Hmmm - I have read that darker leaves and elongated petioles are a sign of too little light. But, not sure I've read anything about the leaves themselves changing form. I've heard of leaves changing colors when a plant sports. I wonder if it could change shape, too?

(Can you tell I don't have a clue?)

Can you give us a little more information? Is it the actual leaf or the 'stem' that is elongating? How old is the violet? Does it have a name?

Some violets have naturally long petioles, or stems. There is also a leaf type called 'longifolia'. If it is a very young plant with this type of foliage, it may not appear elongated until the plant begins to mature.

There are some cultural issues that could also be going on, but having a little more information can steer us in the right direction.

Barbara

I'm with Barbara :)

Also - is there a way that you could share pictures? That's worth over a thousand words (which might make for too long of a post and agitation on some people, LOL)

Dora

flowergirl70ks--It might be too little light.. But I'm with Barbara & Irina--More info and maybe a pic would be great :-)

Lathy wrote:
"(Can you tell I don't have a clue?)"

Then why attempt to answer? :-p

Oops it was Dora, not Irina.... Sorry Dora!!!!!

Sorry for what? LOL

Dora

For calling you Irina by accident up there... Altho I've met Irina, and she's awesome. So, I s'pose certainly coulda have called you worse! :-)

Aha - very large and awesome - that's me. We all should meet in person - in Raleigh and in NJ in 2011 - so we can put the faces with the names.

Irina

"m3mald wrote: Lathy wrote:
"(Can you tell I don't have a clue?)"

Then why attempt to answer? :-p "

Because I was being welcoming and friendly. When I first joined, few people posted here at all and often only one person would answer my questions. It's only in the last month or so that people seem to have come back. Now that more people are posting, I guess I don't have to, but I'd gotten in the habit. I think it's nice to let people know that even if you don't know something, you're thinking of them. I usually try to end posts such as that with, "I hope someone else will be able to help you" but I forgot. I'll continue to do this when I can as I see it as a nice thing to do.

Flowergirl, hope you found your answer. We got a little off-track in this thread so, if you get a chance, let us know if you still need more info.

These are not actually my violets. a friend depends on me for advice, and I just have never had this experience before with having leaves get long. She says its the leaves and stems both, and they have quit blooming. Not just one or two, but probably more than half of what she has. she says they are healthy, but just getting longer leaves. She has broken off the outside leaves, and repotted a few, and now they are doing the same thing.
I'm thinking it must be light and fertilizer. She lives in NC and I'm in KS, so I can't see them, and she doesn't know how to post pics.

L/O wrote: "Because I was being welcoming and friendly. When I first joined, few people posted here at all and often only one person would answer my questions. It's only in the last month or so that people seem to have come back. Now that more people are posting, I guess I don't have to, but I'd gotten in the habit. I think it's nice to let people know that even if you don't know something, you're thinking of them. I usually try to end posts such as that with, "I hope someone else will be able to help you" but I forgot. I'll continue to do this when I can as I see it as a nice thing to do. "

> > > > > > > > > >

I've been struggling over any post to you for several weeks but realize that my frustration is due to living out of alignment with who I am. Ignoring you or trying to be subtle just isn't who I am. Nor am I purposefully confrontational either. I feel compelled to share with you (in kindness) so that this board can get back to what it once was and so that those who have abandoned this board perhaps will consider coming back.

I speak only for myself and not for the people with which I have been involved in numerous private conversations about our agitation with your post. They will have to find a way to speak for themselves and hopefully it will not be removed before others can read it like the previous one was.

The post that was removed was in direct response to the frustration that several people who have previously been active here feel towards your post here. The reason that some people have "returned" is because they are coming back to prevent the complete deterioration of this message board.

Perhaps the other post was removed because it was "too" direct??? I don't know.

I appreciate your wanting to be welcoming and friendly but it is not necessary to reply to *every* single post with an overwhelming sense of (what some have come to think of as) know it all.

I would like to think that you are just being friendly, have discovered the pleasure that this hobby can bring, have acquired a great amount of book knowledge from reading (you did mention that you previously wrote instructional stuff so I assumed you are information oriented) and want to share that excitement with others. Please be careful with how that comes across to others. Your post have been considered by several as loquacious and insolent and I just want to believe that you mean no real insult or offense. That is why I am choosing to post these things.

There is a TON of "information" available for you to read and study and disect from the internet...but not all of it is "fact" and when you present it as such to people who come here looking for help and knowledge....it is offensive to those who have spent decades gaining the knowledge through experience and trial/error.

