Australian and New Zealand Gardening: Bromeliads for novices & addicts, October 2012, 1 by perke_patch

perke_patch wrote:
HI. Ian I think your aechmea looks like one I have called tochintina. It is tall and thin with that nice dark throat.

Nev I love your neo Phyllis. the colour is devine. I didn't know about those concentric rings showing concentrica in parentage. I always looked for the concentric pattern of the leaves but now I'm sitting here thinking of all the neos with the concentric ring markings.

Shirley I notice that your tim plowman has 2 tubes. a word of warning ... they don't like to be alone so always leave 2 tubes joined together but when you get 4 tubes joined together always cut between them to leave 2 groups of 2 joined. this way both groups are pupping for you. When we got our first tim plowman I was a very good friend and gave Jen the first pup. a few years later when I went to Jen's place I saw her tim plowman that was a pot full of tubes and ours was still sitting alone and sulking. It sulked for years before pupping again. we had about 6 or 7 tubes in th pot until recently when Johnny took a couple out and sold hem to someone. I'm not happy with that now. they look so lonely. I've told him not to sell anymore. I love galactic warrior. Johnny asked Olive how she got them to grow so big and she said to leave the pups on till they are big, then they grow bigger. if you take them off small they mature before they get the size. We've had galactic warrior for a while now but Johnny thought Olive's were so big and well coloured he just had to have another one.

Nev info about neo Phyllis. The story we got from Phyllis Hobbs is that at one of the meeting she and Olive swapped plants. as they were both unnamed Phyllis called her plant from Olive "neo Olive" this one is now named as neo morrissiana. Of course Olive called her neo Phyllis. this has now been registered as Phyllis OT for Olive Trevor as she registered it. I would say that Phyllis got the plant from Alan Freeman as it obviously has concentreca and he used it in most f his hybrids.

Sue we had one of those weekends too where you just want to forget it. the week has started out the same. we just want to have some time to ourselves to do what we need to do... no requests for help from anyone... just peace and quiet. Today the old lady next door asked Johnny to help her son get the fallen tree off the roof next door. we knew we had to help Chris move the last ute full of stuff from Dayboro so Johnny and I went over first thing this morning with the ladder and chainsaw. Of course no sign of her son to help. It turned out to be not only her olf umbrella tree (half went west in the SE winds last weekend and last Friday in those very strong W winds half of what was left came straight towards us. The peach tree and half another tree along our fence in her yard also came down but luickily straight into her yard not towards our yard. so Johnny simply used the chainsaw to cut the branches into manageable sized pieces which I dragged out of his way. we didn't make piles or anything but left it all spread out all over her yard thinking her son would turn up today to cart it all to the dump. He came late this afternoon after we got home but simply looked at it all and left it. we are not doing anything else or her now as once we had finished cutting it all up and lugged the ladder and tools home again we were on the back deck having a well deserved cuppa when her grandson came out of the flat under her house with his girlfriend and walked around to front yard, hopped in his car and left. If we'd known he was in bed we would have called him out to help. that's it. no more. we are sick of being used when they do nothing. we are so busy doing for everyone else all the time we don't get time to do our own stuff. anyone ever feel like that????

tomorrow we have to go out to Johnny's sisters to have brakes changed on our car. we'll probably get nothing done tomorrow now either. I can't keep my eyes open now so I'm off to bed. I'll have a quick look for a pic of ae tockintina. no success. will have to get a pic tomorrow. too tired to even dowload pics from camera tonight. will do it tomrrow.
pic 1 is our ae red ribbons for Sue.

Night
Wendy