Grow Where You're Planted

Symbolism

2010-03-31T00:54:00.001-04:00

Before I bought my first gardening book and before I cared about containers that have proper drainage, I knew the importance of having certain plants in the home. Since college, every time a friend moved to a new apartment I brought them an aloe plant for their kitchen because my family always used it for burns. I've also kept jade in my apartments because my mother, a former Feng Shui consultant, taught me as a child that jade plants are a symbol of abundance.

My first couple of jade plants struggled to stay alive, the first went neglected and the plump leaves shriveled up. I lavished the second with water but it died anyway. In retrospect, it probably had a bug problem that I failed to notice.

Which brings me to my current jade, lucky number 3 (my favorite number). I bought it at a flower shop in Manhattan and was skeptical about its ability to thrive because it had been planted in a small glass fish bowl. But I decided to go for it because 1. the price was cheaper than my previous jade (which also made me more skeptical about its quality), 2. I figured I would re-pot it later, and 3. there were 3 jade shoots in the container, lucky 3 again for a plant that's supposed to bring prosperity.

So I took it home and soon found out that the glass container actually worked well because I could see when there was enough water. The 3 little stems did just fine where they were and really thrived once I brought the plant home to Pennsylvania from Brooklyn. It received extra afternoon sun and the petals changed from all green to a lovely bit of crimson on the bottom. The whole plant flourished, until about a month ago.

I noticed aphid egg casings on the new growth of the jade and didn't know what to do at first. If you read my earlier post from last fall you'll know what a tough time I had after using horticultural spray on my other succulents. Luckily the weather was unseasonably warm so I left it out on the deck, ready for the poor thing to die off. But instead, my favorite little insect totems came to the rescue, two ladybugs. One was female and the other male, I know this because they proceeded to mate before getting down to business on the aphids.

The two ladybugs hung out on my jade for 4 or 5 days and once they left the plant was completely clear of aphids. My prosperity plant was saved by my favorite totems. I like to think that this is symbolism, for good things to come.

Gardening on a Dime and Avoiding Waste

2010-03-22T03:10:00.000-04:00

I recently ran low on supplies for this year's gardening and money is tight this week, so I decided to improvise with some of my seed starting. For those of you who are also gardening on a budget or just don't like to waste materials that are still usable, here's a technique I put together for using would-be trash for seed starting. All you need is some used tea lights, an empty rotisserie chicken container, sewing pins, and some coconut coir pellets (about $3 at Loews, the only ingredient I purchased specifically for this project).

First I scraped out any left over wax from the tea lights and removed the wicks. Then I poked a few holes in the thin metal with the sewing pins (thick hat pins work even better), this offers drainage for your seedlings.

Next I used the coconut coir to fill the tea lights. Just let me state how amazing coconut coir is and how easy it is to go overboard with the little pellets. Coconut coir holds water extremely well and expands like crazy. At the Flower Show, one of the vendors had a wheel barrow full of the moist airy material from one brick-sized piece. Once a little water is added, you only need one pellet for 3 tea lights.

I put a couple of seeds in each tea light. For today, I planted sage, catnip (for China, my cat), and just for grins, I've planted seeds from last summer's Hibiscus plant. I covered the seeds with more coir and later, I'll water them with a fertilizer because I've heard that the material doesn't contain many nutrients, it's just good for holding water and allowing roots to grow.

Finally, I used a rotisserie chicken container (which has been washed out and the sticker scratched off) to act as a little hot house. If you don't have one of those containers you can use almost any plastic containers that have clear lids.

I'm excited to see how well this will work. If anyone has experience with coconut coir I'd love to hear about it. I haven't seen many reviews online, I guess it's still a fairly uncommon gardening material in this country.

The more you know:

For more information about coconut coir, check out this site, which compares different seed starting mediums. http://www.planetnatural.com/site/xdpy/kb/coconut-coir.html

How the Flower Show practically ushered in the Spring

2010-03-15T03:30:00.002-04:00

The Philadelphia International Flower Show went well last week. Over 250,000 visitors packed the PA Convention Center's floral oasis, looking for a taste of spring and exotic plants from around the globe. Looking back, I'm amazed to see that the show seemed to mark the transition from deep winter snow to pre-spring balminess.

Thursday, my second day of Flower Show setup, started extra wet and frigid. And the snow increased through the day.

