The trees will be bare root. Plant them as soon as you can dig into the soil. In the mean time heel them in to keep their roots moist. As for the plants that will come green, I'd wait until either last frost date in the area (which may be too late) or past likely frost date and protect them if any more frosts come your way. Temporarily bury them in straw or even snow if need be to protect them from a hard frost (>4 hours below 30F, which may include wind chill). All of them will grow up from their roots (rhizome) if you keep them alive.

Those of you with spindly plants ~ how much light are they getting? Seedlings of most things, especially sun-loving things, need a LOT of light, more than just a sunny window can provide. You need to hang a light over them at a level just barely above their tops. You can find out more in the seed starting forum. Hardening off ~ yes, you really do have to do it or your seedlings will suffer for it when you set them out. Think of it like this ~ you've spent all winter sitting on the couch inside and someone comes along, jerks you out of the house into the bright sun and cold and makes you run a mile. You're not ready for it, so you cramp up, get chest pains and end up with a peeling sunburn. You need to work out a bit and slowly get used to the outside before you can go do all that without any complications. Same thing with your plants ~ they need to slowly get used to the changing temps, changing moisture levels, changing light levels, etc. "I am in NW Houston, so it is too early to plant them outside, so what should I do with them? Plant them in little pots, keep them indoors then transplant them ouotside?" If there are roots all the way to the bottom of the pots they're in now, then yes, you need to transplant to larger pots and continue to keep them inside. Start hardening them off a week or two before planting out. Have you been feeding them? They need a bit of that, too ~ a weak solution of your favorite fertilizer should do it, as in half strength.

I want to thank you all for replying to my post. It was very generous of you to take the time to help me with this decision. You all made some great points for me to consider. Looks like we'll be putting it on the market but I thought I would address some of the comments in your posts at this point: Play up what 'spoke' to us when we bought it issue: That's gonna be tough. I dare say I do hate EVERYTHING about this place: but I know that can't be entirely true. Mostly is though! I'll give it that it has a pretty good floor plan and a nice neighborhood. Period. Why did we buy it? Well we had a list of things we wanted the new house to have and this one had many of them, when we looked at the list on paper and put checkmarks next to it, it looked ok. i.e. 2 car att garage, 4 bedrooms, office, screen porch, playroom...Plus basically had the square footage we wanted for our family of 5, a nice quiet neighborhood, and was in the school district we were trying to get into, which was our #1 priority and could close in time (#2priority). That's about it. Nothing of the actual house itself spoke to us, other than to say" you'll need to fix this , clean that, update this, repair that"....ad nauseum. It had been neglected by previous owners and showed its wear and tear but we thought it had the bones to work with and once we put "our mark on it, it would be nice" and we'd be in a good school district. I remember saying that. We had left a lovely new house that I had drawn the plans for and needed nothing done but was in a poor school district. After the move I sunk into a very deep depression which I have been able with much effort to scratch and crawl my way out of but as a result I think I'll forever resent this hellhole since it robbed me of a couple years when I was depressed. We have done a lot of improvements and in fact it is considered by most (not me) to be quite nice. It is nice but I am too emotionally tied to hating it to ever see it as really nice. We could stay and continue working on it since there are a few mre things we'd like to do. The only thing is the more we do, though in a way it helps, in another way it just reminds me of what a mistake we made by buying it in the first place. The $30,000 lost issue: I think I was referring to the fact that the market has depreciated by that much here so I was seeing it as a loss IF we move but I agree with the point that it's actually already lost! I had never thought of it that way. Thanks for pointing that out. The can we afford to move question: I'd say that's the million dollar question. And the answer is a definite yes but with some caveats. We'll be paid off here within 9 years. Oldest will be starting college in 6 years. If we move, we'd need to go back up to a 15 year mortgage and payments would be about the same as now. Yikes, I am very frugal and paying a mortgage for an extra 6 years is a tough pill to swallow. Tougher even than the Prozac maybe! We have lots of friends who have lovely houses and 30 yr mortgages but I can't handle that, though we could have one S W E E T !!! house if I could. Not in the cards for me or my DH since I hate debt. a 15 yr mortgage again will be a little tough to take but less so than living here where I'm unhappy. And you know what they say: "If Momma ain't happy, ain't nobody happy!" Life is short issue: Sure is which is why we are planning on selling. It's a tough market and we're only willing to lower the price such that we can get a nicer place with a 15 yr mortgage. We won't go so low on price here that would necessitate us getting a 30 yr mortgage for any new place. That would definitely make me resent any new place such that I'd be in the same boat as now. Hopefully we'll get lucky and be able to sell with not too big a loss. So, have I mentioned that I have a lovely house to sell????? LOL

"What's really sad is that they are your neighbors, and you haven't ever just said hi?" Well, for the first part, they live further down the street, maybe 20-22 houses down to be more precise, so they're not really close neighbours, and for the second part, I work on evening shifts, leaving home at 2 o'clock and I come back usually around 12:45, so when I leave they are still at work and when I come back they're probably sleeping. When they are home in the morning then I'm sleeping. I did however speak with my second door neighbour, who confirmed he really just renovated his upstairs bathroom. Also, It is pretty obvious they did have sewer problems; I have seen plumbers replace their sewer lines from the street to their houses, and lots of drywall, flooring and carpeting went into dumpsters. On two houses, the city even got involved and parts of the street were opened up to perform work down below. So, I might be wrong, but I think it's safe to say there's a 90% chance if I go see them, if they don't tell me to fly off, they will tell me they had sewer problems. Perhaps I could try to get a hold of them during weekends and ask them about the specific reason why they needed the work done, but I thought someone on this forum might already have a clue. I will however ask one or two good plumbers for their opinions.