Date: Tue, 30 Mar 1999 18:39:32 -0800 From: "Andrew Marshall" <andrewm@olywa.net> To: cp@opus.hpl.hp.com Message-Id: <aabcdefg1023$foo@default> Subject: moving is such fun!
HI All,
Actually moving bites, really hard!!!
As I posted back in October, I am moving, or by now should say I have
moved. AT last after 5 months of beaurocratic red-tape I am living in my
own house and have the big greenhouse up and running.
Too late though for most of the collection. I had all but the
Sarracenia, a few Pings and such in my mother-in-laws greenhouse. It is a
small tunnel of single pane glass that leaks and is very hard to heat, save
when the sun comes out at which point it is difficult to cool. Not designed
to house much of anything save an assortment of 'house plants' and dwarf
fruit trees. We packed my collection in as best we could and prayed.
It rained so hard we flooded. The ground was like a wet sponge. Then
it froze like few have seen it do here ever. We hit 11 below 0'f one night,
then it climbed to 8 below, then up to 2 or 3 below to 2 or 3 above for a
week. Round the clock hard work as far as keeping the kerosene heater, oil
heater and electric heater going at night, as well as opening the door to
vent the furnace like heat that would build up during the day (did I say it
was very nice, clear and bright, though very windy after dumping a 12" of
snow on us, during the day) was not enough. Those plants that didn't freeze
were scorched and began to rot as fast as possible it seemed. With in the
two weeks that it took for this all to warm up (relatively speaking) and
resume flooding (97 straight days of rain, 30 straight days of winds over
30mph and the coldest season EVER!) I estimate I lost half the entire
collection, if you include the Sarracenia. If only the greenhouse stock are
looked at, 80% were killed or so severely damaged as to be totally ruined.
All lowland Nepenthes but my N. truncata were killed including several rare
forms of Nn. ampullaria, albomarginata, northiana rafflesiana, as well as
commoner varieties like Nn gracilis, mirabilis, vietchii, tobaica, and
reinwardtiana. Most of the highland varieties were also killed such as N.
macfarlenei some of the alata and ventricosa forms also. Most of the
hybrids I had were also killed. These were not little plants either as any
one who has ever visited and seen the collection in its former location can
attest.
I also lost all the Heliamphora, most of the Pinguicula, Utricularia,
Drosera, vft and even the Darlingtonia. I am over being heart broken,
there is to much work around here to do to grieve to long. Now I am on the
hunt again for the clones I had, and distributed in hopes of securing
cuttings later in the summer and perhaps rebuilding the collection again.
I am working on a complete list of what I had for posting here in hopes that
the clones are still around.
Meanwhile, I shall continie to get the rest of the collection in good
shape, and also continue the rest of the work inolved in starting a small
farm.
PS. in the move, all my computer files were deleted. I thought they
had been saved to disk, but due to my ineptness with the copmputer they were
not. I have lsot my addressbook so have no idea of most of the address of
all the friends I have out there. If you could drop me a line so I can try
and rebuild my address book again I would appreciate it.
Many thanks and good growing
Andrew
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