By the end of the day this was my car at the Malvern train station. It was hazardous getting home but a fairly mild storm compared to the previous few.

Bags and bags of flowers waited at the ready while pungent piles of fertilized soil were plopped in place by construction equipment.

The Indian Wedding displayed by Jamie Rothstein included a life-sized elephant topiary complete with pink nail polish.

These carnation flamingos were one of the many exotic animals created by natural plant materials.

Over at the New Zealand display, the Blandys of Stony Bank Nursery pulled off a 3 part garden that incorporated indigenous plants and cultural symbols, with british gardens.

The Camden Children's Garden created an edible garden display sponsored by Campbell's Soup. It had all the makings of a salad like lettuce, tomatoes, even broccoli.

Meadowbrook Farm is a popular vendor and grower of many of the plants in the show.

Almost every hour there was a performance on the showcase stage. The night of the Preview Party was full of great performances.

The Brazilian musical group Minas serenaded us with samba tunes and this dancer made me think of carnival or the West Indian Day parade in Brooklyn.

This giraffe made of wires, glass, and orchids loomed over the South African display.

This is my mom at the Preview Gala. The mannequins in the background were completely clothed in plant materials. The South African Display, from AIFD, received a People's Choice award.

Schaffer Designs used simple shapes and stark white to mimic the cold natural world of the North Pole.


I took the R5 regional rail into Philadelphia most days and this train attendant really knew how to celebrate. Read about it on the Flower Show blog, which I also contribute to.

MODA Botanica used old shipping crates to build an innovative modern display. This was a personal favorite because I love graffiti.


I brought my Grandma to the show towards the end of the show. She liked the clever displays like AIFD's but I think she really enjoyed the more traditional gardens.

In addition to the amazing professional displays there were amateur class competitions with gorgeous entries.

These odd looking plants, known as corpse flowers or voodoo lilies, are known to have an impressive smell when they open. By impressive I mean, nasty (they call it corpse flower for a reason). I'm kind of glad it didn't open completely during the show.

This was a floral birthday party and although the frame is a bit pretentious, the off-center view makes a neat picture.

This Indian wedding display was so romantic one couple used it as the site of their engagement. Read about it here.

This last view is of the entrance from the Horticultural Society's offices on the third floor. As you can see the show was jam-packed from the first to the final day.

By the last day of the show the weather had warmed up so much that much of the snow in the area had melted. And in the beginning of the following week the earliest flowers started popping up.
Of course I know not to get my hopes too high when it comes to the weather. The lions and lambs of March are fickle around here. But it's encouraging to see the grass again and know that the cold doesn't last forever.

Snow, A Blessing And A Curse

2010-02-22T12:00:00.001-05:00

As I look longingly out the window every morning at the knee deep snow on the hill outside, I think of the warm spring weather to come and how it seems like it will take months for it to melt. I've been trying to plan for what I want to grow, where to plant, and how much space I'll need. In general, I'm anxious to start gardening. But then as I lift my arm to shield my eyes from the ultra bright sun reflecting off the snow, I'm grateful to have the extra light at this time. That's because, luckily, I decided to start my tomato and pepper seeds indoors on the day after the first big snowfall.

I planted the seeds in little peat pellets and I'm keeping them moist and toasty in a Jiffy box by my bright window. And thanks to the snow the seeds have been getting more light by my window than they would normally, I don't even have to use an extra lamp. For the peppers specifically, I heard they need heat to germinate, and since I have a heat vent by the window I positioned the box over the vent, giving the box just enough heat. So I haven't had to spend any extra money creating a hothouse environment for the seeds.

The tall sprouts pictured are my tomatoes. They come from the seeds of the tomatoes I grew last year. The little sprouts are peppers from a former co-worker. It's so encouraging to see plants growing from the seeds I saved last fall. I have such an abundance I may give some of the tomato plants away and swap the extra seeds.

The More You Know:
Here is a good site that talks about seed germination with Jiffy boxes and peat pellets. http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/696468/
Storing veggie seeds is pretty easy and fun here's a site for seed saving.
http://www.fedcoseeds.com/seeds/seed_saving.htm
And here's a site that makes seed saving an artsy fartsy endeavor.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/homegrowndotorg/sets/72157623267324767/show/
For seed swaping info.
http://www.seedswaps.com/

Snow day! Having a cat is great, having good neighbors is even better.

