I bought these AV-s this year in March. They did very well for 3 months or so, until we had to leave overseas for the summer. I left the AV-s with a neighbor who is good with plants and gave her care instructions. She took care of them for 3 weeks, then she gave them back to my husband when he returned home. He said he found them doing well when he got them back from the neighbor. I stayed overseas about 2 more months. During this time, my husband managed NOT TO kill them, which was a major victory in and of itself, but he reported that he used tap water (instead of distilled) to water them, and he did not use any plant food during this time. He just watered them at the intervals I indicated.

In addition, he obviously turned on the AC given the summer heat, and it is likely the house became drier than before, so humidity around the plants may actually have gone down compared to spring when we used no AC. I had no trays with wet pebbles under them, so again, they may have also suffered from low humidity. Either way, the result is that when I got home, two of the four plants are no longer blooming. I know it is more than just a rest period because my husband said they've been like this for a while. Two are still blooming though the blooms are relatively few (one is a bit fuller than the other). I also noticed that a few of the older, lower leaves were limp and transparent. I cut them off, so a couple of plants now look quite small as they only have the smaller, newer leaves now. They do not look necky yet, just small - because of the loss of the mature, ground level leaves.

What do you think caused the ceasing of blooms and what should I do now to get my two plants to bloom again? How soon should I expect blooms?

My first guess was the lack of plant food - they only had water. Obviously I restarted the feeding regimen, I added a tray with water and gravel pebbles beneath the plant, and I plan on re-potting them soon because it will soon be 6 months since I last re-potted. I will not go up in size.

Any advice as to what happened and what I should do to get my plants blooming and growing again? Also, is it normal for the lower leaves to get limpy and just die after a while?