Sherry, I'm sure I passed you at least once or twice this weekend at the festival! I went both days and fully loaded our pull-behind trailer each day. You know you're buying a lot when folks stop looking at the booths and instead stare at your cart! I started planting Sunday afternoon, and I just finished my rose beds last night. I'm sore but sooo happy. What did you buy? Gosh I bought so much. I got some new roses: two Scentimentals (candy-cane red and white striped floribunda), a Love & Peace and an Ebb Tide. I did have Gaura last year and loved the wispy look against my Our Lady of Guadalupe. It did well for me but a few didn't survive the winter, so I took them all out. I replaced them with three small French Lavenders. I do have a Blue Plumbago by the Ebb Tide but I'm keeping a close eye on it since I know how large they get. I had two huge Blue Plumbago bushes that flanked my driveway when I lived in Orlando and I loved them. I did buy some Salvia...one called Hummingbird Coral and a standard purple one. I bought a Hyssop and some Buddelia, and the exact African Daisy you mentioned with the white petals and blue centers. For another bed I bought three gorgeous Digitalis. I now know what that is - thank you Judith! I bought a bunch of other tropicals for our front yard including three beautiful Bird of Paradises, and I filled out my herb garden too. After the festival I hit the Home Depot nursery. I felt like I had no business buying more plants but did that stop me? Psshht! Got flats of white and lavender Alyssum, Angelonia, Golden Mound Lantana and another Angel Face rose (my third). I can't wait until everything takes and starts to fill out. Thanks for the warnings on the gingers. I got two for the front that get afternoon shade. Our landscaping package that came with our house included African Irises, but those got replaced this week with needle palms and two pink New Zealand tea trees. I also bought (it goes on...) cala lilies, a fuschia, gardenias for a hedge row, three beautiful climbers called Petrea that have purple flowers that look like Wisteria. I got a light yellow double-hibiscus called "Becca" and a bunch of succulents for the first time for a little container garden on my patio. And I also got a blueberry bush. Can't wait to see how that one does. There's said to be a blueberry farm here in Ocala, so that's a good sign that it has a chance to do well! Sorry about the laundry list of plants but I can't help myself. I thought I'd at least spare you the list of herbs I got. :o) I'll take photos and will post them soon.

@ostrich do you take it down and cover it for the winter? from what I read, our hard winters kill the buds so we need to take extra care to protect it. Here is what Terry suggested for our harsh climate: "Twros(z 4 Ab. Can.) Hi beal_17 ... the wisteria had gotten very large and stretched out a total of 45 ft in two directions. In the autumn of 2014, after taking the vine down for the winter and applying protection, the darn mice had gotten to it and chewed it up badly and the next spring I needed to cut it back severely. Then, as the summer progressed, I decided that I hadn't liked the way the thing was looking and thought best to cut it right off at the base in hopes it would resprout ... though, it hadn't liked me doing so and the remaining stump had rotted down to the roots. Last summer, I started anew with a large on sale plant from CT. Again, I'll stress that this vine is not hardy for the Canadian prairies, or at least I've never seen photos or heard word of anyone having it eat up and consume the side of their home. This past winter was very mild and I'm sure many vines had wintered very well with no protection whatsoever, though a normal winter will more than likely knock them right back down. What I had learnt was to keep the thing growing as late in the autumn as possible by protecting it from severe frost, planting next to a building is a good idea. When taking it down in preparation of winter, snip off all remaining foliage that has not yet fallen along with green unhardened wood. I've had good success when covering the vine with about 3 or 4 inches of dry peat moss and placing a sheet of plastic upon the area to help keep it dry. Vines are very flexible until reaching a sizable thickness and can be wrapped up around themselves, though do not force them otherwise they might snap ... and be sure the darn mice have been dealt with! :)"

Blondboy, Around the end of Nov or Dec when it starts to get cold, I will wrap it. Before I wrap it I will cut off all the fronds except the main spear. Since Washies grow soo fast, I am ok with chopping most of the fronds off. Within a month after taking the wrap off this year it was looking again like a normal palm. Before I lay a layer of mulch and leaves around the base, I will take some X-Mas mini-lights and starting about a foot from the trunk wrap them in a circular motion around the base of the palm. Then I will connect one or two more stands and wrap them all the way to the top. I don't wrap them too close to one another because this last year I found out that those little lights actually generate alot of heat under the wrap that I use. I don't concentrate alot of the mini-lights at the top of the wrap near the spear. Last winter I had a thermometer reading temps at the base under the mulch, in the middle of the the palm and at the top near the spear. What I found was that the heat seemed to rise under the wrap, makes sense. Anyway our temps got down to -10 F a couple nights and we had several weeks below freezing. Under the wrap it never got below 37 F. Actually near the top of the wrap on days when the temps were in the 20's it would get up to 75 F. I would only turn the lights on when it got below 30 F. It didn't affect my power bill much at all. This was it's first winter and I hope that it will work again. I think that the key is to keep the tree under the wrap fairly dry, I would poke several holes in the plastic for venilation. Also, I wouldn't wrap the spear with the thick insulation. I simply wrapped it with black landscape fabric with the plastic going over the fabric. That way the spear could still get some light. The palm actually shot out a couple fronds during the winter. A couple times over the winter I would take the top of the wrap off on warm days to let the frond(s) get some air. Oh yeah, I also sprayed some copper based fungicide all over the palm before I wrapped it. If you decide to try this let me know how it works for you. Good luck with you're palms. All the materials I needed for the wrap cost under $70. To put the entire wrap together it only took about 45 minutes. During the winter, the only thing I had to do was make sure that the lights were plugged in on cold days. Pretty easy.

I wonder if they were actually "overheated"... It makes sense that they did not have enough time to recover from transplant shock though, as they were planted too late in the season. Trees that size will be tough to protect, and they better be planning to cover/tie the fronds this time, not just the trunks. They need to do at least what the Iowa palms guy does/did to winter his larger palm(s). If he can get washingtonias through an Iowa winter, the trachys should be doable. Big job though! By the way, thanks for posting the follow-up dln949!