2010-02-07T01:52:00.000-05:00

First off, to my friends in NYC who apparently saw only a dusting of snow in the last day, I'm both amazed at the difference and totally envious. Usually the weather in PA is not far off from the NY metro area. But believe me when I say my area to the south west of Philadelphia had snow up to my upper thighs and hips!

I woke up Saturday with no plan to even set foot outside until Sunday. I made breakfast and watched the Magnificent Seven on TMC (it's very well done for an old western/Japanese knock-off). Later I planned to start growing my tomato seeds. But when the snow stopped around 1pm I couldn't help but notice all the neighbors starting to shovel. I even saw the people next door trying to drive their jeep through the snow to flatten and/or disperse some of the heavy powder. The jeep revved and sputtered, really tearing through that snow.

As I sat in my pajama pants and t-shirt I thought about how hard everyone was working and it occurred to me that if I waited until Sunday to shovel I might wind up exerting even more energy than them because the surface of the snow could ice over. So after the movie I dragged myself upstairs and pulled on some layers of clothes. I strapped my feet into a pair of ultra ugly but functional snow boots. I popped on my mp3 player and went to work.

Outside, my next-door neighbors, a married couple around my age, were finishing their jeep plowing and had started to shovel the snow that remained on the driveway. I said hello, they said hello and we went to work with our mp3 players on. But once they got to the bottom of their driveway, the wife stepped over to my side and started digging up my drive. I said, "You really don't have to do that." She said she knows but it's okay, and kept digging up the drive as I dug down.

Her husband finished their driveway with some ice melter, then let the dog out to poop. After that, he joined his wife in helping to shovel my driveway. I was so grateful and told them so but they had their mp3 players on and they just nodded at me. By the time the loose snow was done the sun was setting. If I had been alone shoveling I never would have finished by dark. I thanked them when they finished then I tried scrapping up the last layer of smooshed ice and snow. I considered running to the store to get ice melt (the one thing I forgot to get the day before) but my mom suggested the extra gallon of kitty litter in the basement. I sprinkled it all over the driveway and I'll see in the morning how well it works. It's a good thing I went to Petco last week.

I finally got to start my tomatoes after dinner, while I watching the Temple Grandin movie on HBO. The tomatoes and other veggies won't be ready for months but I won't soon forget my neighbor's kindness. They're definitely getting first pick of the crops and I hope they'll enjoy the Philadelphia Flower Show tickets I think I'll leave in their front door.

The passion of the vine

2010-02-01T12:00:00.004-05:00

I've been growing passion flower (passiflora) since the beginning of last summer. Or should I say, I planted the seeds last summer and now I'm finding that some of the seeds are still sprouting. I planted maybe 8 seeds in a big planter and really didn't expect much because I'd heard they were hard to grow. I left the planter outside, through last summer's unusual driving rain and sunless days. After a few weeks, around the time I expected to see seedlings, all of the rain mixed with the soil and congealed into clear gelatinous globs. I had a planter full of damp soil and jelly, until about two months later, when the first seedling popped up.

At first I thought it was a wayward sassafras seed that had taken root. But as it vined upward I realized that I was in fact dealing with passiflora! The lone seedling grew fast in the corner of the big planter and I bought it a tiny trellis to climb. By the end of the summer I hoped it would have bloomed in one of the brilliant ways pictured here from Longwood Gardens and University of British Columbia Botanical Garden:

But as the vine grows on I see no crazy alien-looking flowers yet (actually the word "passion" in passion flower comes from the the way the flower looks like Jesus' crown of thorns).

I brought the plant inside when the weather got chilly and I put it in one of those self watering lechuza pots. And once I brought it in the vine really took off. The trellis was quickly overcome and the passiflora even tried to wrap its curly little shoots around my mother's jade plant. To my surprise though, some of the older leaves in the middle of the trellis shriveled up and turned yellow while the outer parts kept growing.

When I asked someone at my local garden center for advice on this, she said the plant naturally thins itself out in preparation for winter. It knew it would be getting less energy from the sun and therefore didn't need as many leaves for photosynthesis. Talk about brilliant instincts!

