Shipping via USPS during ballot season

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Dollythehun sent me a division of her Oncidium Sharry Baby, in spike, via the US Postal Service. She mentioned it here:
latest order stuck in postal system

She took it to her post office in Indiana on October 19. It was supposed to get to me in 2-3 days:

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The tracking showed it was accepted at her post office, then went to the regional hub at Elk Grove Village. Then it disappeared.

Two days passed. Four. Six. Eight. We gave up. I ordered a small mericlone of Sharry Baby from Olympic Orchids, which came very much larger than expected. That is growing strongly.

I came home from work on November 2 and found a tall box at my carport door. I didn't know what it was, since I was expecting a small box with Bulbophyllums from Bill Thoms. Imagine my surprise to find it was from Indiana!

It looked pretty good when I took it out of the box. The spike and lower buds were still alive. I watered it and set it in my sunroom. Here it is today:

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The blue Agave in the background is Agave angustifolia var. tequilana, AKA Agave tequilana Weber. Some of you may be familiar with it. If anybody wants an offset, let me know. Agaves are interesting succulents: They will grow to a certain size to fill any pot, then they almost stop growing. Although this plant is 5-6 feet across when it flowers, it can be kept for decades in much smaller pots.

[Clawhammer]

Expect a call from Trump's legal team and Tucker Carlson. They are going to be very interested in your story lol lol

[Dollythehun]

Miracles still happen. I still have two divisions of this plant free to good home. If you're not in a hurry.

[Mr.Fakename]

Happy ending for everyone!

Have you tried using those Agave to make actual tequila?

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I haven't tried making tequila. It's a huge amount of work. And home distilling liquor in the US is illegal, though I doubt many people are arrested and charged. I have to admit I distilled vodka from fermented table sugar when I was 9 years old. I had a Gilbert chemistry set, which had an instruction manual for lots of neat experiments with the chemicals and equipment inside the box. I also followed the directions and made chlorine gas at about the same age, but that's another story.

Agave stems swell up dramatically as they near flowering, filled with starch. People cut off the leaves down to the stem and dig out the stem. They roast it whole in a wood-fired, rock-lined, covered pit for 3 days. (Commercial tequila is roasted in giant ovens.) That converts the starch to sugar. I've eaten pit-roasted Agave - it has the consistency of, and tastes a lot like, fudge.

Then the roasted stems are mashed to press out the juice, which is collected. It is fermented, then distilled.

Tequila is a spirit distilled only in 3 Mexican states from Agave angustifolia var. tequilana. If it's a different Agave species, or it's produced anywhere else, it's called mezcal.

Agave tequilana makes prodigious offsets from the base, and vast numbers of bulbils on the inflorescence after flowering. It is very easy to propagate from all of these. It was used as a food plant pre-Contact.

There are other Agave species whose juice is collected from a hole carved into the stem when ready to flower, and the juice is fermented into a beverage called pulque (POOL-kay.) The Spanish introduced distillation and tequila production. Pulque Agaves like A. salmiana or A. atrovirens tend to be colossal in size, to 9 feet / 3 meters tall and across (or more.) They are higher elevation plants that prefer cooler weather than the desert species.

Traditionally mezcal was made from Agave potatorum (whose name means the drinkers' Agave.) That plant does not offset and does not produce bulbils. It can only be propagated from seed. It is collected from the wild for mezcal.

Other desert plants that have starchy stems at bloom time can be converted to liquors in similar fashion. It is done with Dasylirion species, whose product is called sotol. It is done with Dioon sonorense, whose product is called bacanora, after the town where it was produced. The Dioon is endangered. I hope it's not being made any longer.

Most bottled tequila isn't roasted over a wood fire, which is why it isn't very smoky. Most mezcals are made from stems roasted over fire, so most mezcal has a smoky flavor. Many people think an average mezcal is better than very good tequila.