I just wanted to say thanks everyone!! Very informative articles and so much knew stuff you learn each day comming here...I never understood this about bark and wood.. All I can say is thanks! I FINALLY found some! Fir bark... I remebered buying orchards from someone I met in my area over 5 years ago that was growing beautiful and citrus back then, and I remembered him saying someday he was going to sellevery good supply he could think of for orchards and tropicals, to help people be sucessful at these plants. It was a dream of his. I saved his number from then. I called him, and come to find out, he is a big supplier of YES!! "fir bark"...We were both happy to hear from each other besides. He has fine and or small and medium grade...He says it's real real good stuff. He specializes in this bark..NICE ha. Now I am excited. I get a FREE delivery of three bags within the next couple of days... I will take a pic, and you can see if it as nice as he says when I get to using it.... If it is, then I would be willing to tell you where I got it privately, since it can be VERY difficult to obtain this hard to find good stuff..:-) A secret he shared. I asked him how his plants were doing. He said better than ever before, since he waters his plants once a month with, ready? Seltzer water, sodium free.... He explained the benefits in detail, hard to remember...Hummm.. As anyone ever heard of this, watering container plants with seltzer water?

To all those who have asked about how I will clean it..... I put the house up using two poles, one is secrured into the ground with concrete, the other is the one the house is actually mounted on, I used a large eye bolt and some u-clamps to secure the house pole to the ground pole. The bolt is through both poles about a foot down from the top of the ground pole. The u clamps go around both poles for stability. This setup allows for me to take the clamps off and then loosen the eyebolt just enough to swivel the house pole down for cleaning. This particular one requires two people for that because of the weight of the house during swivel, but it is really the best way I found to accomplish the cleaning need for all my birdhouses.

Chris, NICE job!!! Can you take a pic of the whole tree? Anirbn, My mom fell and hurt herself badly after she got out from a week in the hospital, so I totally forgot too. My bad. It started getting lighter in coloring..It was loosing it's vivid green look because the temps have gotten so cold. But I stuck it in the house and it seems to be coloring up again/. I will take a pic tomorrow..) I have been trying to grow it Bonsai style since I don't need it to be big and take up room. So it's pretty small..

Jacki, I got mine at lowes too, only they were 1/2 to 3/4 dead. Figured for $1 each I'd give them a try. Got multi blue, HF Young and fireworks. 4 flowers on the multi blue, but that was the healthiest of the 3, 3 green stems. 3 flowers on my HF Young, and fireworks, the poor thing had one green leaf. She's growing roots, new growth from the ground, but alas no buds this year. Hope to have blooms on her next year and hope to see some rebloom on multi and HF Young. Questions, what are you fertilizing yours with and is the multiblue really that blue. Mine is a dark lavender but really beautiful.