As if I hadn't learned enough surprising things about this vine, all at once, about a month ago three more seedlings popped out of the soil and started growing like weeds. That's an 8 month germination period. I don't know what took so long for them to wake up but once the weather warms I think I need to find a home for all these vines. I might keep one inside to climb up my bed railing. I'm not sure how well the plant does outside in this zone (6b) but if someone nearby wants to take one off my hands I'm open. There's four total. I'm hoping this summer will bring blooms and maybe even some passion fruit.

How's it growing? Long time no seed.

2010-01-31T01:29:00.000-05:00

It's been a while since I last posted and I want to start doing it more regularly because I'm constantly learning new things about the stuff I'm growing and I think I should have some record of whatever the heck I'm doing. For this post I'll say,the succulents are slowly struggling back to life after the events described in the last post.

I like to try and find a lesson or at least a bit of serendipity in every mistake I make and I guess my recent outlook on gardening would be that bit of serendipity. I had two thriving strawberry pots brimming with succulents that are now in shambles. I've pulled out most of the ones that have started to grow back and transplanted them to more hospitable containers. Which means I'm left with strawberry pots filled with soil. So I started thinking today, "Why don't I use them to grow what's meant to grow in them? Strawberries!" Then I thought of the other edible stuff that would probably do well in that sort of habitat, herbs especially. I'll find as much variety and function for the pots as possible

Lately I've been trying to stop being so consumer driven when it comes to my free time. I still over eat and quitting has been driving me nuts. But I make clocks when I have the money for parts, I draw, I run, I've even tried teaching myself to knit (although it's getting frustrating trying to learn to knit from a book with only a few black and white photos). In general, I've gotten more creative in the past year and developed myself from wanting to make "stuff" to trying to make useful things like food. I saved tomato and pepper seeds from the summer that I want to try growing in a homemade earth box on the back deck since there's not much room in the yard. I also have spinach, lettuce, and nasturtium that I hope to grow in one of those deck railing planter boxes.

Last year I was starting to get my footing as a gardener. The succulents were lovely and pretty easy to keep outside. They'll come back I'm sure. But now I really want to test my skills. I want beauty and I want function!

WHAT GOES AROUND...

2009-11-19T18:50:00.003-05:00

Just a warning to readers this is a fairly long entry. But if you love container plants, especially succulents as much as I do you'll want to read on and maybe learn from my pitiful karmic lesson:

At the end of the summer I went on a spider eradication campaign with my beloved succulent containers. Everything that had been displayed proudly on the back deck had to be de-spidered…

Now before go accusing me of being some sort of prissy irrational novice gardener, please take a moment to think about where I’m coming from. I am all for using natural repellents for harmful pests. And I understand that spiders are more helpful than harmful to the tiny habitat known as my back deck.

But this summer I was an avid watcher of the Showtime program Nurse Jackie and in one of the last episodes of the season a patient came into the ER with what he thought was a cockroach in his ear.
A nurse shined a light in the ear to draw the roach out. I knew this was why he used the light because I actually know someone who once got a beetle stuck in his ear and the thing was drawn out by light. But on Nurse Jackie the little critter didn’t come out. That’s because it wasn’t a roach, it was a spider, so they had to flush it out with a syringe of water. And of course the damn spider bit the guy a couple of times as they tried to get it out. That night I slept with wads of toilet paper jammed in my ears.

Thoughts of that episode resurfaced later in the summer when I realized that I’d have to bring all the succulents from outside inside for the winter and the best place to keep them would be in the upstairs loft, right outside my bedroom.

I’ll admit my plans were a bit frantic but I thought they were well thought out considering the scale of my task. Spider webs were woven over almost every fleshy leaf (and they actually looked kind of pretty when shining in the sun outside.)

I talked to my co-workers at Mainline Gardens about my dilemma. I told them I didn’t want to let the plants die outside in the cold, I didn’t want to kill the spiders if I didn’t have to, and if I had to I wanted to use something that would be harmless to the plants. My best bet turned out to involve making the spiders supremely uncomfortable so they’d eventually leave. But some spiders would have to die in the process. This option involved using Diatomaceous Earth and letting the containers sit in the garage for about a week before bringing them inside.

