My Mandevilla vine comes back eventually, every spring. It only gets blooming by late summer, hardly worth the wait for a lackluster performance. I decided this year to see if my mandevilla will overwinter. If it doesn't, I did that cuttings that have rooted and have them in the basement. It's just too much trouble bringing plants in and out of the basement and making sure no critters get to them. That was my main issue with brugmansias. Now that I have a couple hardy ones, I can plant them in the yard this spring and let them fend for themselves. Of course, I'll still make cuttings each fall, but they're much easier to handle. Plus, I can trade them or sell them on eBay.

Suzie, Your area sounds like what we've been looking for. We too starting looking at a small amount of acreage, somewhere between 2-5 and have found several listings for Piedmont as well. But after living on the west side of Edmond, I've seen all the 'flat' I want to see. I want a few trees and a little bit of topography other than flat, flat and more flat. We recently found a very attractive listing in Cashion. Truth be told, after living here for 17 years, I didn't even know where that was. Turns out, only 5-7 miles from my home. Your location sounds wonderful. We'd really like a quiet setting but I still want to be close enough for convenience sake (groceries, restaurants, shopping, etc.). I've been a city girl all my life and have never lived rural before so it might be a small adjustment. I don't want to deal with septic tanks and well water issues for example so we'll probably not move too far out. While we love our home here (it was the "Parade" home for our subdivision when new), so many homes in our neighborhood have turned into rental property. I'm concerned our property values will be hurt in the long run if the rentals keep popping up. At the time we bought, our house value would have been in the medium range for Edmond but so many mega-million dollar houses have popped up in the last decade, our home would probably now be considered a "starter home". Oh well. I can relate to the decompression process while driving home. On bad weather days, I would use Boulevard/Eastern (a snow route) to commute to NW Expsy and home each day. It felt like driving in the country even though it was still in the city. It sounds like you have made a wonderful transition to your new area. I hope you continue to enjoy all the peacefulness that it has to offer. Lynn

I was thinking of getting a weeping white spruce (picea glauca) to put in the place of the hemlock but after seeing what they cost, it was hard to convince DW to fork out another $300-500 to get one of any size and I'm not patient enough to start with a very small one. My next thought was picea abies would look nice there but for some reason, nobody seemed to carry the smaller potted trees anymore around my area. All types of spruces were high priced and seemed to be hard to find this year, for some reason. Finally, I found a tree grower who was gracious enough to sell me a potted P. Abies from his stock he'll be planting soon. I waited over an hour at his fields while he tended to customers, but it was worth the wait. I was expecting a seedling in a half gallon pot, but was happy to see it was a 30" tree in a 3 gal. pot. :-) He explained to me how to slit the sides of the root ball before planting, which I did but when I tried to find the root flare, the red flags went off. I took off over 1-1/2" of extra soil from the top layer in the pot before finding the root flare. In turn found a couple of good-sized roots growing up from the top of the root flare and were circling around the trunk area in that top layer of soil. (You can see the white spots of the snipped roots just right of trunk (next pic) and the soil line (dark part of trunk) where the original soil line was in the pot). I've read that P. Abies isn't as fussy as most trees are about getting planted too deep but didn't want to take chances and circling roots are never a good idea to leave without fixing. So anyways, got the P. Abies species tree planted, and it shouldn't be long for it to start looking nice. The buds were just breaking when I was planting today. 77df. When clearing the old mulch for planting, I found at least 3" deep of composted wood mulch under the top layer of mulch, I suppose from the last 7 years of applying mulch around the hemlock. Now you know 'The rest of the story'. ;-)

i presume.. it looks nothing like what the plants in your yard look like ... in other words.. its actively growing .... while every thing else is still dormant ... i would keep it in a cold garage.. until things catch up a bit ... as the flower buds expand.. they will be more and more exposed .... to frost or FREEZE damage ... as noted.. you might lose this years show.. so be it ... its obviously been brought in from a much warmer zone.. or greenhouse .... and it needs time to harden off to temps .. and for the local weather to catch up ... we all have the fever .. but this might have been a time.. when you let the seller deal with it.. until closer to actual planting time ... if at a nursery.. tag the plant for later sale ... if big box .... just cross your fingers ... but.. this way.. you will learn something ... how to hold over a plant until proper planting time ... imo .. coming from a greenhouse.. it can not just be planted ... it needs to harden off to local temps ken