Bamboo That is what I MEAN!! I insist if I get to go back to at least have some of this work and brain carry over. Who do I insist to??? Grins!! I love this beautiful world. I did a great job seriously using what I had to work with! I always think of these 3rd world countries of course and their work to survive.

Was it you who told me their mum said it is all physical work until the forties?

@stormy yep, my mother in law, but not quite work - she said the years before 40 were for the physical, the years after for the spiritual - and you can't insist on anything, I was told we select our life situations and our parents before returning...

Isn't this world and Universe just breath taking? And then you look back at us humans and go; we aren't a very cool species at all!

No, we're not - we just life forms, like everything else

we just happen to be self conscious with a large pre frontal cortex and the ability to speak

@Bamboo I wish I could remember about the reincarnation of this boy!! HE, this little boy told his daddy that HE CHOSE THEM! He knew how to describe the hotel they were in when they conceived. This is one of the few BELIEVABLE videos on this internet...

@stormy yep, there was a programme I watched a while back - one of them was particularly striking, an American child actually, and it was unexplainable, plus there was a boy in India who insisted he had a wife and four children in the village not far away - when they gave in and took him there, there were his former wife and his children, in the house where he'd said they were....

the Indian boy I knew about years ago... its pretty difficult to explain away

@Bamboo All animals communicate to the extent they need to within their own species. There are also universal SPEAKS between different species. I KNOW that plants are able to communicate. Each species knows, see, hears, can feel, taste and smell that which they only need to survive. Us humans don't even use but 10% of our brains? How does that fit with what we know of the patterns in nature!!!????

That American child, was it a boy obsessed with fighter planes and war ships?

@stormy its not necessarily true we only use 10% of our brains - latest research suggests we do use all of it, or most oit anyway. No, the American boy had previously been the writer of Gone With tyhe Wind - hee remembered being crushed under a runaway tractor in a field, and he knew where it happened too, and that is what happened to the author, bedjke===before Gone with the Wind was made into a film

he died before Gone withthe Wind became a movie, and he was mown down by a runaway tractor

he had nightmares about it from very small, until they took him to the place he said it happened when he was about 6 or 7 - he walked around, went to a small lake and said this had been his wife's favouirite place, they left, and he never mentioned it again and the nightmares went

@Bamboo The most I've seen done in research is 15% maybe 20% use of our brains. Hard to swallow knowing Muddah Nature doesn't waste ANYTHING...much less keep such an incredible brain alive and being passed on if we don't use all of it!

@stormy what you gotta remember is that neurology isn't that well informed - they can't even explain why some people get certain types of migrane - I get aura or visual migraine, which is caused by some neurological disturbrance, but they don't know what, why or how... what they don't knkow about the brain is far greater than what they do know,I;'ve come to realise

I sometimes wonder if that';s because there's a soul and emotions at work, interfacing with the brain, its not just a piece of machinery....

@Bamboo Too weird...how horrible for him. I just wish we put more money into the stuff right here on this planet in this life...hey our brains? The ocean? Before jumping the gun to go to another planet.

@stormy I;ve been an avid reader of scifi most of my life, and going to another planet to live might be the only option when we muck up this one completely...

@Bamboo The SOUL. How the hell could I have the most vivid memories in my life at 8 years old HOVERING above my body? A soul or something ...i felt no fear, no anger, no nothing, just interested.

AHHHHH for real? We are too much alike, Bamboo! I read every single science fiction in the library, every dang Edgar Rice Borough Tarzan and Mars series. Have you read The Martian?

@stormy well I've neveryet heard a satisfactory explanation as to why everyone loses the exact same amount of weight at the point of death, regardless of their body size... Rice Burroughs I don

We HAVE TO be able to travel to other planets to survive as a species. Though these days i think we should all just disappear...Edgar Rice Burroughs...same category with Nancy Drew books!

don't think I;ve read, but Asimov, Philip K Dick, Ray Bradbury,can't remember them all - u sed to have a large collection of scifi, binned it all whenI moved to a small apartment

dIn later years, I gravitated to some science fantasy - Ursula le guin and the like

Grins, throwing away books is sad. I've done the same. I've also taken box loads to a used book store and got a couple hundred bucks!!

well, whenI say binned, I mean taken to the library or the charity shop

but I wish I could have kept them all...

HA HA HA...I have to say I LOVE talking with you over there in London. Such a treat!! Such a small world after all! I've got animals and plants that need my attention...gotta go...stay in touch. What a joy you are Bamboo!!

@stormy I'm just trying to remember the name of the book that the film Soylent Green was based on, starring Charlton Heston - whatever it was, I';d read it before the movie came out, it wasn't called soylent green... I'm off to bed shortly anyway

@Bamboo Read that book...richard...fleicher? Even the matrix is scarily coming to be true. 1984? We have been there done that...have you had the chance to look up Trey Gowdy? Seriously a human you need to see! He will give you hope that humans have evolved!! Grins.

What time is it for you? 11:45 ish?pm?

HUGGS!!

@stormy its now 12.55 at night, when you asked what time it was, it was actually 22.42... re the matrix,I read recently, think it was the New Scientist, that there are some quantum scientists who are beginning to believe we do, indeed, occupy a matrix, similar to the movie - I find it hard to believe, if that were the case, why am I having to put up with arthritis...

sorry, 23.42 when you asked, not 22.42...