Right away some spiders came out when I swept out the webs. Others emerged as I sprinkled the powdery Diat. Earth around. Apparently the flour-like substance is made of minute diatoms, eggshells and ground up crustaceans that are jagged and cut the legs of insects as well as their poor insides when they breathe it in. I felt like a horrible kid throwing salt on slugs, but the Diat. Earth is supposed to be good for plants by serving as a kind of fertilizer. Well the Diat. Earth did the trick, along with the transition week inside the garage. By the time I moved the pots up to the loft I’d seen about six spiders crawl away from their ruined homes. My process worked very very well. Too well.

I realize now that I was so clouded by my arachnophobia that I didn’t look at all the angles. I failed to consider the other critters that lurk in and around plants, especially the tiny harmful ones. The ones spiders help keep at bay. Critters like aphids.

About 3 weeks after bringing the plants inside I noticed the little white casings and black dots collecting in the beautiful florets of my desert rose. There were too many to scrape off so I instinctively reached for the stuff I use for aphids on regular houseplants, horticultural oil.

It worked on the aphids but no one ever told me that the skins of most succulents take differently to certain substances than other leafy plants. So I actually made the situation worse by trying to fix it. The oil essentially burned the leaves, so they slowly turned brown and started to fall away.

Now I have to replant, move things around and pray that most of the damage is salvageable.

This is where irrational fear and naiveté will get you in life, stripped bare and burned. If only I had just toughened up and invested in some earplugs for bedtime…

Succulent Love

2009-10-22T16:56:00.000-04:00

Succulents are my obsession these days. Especially since the weather has gotten cooler and the outdoor flower beds are as full as can be. I love succulents because they have not always loved me in return. For over a year I had about four cactuses and one jade on a windowsill in my Brooklyn apartment. I bought the cacti because they looked like they would grow tall (they were kind of phallic shaped) and I didn't want my adopted cat to jump on the windowsill. She somehow managed to snake her way around them and jump up there anyway but I kept the cacti regardless. Miss kitty has since gone on to new foster parents (too much reckless urination.)

I quickly found that the jade and cacti were easy to keep alive but it was not easy to get them to grow. No matter how often or how little I watered them they stayed the same size.

Eventually I moved back home to Pennsylvania and put them on the windowsill in my bedroom. The change of atmospere and sun must have been too jarring and most of them died off accept the jade and a smaller cactus. But since I started paying more attention to gardening I think the succulents picked up on my new found respect for plants. The jade has taken on a deeper green and begun growing in a spiral according to the direction of the sun and the small cactus is growing new limbs.

New succulents like the ones in the picture have come into my life as well. Over the summer I became inspired by "found" objects like an old yellow watering can, strawberry pots and old bonsai pots. The possibilities seem endless now. Some of my succulents grow so fast I can't keep up with new plantings. The red strawberry pot above has become overrun with those pearl shaped succulents since I took the picture and I've had to do new plantings with them. I think I may even start selling the pots I make. I'd just have to work out a strategy for getting new pots and making sure the plants have time to take root. Maybe I'll post samples someday soon!

Slug Shots: Cell phone pics and gardening tricks

2009-10-10T00:08:00.003-04:00

In late May I planted salvia, marigolds and a red flower that's supposed to attract butterflies. Red is supposed to be a color of abundance and it turned out that I got an abundance of slugs.

As the leaves were slowly eaten up the brilliant red drained away and everything slowly fell apart.

This is how they looked within two weeks. I wanted to stop the slugs but I couldn't bring myself to kill them the old fashioned way i.e. salt. Sure I was the cruel kid who was fascinated by the physical reaction of spiders drenched in Windex and salty shriveled slugs on the hot driveway. But I'm an adult now. If I'm going to kill a living creature I want it to look as unagonizing as possible. So I stood out in the driveway next to my shriveled plants, tin foil in one hand and full-bodied beer in the other. I popped the cap, took a drink then folded the foil into a bowl shape and poured a third of the bottle inside. I set my make-shift slug trap in the mulch by the flowers and actually watched one slug make a slow U-turn toward the beer once it got a whiff.

Apparently slugs like the yeast in beer. So they slowly slink into the trap and drown. As you can see below, the flowers bounced back wonderfully after the culprits were eliminated. Through the Summer I shared a few more bottles with the garden slugs and every time I did, the plants came back to life. I'm sure their deaths were more painful than I want to admit, but I like to think they went out feeling high as a kite. And I like having a good excuse for drinking while gardening.

