I know this post is old but I am new to the forum and rooting around for tips and tricks myself for various things so I thought I'd chime in. We just spent the ENTIRE morning raking and hand picking mesquite seed pods up off the ground in our front yard. Now my husband is attempting to get the rest with our leaf blower. I am with the fellow who first responded - I should have just spent five minutes every day picking up what dropped. I would love to have spent my Saturday morning doing something else! Love the shade the tree provides my yard and home here in Phoenix though. Oh, and we also have a mesquite AND palo verde that some previous owner thought would be awesome to plant by our pool. Ugh...

Yes, I was glad for the smaller size... amazing the options out there once you know what to search for. Similar cost to the paper or Ziploc sacks I'm currently using - and less than the small special order seed bags in retail quantities. We've used our old red or brown produce mesh sacks for bulbs, but now can have organza in a variety of sizes and almost any color of the rainbow - may rock at the next swap :-D Back on topic, I'm still wondering how copper lilies manage to produce enough energy to survive. The leaves seem to appear for very short periods once they start blooming at maturity - that's what makes it so tough to know how they're doing (or where they even are). The grass-like foliage that persisted over the 2.5+ years with the potted juvenile plants from germination to first bloom is now dying off, so seems to be starting this adult cycle of appearing and disappearing - more like a spider than a rain lily. A vendor I don't remember seeing when we bought ours back in 2012 says they take 5 years to get established and spread... so, may have a year to go before judging how the ones from 2012 are actually naturalizing in our clay.

There have been some doozie color questions around here lately. Doozie, I say. It's like GW is the hosting vortex for the shifting color consciousness of all humanity. (I got my drama queen goin' on tonight) :~D Most of the time the problem is they become too yellowish or just too intense. ÂOne thing I am going to try is changing the light bulbs to "true-color" type of bulb where possible. About the yellow thing. Incandescent a.k.a. tungsten a.k.a. regular light bulbs do slant yellow or golden. But a bulb that tosses yellow light is not where the story starts or ends. There's more and I'll keep it short. Your eyeballs have an uneven distribution of red, green, and blue cones. The color we perceive as *yellow* tickles the red + green cones so yellow affects a big chunky piece of the color receptors in your eyeballs. The visual reaction to yellow color/yellow light is bigger, more robust compared to other colors. The red, green, and blue (RGB) color system that your eyes function *from* creates what they call a warm bias in human color perception. It's also why it feels like the more wall area a yellow paint color covers it grows more intense exponentially. Your eyeballs have a bias to yellow and warm colors in general and so do your light bulbs. Some people have a greater sensitity to that combined bias than others. It all depends, but generally speaking this is where "too much yellow" can come from in paint colors. It's also why graphic designers and website designers are very mindful of how, when, and where to use yellow -- graphic design is mostly to blame for how I've come to understand all this useless crap about color and eyeballs. The neodymium light blubs, like GE Reveal, changes things up in the quality of atmosphere in that they do not illuminate with the same kind of warm itensity like *normal*, tungsten light bulbs so the bias of yellow that exists, is ratcheted back so it's not so darn yellow and warm. Are there any other tricks out there? Are certain colors more susceptible to light changes than other colors? So now that you know what the problem is and where it comes from, you can explore options to deal with it. Intuitively you already came up with one option and that's first try different kinds of light bulbs and see what happens. Another is full spectrum or multi-pigmented paint colors. The advantage of FS and MP paints has been beat to death more times then I ever could have imagined on this forum. I don't have the energies to *go there* again but, truly, full spectrum paint could be a solution for you. FS and MP would, in a nutshell, be exactly what you asked, "Are certain colors more susceptible to light changes than other colors?". Answer is yes there are paint colors like that and they are called full spectrum and multi-pigmented. Brands like Citron, Donald Kaufmann, Ellen Kennon and C2. There are also some *regular* paint colors that are more susceptible to light changes than others. The average color collection consists of over 3,000 colors. Fishing them out, discovering which paint colors shift and change gracefully is like finding a needle in a haystack. The brands that exlusively philosophize color from a "shifting" point of view simplifies color options for the consumers of color. Hope that helps some.

OK., here's what you do: First of all, you do NOT cut ice cream cones to size. The average size of a cone is 6-inches (in height). You simply stack the cones to get the height you like. And 'glue' the cones together with dots of Royal Icing. There is a way to cut the cones neatly. But, while a simple process, the details would take me forever to explain (my PC is down, and I'm on my phone), plus, there's a risk more instructions would only overwhelm, and put you over the edge. In regards to which icing to use, I'd recommend Royal icing. Royal icing , when done right, has the consistency of stiff meringue. And is extremely easy to pipe from a pastry bag and leaf tip. Royal icing will set hard. But NEVER freeze royal icing. It turns rather 'spongy' and ruins its texture. Plus, royal icing dries fast, and lasts a very long time. Long enough that the cones will still look stunning by the time you're ready to toss them in the trash. I have pictures of Christmas cone trees I made years ago, with how-to photos, which I was planning to blog about, and never did. But the trees are simple enough, that you won't need a pictorial. BTW, I do not recommend the use buttercream for this projet. Buttercream is great tasting, and easy to work with, and can be frozen, true. But, once out of the freezer, buttercream instantly starts to soften. Meaning, that even with a delicate touch, the decorated trees will get smooshed before they reach the cake. With TG just days away, it might be a while before I get my computer up and running. But hopefully, these tips will ease your worries. Sol