Hey Glenn, I recently finished a patio behind our house. I didn't use flagstone, I used a product called a Walkmaker by Quikrete, basically a mold you fill with concrete to get a random stone pattern, but the end result is wide joints similar to what you'll have between your flagstones. I found a product called Envirostone made by Envirobond. (www.envirobond.com) It's similar to the "stabilizing" sands you've seen, but is specifically made for flagstone joints. It is a mixture of a fine sand, aggregate, and their "stabilizer". It's been raining here everyday since I put the Envirostone down and swept it in to the joints, so I still don't know exactly how hard it sets up, but it is very tightly packed in from the rain and isn't running off at all. I imagine once it dries it will not blow away. I did fill my joints about 50% with pea gravel before adding the Envirostone to keep costs down. The Envirostone was $12.50 a bag locally, and I needed 4 bags of it for my 225 sq. ft patio. I also used 5 bags of pea gravel. They have 2 colors of Envirostone, I used the "natural", sort of tan/beige when dry. Here are a couple of pics of the finished patio. Good luck! http://img201.echo.cx/my.php?image=patiodone10lm.jpg http://img141.echo.cx/my.php?image=patiodone31xz.jpg

GD-I'm so sorry that you are having problems too! I am glad it didn't get down low temps last night for your plants too. Thank goodness I don't have to repair roofs, though you just reminded me to give mine a second look, since I just did a quick once over after chasing down the greenhouse peices. I think we got hit so hard because we sit on a hill of sorts, at least one of the higher altitude areas for around here anyway. Behind my house is flat fields for a long way, so I think that probably did us in yesterday. Oh well, last year we had to cut up 2 trees that fell across our driveway, on a Sunday morning, just so we could get out of the driveway to go to church. And just think....Spring storms are just now building up for the really "good ones" to come......

Your flats are not entirely at the mercy of Mother Nature. They're portable and you can save them. They'll be okay and they will survive. Go outside with a box or two and put them inside the boxes and carry them into an unheated shed or garage, or tuck them into a crawl space under the house, or into the trunk of the car. Anywhere that there is unheated shelter will do fine. Take them out afterwards when the winds have died down and the storm has passed. Consider your flats just like you would consider your lawn furniture. You stow it just before the hurricane comes and then you take it out right afterwards. Trudi

Cristina my azalea garden didn’t bloom at all a few years ago and that was even with my care, so don’t beat yourself up too much. I wasn’t sure if it was drought, nutrients, sun/shade, soil pH, etc. I had the soil tested like akamainegrower recommended (although it’s a bit of a different process here because everything is more expensive in CA). Come to find out my soil was great and extremely fertile in everything, except I was just lacking nitrogen. Most likely caused from mulching yearly without ever fertilizing to make up for the nitrogen. Quick fix! Added nitrogen as recommended and they have been blooming consistently and looking happy ever since. No need to add anything else since my soil was already higher than necessary in other nutrients. No need to change irrigation schedule or sun/shade. Just a quick fix of granular nitrogen, kept up yearly. Without the specific soil analysis, I would have been guessing and probably would have wasted a lot of time and money on the wrong things, so even though soil analysis is expensive here and not available at county exts or UCs, it was still totally worth it.