Nobel Rant

2009-10-09T13:48:00.001-04:00

As I've previously "Tweeted," I was surprised to hear Obama won the Nobel Peace prize. It seemed premature, as many people are saying. But I'm starting to see it more as an "Ata' boy!" statement of encouragement from the world. A way of saying, "keep doing what you're doing. Even though your actions aren't completely accepted in your own country, we think you're doing something good and healthy for the world in the long run." When Martin Luther King Jr. won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 he was not the most popular man in America.

While the glowing support from the Nobel Committee may seem premature I think it's also important to note how shockingly vindictive his opponents have been. From Rush Limbaugh declaring very early on that he wants Obama to fail, to the proud conservatives that actually celebrated when an American city lost the Olympic bid, just because it was a personal blow to Obama. It doesn't seem that he's been in office long enough for the effects of his policies to really be felt, yet conservatives are getting so ralled up you would think they were all thrown into poverty the moment Obama was elected. All the hatred seems to be based on theory, on ramifications they think his policies could have. When people protested President Bush it was because soldiers have been coming home in caskets from a misguided war. Or because he didn't pay enough attention to warnings about Bin Laden. Or because he hired an incompetent person to run FEMA. Or for the myriad of other reasons his adminstration became the most unpopular administration in a generation.

In Obama's acceptance speech on election night he said he needs everyone's help. I thought that was such an important statement and hoped people would heed the call. With all the bailouts Obama's administration has given this year I'm glad the Nobel committee is willing to give him a little bailout, even if it is a measly $1.5 million. But the statement of solidarity is more important than anything. Maybe he'll see that people really do think he's on the right track, even if it's not the most popular one at the moment.

growing where planted...

2009-10-08T23:50:00.001-04:00

Since adolescence I’ve found temporary fulfillment through consumption. Every season has held a new flavor. In the Autumn there’s candy corn and leaf shaped candies made of maple syrup. Winter brings the crisp flavor of peppermint and cinnamon candy canes, hot cocoa (also flavored with mint), and Valentine’s Day conversation hearts. Easter bunny marshmallow Peeps and jelly beans offer a segue into sweet tea, water ice and all the sweetness of Summer.

I can’t begin to imagine the hundreds of dollars I’ve spent on momentary gastric bliss. But in the last few years I’ve found a new form of fulfillment that broadens and intensifies with each season. That’s because I’ve been slowly making myself at home in nature. First I overcame my disdain for jogging by trekking down the historic stony trails of Valley Forge. Then my love of trail jogging followed me to Brooklyn’s Prospect Park and evolved into floral and landscape photography as I found myself passing the Brooklyn Botanical Garden on the way from the park to the subway. There, I began to wonder about the way gardens develop in different parts of the world. The Shakespearean garden juxtaposed with the Japanese garden brought up questions of what a native plant really is. Now that I'm back home in Southeastern PA, working for a plant nursery, I have more opportunities to get to know the plants and landscapes I've always been curious about.

I started with lavender and yellow pansies back in April. (Isn't it ironic that the flower that stands up to harsh weather at the beginning and end of the growing season bears the name we give to wimps?) I quickly learned why some of the landscapers that come into the nursery have knee problems. After flipping over a blue recycling bin I had a sturdy seat at the perfect height for gardening. The hardest part of doing that first planting (and even now it's hard for me) was sticking my trowel into the ground and realizing that I sliced into a poor little earthworm. Gardening has so many moral conundrums. When is it okay to kill a creepy crawly? Can I drive pests away without killing them?

I used to look at gardening as another way for us to act like mini-Gods. We decide what lives or dies in our little Edens, we think we know all and see all. A weed is whatever is tough to control, and boy do they have to go! But now that I've given gardening a serious try I'm finding that like most things in life the situation is not so black and white. Sure I'm playing God by setting up certain plants in certain places. But there's no way to plan for everything that happens during and after the planting. My little lantana plant could have a sudden growth spurt and become more like a weed. Or the pansies I expected to crap out by early June could stay strong and drop seeds that flower out of nowhere in October. Aphids could creep up on my spinach leaves before I have the chance to smother them out. There's no complete control. I'm learning that life's disappointments can't be fixed by downing a bag of candy corn. I have to roll with whatever the universe hands me, and so far the outcome has almost always been pleasant.