Awesome blooms Randy. How often do you repot your plants? I've had lots of inflos this year, but most all blooms fell of before they opened. Shall I assume it's because they were underpotted? I can't figure it out. It's so frustrating. Even the Penang Peach --I only got a few blooms. Heck, it bloomed better indoors last winter.

I would definitely get a few ginger. Some of the Alphina's might stay evergreen all year long under a shady tree! Butterfly gingers are very common in Hawaii, but they are also very common in the south! You cant enjoy then year-round in the south because they die back sometime around November-December, but you will see them up and growing from early March to late November which is almost 9 months out of the year! Cape Jasmine is a southern fragrance and they look fantastic climbing a brick wall. The fragrance during the spring and early summer is amazing! A fully grown plant will give the ENTIRE yard a beautiful scent! Plumerias are great potted plants to try in Savannah. Anyone who lives in Hawaii has seen them because they are everywhere! They grow into huge trees, but they can last at least a decade as a potted plant and make blooms every summer when established! I live in New York, but I have plumerias as potted plants and I always have blooms during the summer and nothing reminds me more of Hawaii! I take them in before the first freeze and keep them inside a normal room. I only water them maybe 3 or 4 times the entire time they are indoors and then I start watering them again when they go outside and it gets into the 80sF. They lose their leaves indoors, but grow them back when they go outside. Evergreen species of Plumeria will likely keep all their leaves indoors and out! You should also look into some bromeliads. If you have a nice microclimate that doesnt get frost, you can mount a few on an evergreen tree (like a Live Oak). Spanish moss and ball moss are very common (and native) bromeliads that thrive in Savannah, but they arent the kind of showy bromeliads everyone loves! I love Crinums so you should give those a try too. Palm trees are symbolic of the tropics so you should definitely add some Pindo palms, date palms, trachycarpus, sabals, washingtonas, and needle palms. If you have a shady spot you should definitely give Chamaedorea radicalis and Chamaedorea Microspadix a try. They look very tropical, but they can handle a Savannah winter with no problems! Rhapis Palms are probably too tender to grow in Savannah, but if you have a nice protected spot and maybe give it some protection, I think they should pull through also! Cannas and elephant ears are great perennials and very common and hardy in Savannah. I have heard of people getting Papayas to survive in Savannah with just some mulch and if you dont like the idea of protecting plants, then you can just regrow them every year. Just get some seeds and germinate the seeds around September. Keep them in pots indoors until the Spring and plant them in the ground. By fall, you might even see some fruit developing if you give them lots of sun and care! Citrus have a great fragrance and you get the added benefit of some delicious fruit. Lemon Trees do great and the more cold tolerant Orange Trees should have no problems either. Im not sure about Grapefruit, limes and Kumquats, but those might be okay too. Ferns make a great ground cover for shady wooded areas and they might help bring that Hawaii look a bit too. Add a water feature with some waterlilie, cannas, elephant ears, umbrella palm, and a waterfall and that will really help make you yard look tropical. Some tiki heads and tiki torches kind of give a bit of Hawaiian Culture as well. Good luck! -Alex

Thanks everyone! I had been to Mrytle Beach about 6 years ago and it left me very unimpressed, so there were no plans made for a stop. And Richmond, even it were along the way, we visited last year when my GD gratuated from a high school. We will definitely visit Charleston, even though my 3 DD's and myself had our girls trip there last spring. I had heard if you really want to see historical homes, Savannah was the place to go, and both my son and myself love walking thru the old neighborhoods, but will do the tour bus 'thing' instead of walking. And of course shopping! The south has a certain magic, and when you are standing underneath one of the many magnificent oaks strung with Spanish moss, you can't help being transported to a time many years ago. ;)

Get the model from Costco and enjoy! It'll be so much better than anything you had before. And if after a few years you find that 15kBTU isn't enough, then search online for how to convert one of the burners to 18kBTU, 22kBTU or even more, if you are really adventurous. Bluestar doesn't want you to do this, so they won't sell you the parts, and I won't post any links here. But suffice it to say, there are places that sell you the RNB burner heads and you can just swap them out for what you have in your RCS. And the gas orifice (aka jet) is an industry standard part with Bluestar ranges. You can buy that for a few dollars from any restaurant supply store. There are charts online that show you which orifice size goes with which power rating. Bluestar ranges all use pretty standard components, so these adjustments are easy to make by any technician. That's really the recurring theme. Bluestar is easy to service, and it uses the same standard components that many commercial stoves use. So, a lot of the repairs are well within what a good technician can do, even if they have never worked on Bluestar before.