Before your orientation to this group's dynamics...no one considered it "unfriendly" for a post to go a few days before being able to read a response....but one thing that was always true is that the post were accurate and based on DECADES of EXPERIENCE and not on 6 or 7 months of book studying and propogating some leaves and a few plants.
Whether it was purposeful (which I doubt) or not....some of your post have come across as authorative in the industry when they really were an assumption or guess on your part.

An example of this is the recent statement that you made about "thinking that Faye Wagman's site was moved to be more 'buyer friendly'. It was moved/updated because the person who was acting as webmaster died. Your post was presumptious and offensive to those who knew the truth.

It's not my intention to embarrass you or be critical of you but to help mend this broken gap that seems to be widening amongst a few regulars who have vacated because they don't sense enough 'room' for your numerous post

And to those newbies here...and to those who may not be on the same page as I am or a few others who feel this way - my apologies. I enjoy this board and want to continue to enjoy it....with every one who wants to be a part of it. My goal is to get everything up on the table so we can all move forward.

Dora

Dora, thank you for having the courage to be upfront and honest. I didn't appreciate the insinuations in some people's previous posts but without the courage to either post directly or suggest we take it off line.

I could say many things in my defense, but all it will do is make me feel better. You feel how you feel, regardless of what I'm going to say about who I am or why I do what I do.

I am a bit astonished that anyone would think that my quantity of posts is driving people away. If my numerous posts are truly inhibiting people, that is a shame....but not on my part. Each person has a place here, including me. I am not stopping anyone from being here in any way - they are stopping themselves.

I will work hard on adding qualifiers; my post about Fay Wagmans site was inappropriate as I didn't really know. But, other than that, until you take the time to get to know me, which only one person here has done (and I appreciate that more than she knows), you can't make assumptions about what I know or don't know.

The gap that you mention, in my opinion, seems to be because I'm not like many of you who have been here for awhile and who know each others. I don't write the same way, I don't think the same way, and I do not operate under the same belief system regarding accepting the status quo.

It's hard when someone who acts differently comes into an established group. Given that some of you and I do not see things the same way, it's easy to see why some people are upset. I certainly don't know what all those are, but I can readily see that some of us view knowledge and experience very differently. In my belief system, people can have years of experience and know nothing or only know what someone else told them initially and that info wasn't correct in the first place.

This board, however, is for everyone. Not just people like you or people like me. Sometimes, especially on the internet, we have dialog with people that are not like us and sometimes that rankles us or shakes up our world. We can either be upset by it and act out in petty ways, confront it, ignore it, work to get along, leave, etc.

It's up to all of you what you choose to do. I know that I will continue to post and be who I am, just as I imagine that you will, Dora. As noted above, I will work on being more careful to use qualifiers. Other than that, I hope that some of you might learn to embrace me for who I am, and even take the time to get to know me. Who knows, you might find I actually do have something to offer. For the one person who has bothered, I appreciate it immensely.

Lath,
It did take some courage but I believe you are worth it.

We do want to get to know you.

Help us :)

How many people skip over your post because they see them as too numerous, too long and drawn-out and full of fluff?

There is a common understanding that when a newcomer joins a message board - that it is primarily the responsibility of the newcomer to fit into the dynamics and environment of that board...not the board to have to change and fit around the newcomer. It took me quite a while when I first began coming around here to learn how to fit in.

I want you to be comfortable here as well as others....I am a firm believer that we can all come towards the middle a bit so that we can co-exist here...AND that everyone involved will do their part to help bring down the walls and obstacles that exist.

I am certainly willing to give it a try. I hope you'll do the same. Again...thanks for hearing me out.

Dora

Not sure that anyone really does want to get to know me - I tried in the beginning and had few takers, lol. But, I appreciate you saying so.

l/o,

You may recall that when you first joined the forum, I extended what I feel was a genuine and warm welcome. I know when I found this forum, and compared it to others, I picked this one because of the experience of its members and their generosity in sharing information. Over the last 4 years, my appreciation for the people on this forum has only increased. The people that join this forum help to keep it vibrant and active.

Dora is correct in her point regarding newcomers and their responsibility to fit in. There is also a responsibility on the part of all forum members to be respectful of others.

