Donations to Houston, Oct. Meeting!

[ingg]

We are planning a donation to our sister club NASH in Houston.

These folks had their tanks slammed by the hurricane, a week without power pretty much wipes a planted tank! Many are starting from essentially ground zero.

I'm working out details now, but if you have trimmings to spare, please plan to bring them to the meeting. If you've never shipped plants before, don't worry, just bring the plants in a bag with species labelled and we'll set them up for shipping out.

No invasive plants please! Kep the polysperma to yourself.

My original thought was to have donors show an hour or two early, just to be able to gather plants and ship out that day - I haven't brought this up with the host of the meeting yet though, so hang on with that thought.

[krisw]

I think the host might prefer if we keep it at the regular time. The next couple weeks are crazy for me with company, wedding, and then the meeting. I'm going to need all the time I can spare to get the house/photography talk ready. Sorry to be a pain.

I'm looking forward to this donation, and the meeting tho!

[ingg]

No worries - we'll gather plants then, pack a box, and ship Monday then?

[PadreJP]

Just a thought...

Since it seems several of the local fish shops are friendly with us, any chance they would be willing to chip in some plants as well? Who knows, they might be able to make it a tax write-off as a charitable contribution or something like that. Not sure how well some of you know the actual owners (or whoever is "in charge" at these places), but I figured it was worth a shot.

[ingg]

Had some folks asking about sending early.

Please send the plants to:

Luis Navarro
7710 Beechnut St. ste 206
Houston, TX 77074

It'd be good to let him know they are coming, pm him here on the boards, his screen name is Navarro

Also an FYI - I'm finding myself iffy for making the October meeting, my neices will be in a wedding that happens to be in Westminster - don't know the time of the wedding, but I should probably go see my brother and his family. Will know more when I can figure out times.

Doesn't change anything, I'll ask Aaron or Kris to snag the donations, I can pick em up from someone, get it all packaged, and sent out - just wanted to make folks aware.

[Aaron]

Dave - I can handle sending this out on Monday to save you a trip. I'll pick up a couple of the larger flat-rate boxes from the PO this week to bring with me to the meeting.

[DonkeyFish]

If it's helpful at all I get a discounted rate through FedEx for my business. I'd be more than happy to take care of that end of things if we could get everything boxed up and label-ready at the meeting (or close enough).

[DonkeyFish]

So what, exactly, (for those of us less versed in the technical points) are species considered "invasive" for this purpose?

[ingg]

The main one I see at tour auctions all the time is Hygrophila Polysperma and Polysperma 'rosanervig'.

If you have true Marselea Quadrifolia, it is a federal invasive also as far as I know - at least I've seen it as not able to be shipped by importers. This one isn't commonly kept that I can figure out, and other marseleas are fine.

We'll sort them, Aaron and I, as best we can - those that can't be shipped we'll toss into the auction or let you know right off, but those are the few that come to mind immediately for me.

[krisw]

If I may offer a suggestion, I would propose that everyone bag and label their plants clearly, so that the recipients do not have to sort through a single bag with 10 different types of plants in there.