Like the other Texas members, I do NOT feel your pain. Large areas of Texas have been declared eligible for disaster relief because the extended heat and drought have wiped out farm crops and cattle forage. Those big round bales of hay sell for around $80 dollars apiece, and they feed about ten cows for about two days. I feel a little guilty about the water usage (from our well) that it takes to keep our large yard alive...there is a vivid line around the yard that shows where the sprinklers stop---green on one side, brown and crunchy on the other. We have a large pond, and I often think it would be very interesting to have a motion-activated camera out there at night, to see the parade of desperate wildlife. There is a deer that brings her twin fawns out to drink and search for a little grass on the far side of the pond from the house, in broad daylight now. Guess she can't wait for dark in these temperatures. I don't much like hummingbirds (I know, you bird-huggers are horrified) but I finally put out feeders for them after I saw a hummer trying frantically to get his beak into a collapsed morning glory bloom. Nothing is blooming outside the yard. It'll be interesting to see whether the winter brings opposite extremes. Laura

To reply to the question in the initial post in this thread... I start my pumpkins just before a stretch of forecast sunny warm weather in late May. I sprout the seeds indoors kind of like bean sprouts... put them in a plastic tub like an old sour cream container, cover with a j-cloth held on with a rubber band, then wet and drain the seeds several times per day. At a constant indoor temp of 20 or 22 degrees they usually start to sprout in 2-4 days (might take longer if your seeds are old and some varieties take longer than others). So I set up my jars about 3 days before a forecast stretch of warm weather, then the just-sprouted seeds are ready to plant when the warm weather hits. For the first month or so I grow them under mini-greenhouse tents (about 6' long by 3' wide, almost like rowcovers but different, they were sold by Vesey's some years ago). I keep them under the mini-greenhouses until they fill them up, usually by late June, then I remove the cover and let them grow in the open. When they start to bloom, I hand-pollinate until I'm good and sure the bees have found the flowers. Sounds like an effort I guess, but I quite enjoy fussing over them, so it's more fun than anything else.

Thanks for the info and offers, everyone-- I used to see this green arboricola for sale everywhere, but this season it seems that only the variegated stuff is out there. Maybe the colorful stuff was found to be more popular here in Naples. I wonder if philodendron selloum would be a nice substitute-- still tropical looking, a similar green color... I might try this if I don't find the arboricola around.

It's a choice of economics. Pure Trachycarpus wagnerianus is very slow to gain height unlike Trachycarpus fortunei or T. wagnerianus x fortunei. In about four years of potting up, fertilizing, and watering, I can have four foot tall fortunei, three foot tall wagnerianus x fortunei or one gallon, 16 inch tall Trachycarpus wagnerianus.