Some of your activity has been viewed by me, and others who have spoken to me privately off line, to be disrespectful. It doesn't have to do with having different opinions on how to do something, for there are a gazillion ways to do most anything. It has to do with what is perceived as credibility. You stated
"I am a bit astonished that anyone would think that my quantity of posts is driving people away. If my numerous posts are truly inhibiting people, that is a shame....but not on my part."

It's not the QUANTITY of your posts, it's the QUALITY of your posts that have turned many people off to the point of leaving this forum. Even though you have done lots of research, you just don't have the 'street creds' to back up a lot of what you say on this forum.

To your credit, I have read many of your posts on other forums here at GW, and I can tell that you do have a great deal of interest and knowledge in other areas. Give yourself a break, and let that knowledge reveal itself naturally. You don't need to beat us over the head with it.

Now, let's get on with the joy of growing African violets.

Barbara

Barbara, I appreciate your kind comment about my other posts on GW.

If you re-read my post, I said I had "few takers" not that I had none. And, if you re-read both prior posts, you'll see that I stated the quantity of posts was an issue because that is what was said by Dora. I cannot reply to comments I haven't yet heard.

I respectfully disagree with you regarding how forums work and people having a responsibility to fit in. People have a responsibility to whatever their values and beliefs are. They may choose to fit in because there is some incentive or internal motivation. Some of us may hold it as a belief that people ought to want to or value those who do. Not all of us do want to fit in, for many reasons. Some people come here for completely other reasons and fitting in isn't a part of that. Some of us may wish that everyone would indeed chose to fit in, but it's each person's choice to decide how they want to act. This is a public not private forum so a person has even less incentive to choose to do so because coming here may be for completely different reasons and they don't have to fit in to get that.

That said, I never tried not to fit in, nor did I try to fit in. It wasn't why I was here. I was here to share my thoughts, be welcoming to people, be enthusiastic, and hopefully gain knowledge.

From my vantage point, which is no doubt completely different that yours, the issue is primarily about me having a different perspective about what is considered OK to do and about how and why we share information. And, I have very little incentive to try to fit in at this point, which I will explain more about at the end of this long post.

I stand by my original statements above. This isn't all of you against me and I have to conform or we all take our marbles and go home. Or it shouldn't be based on my value system. If it is, that is a huge loss in my humble opinion (that you may not feel is humble, but it indeed is).

I choose to give credibility in a very different way than it sounds like some people here are suggesting. I do not automatically confer credibility to people who've done something a long time - that means little to me. I want to know the results, what they learned, how they changed. A person can do something the same way for 50 years - and never learn a thing from it or ask themselves why and they can say they are an expert. Many people would believe them and give them credibility. I confer credibility to people who question why we do things, read, ask questions, listen, share their thoughts, experiment, and change when they see it is helpful. I confer credibility based on the whole package, not one part of it. Someone who is earnest, looks at multiple angles might deserve my respect and be credible within a week of starting a new undertaking.

I've tried to be extraordinarily calm and polite to all of you in the face of a bit of rudeness from several of you to me over the past month, most of it in subtext. At any time anyone could have said, hey, lath, can we talk and it could have moved offline in a polite and respectful way. Yet, what I am hearing is that there is a belief that I'm the only bad guy here and that I should both respect your opinions about this topic and the forum and should take full responsibility for this who adventure. I respect your right to your opinions, but I do not hold the same and I cannot take responsibility as many of the actions that have created this situation, easily the majority, were not mine.

Anyone could have stated the unspoken rules and expectations regarding how this forum has worked in the past. But, no one did. You are telling me it's up to me to fit in, yet nothing in your posts would have given me a clue that what I was doing was not appropriate. Only in the last month did I hear the rumblings, but the comments were oblique so I hadn't a clue what the real issue was.

Some of the recent posts were extraordinarily rude to me, particularly the one that was deleted but that was forwarded to me just tonight. I can't say what would have happened if someone would have handled this differently; I am positive that the outcome would not have been this, however. It's a shame, in my opinion (this time not humble at all) that this had to happen in this way, particularly because there were other viable options with much less fallout.

To anyone who has been bothered by this (I know I have been), please accept my apologies for my part in it. As such, I am not going to post about this anymore as I think it's time this ended. If anyone wants to respond to anything I said in my post, let me know and I'll send you my email.

Seriously? So disappearing posts are making more sense now. Not a nice little African Violet thread today.

Had no idea what was going on and I guess I'm glad. Some days talking on internet forums is indeed worse than 2 cans and string.

POOF!