Good Morning Everyone!!!! I have missed all of you as well. Often, I would check to see how each of you were doing, and I enjoyed gardening through your daily posts. My Health made life a bit challenging. Kidneys were close to shutting down 3 times- gall bladder inflamed, had to be removed,before surgery, i could not even think of eating anything,SO>>my beloved made me his favorite treat for all sick people. Soft boiled eggs. From this i managed to get a bout of salmonella, with 10 days in the hospital.Fell again, tore my rotator cuff. Surgery for that, 6 weeks of no movement, 6 weeks of therapy, only to find out, the repair failed. Of course, during this time i used my left arm for everything,resulting in tearing the left rotator cuff. Waiting for surgery, as soon as my kidneys say OK. The big addition to our home turned out to be a trip to hell and back, a dozen times. From the usual small problems, to no proper foundation to no roof tie down, Major problems everywhere. The new roof,which cost in excess of 80,000., has to be replaced, since the underlayment was installed incorrectly. As you see, we had rather a "wish i could forget" kind of a year. Hopefully, next year will be a lot better. If i offended anyone with my dribble, I am sorry in advance. Cindeea, I hope all your proceedures will go perfectly well, and you will have a comfortable, painfree new year ahead of you. Happy Holidays to All, Irene

Hi, Choksaw! Welcome to the Florida Forum. There are so many friendly and helpful folks here, I'm sure you will get lots of good information, and probably make a few new gardening friends along the way. It IS great to grow native plants, but if you are more into vegetables, that's a whole 'nuther story. I don't grow many veggies, but many here do and can give you some good pointers, I'm sure. All I know is that tomatoes get nematodes if you don't do certain things, so I only grow a few patio tomatoes in containers, myself. I have a very small potager garden started now in a washtub with a tomato, lots of green onions (planted from the tips of the ones I bought in Publix), and some herbs. Just keep asking questions, and folks will pop in with answers. You will find gardening in Florida to be a constant learning experience, lots of trial and error. We have so many zones in the state that what works in one may not do well in another. But most of us enjoy the process, and the warm winters allow us to garden most of the year. Speaking of which, many veggies are winter crops in Florida. You'll have to pick the brains of our experts here on what you can grow easily this time of year, as a lot of things are winding down for the summer. Good luck with your new gardens! Marcia

The entire problem stems from robo-signing, this refers to what weâÂÂre now realizing has been a very common practice in the banksâ foreclosure document processing divisions, where one person was essentially given the job of signing as many 10,000 foreclosure documents per month, by hand. These individuals were supposed to be reviewing the files, making sure grounds for foreclosure actually existed, signing the docs in front of notaries. But because of the volume of documents, what they actually did was just sign thousands of documents at a time, without even reading them, and ship them off somewhere else to be notarized. If you do the math on an 8 hour workday, you'll see that that only gives the staffer 1.5 minute to review each file and documents to make sure the foreclosure is warranted. That's not humanly possible, which is how these staffers got the nickname âÂÂrobo-signersâÂÂ. I have personally poured over mortgages online and have found so many errors that they were never legal in the first place, these being both homes in foreclosure and REO's. It's a sad state of affairs, with 860,000 homes up for grabs, and the FDIC is hiring big time to assist in this entire mess. To make matters worse, the Obama make home affordable and loan modification plans are not working as advertised and what the banks are telling people seems counter-intuitive by not paying their mortgage on time. REO's are a great deal and I was currently working on my fifth house here on Cape Cod that was a Fannie Mae first look, however no offers in 15 days placed it up for grabs. Buying a home for 1/2 of what it's worth is a no-brainer.

Oh my God...Do you have any idea of what this conversation about Mango's is doing to me? I have a Mango tree in my yard at my house in Puerto Rico and it's the ONLY tree I use to love picking from before going to the beach. I use to pick them fresh and stick them in a cooler for the beach. To bite into one of those when you are hot is to die for, next to fresh Coconut juice right out from the coconut. Those pics and of that water, the orange and blues are just to die for. I once tried a Glen Mango, and a Roof Rat as they call it literally kept picking my fruit a few years back and then toppled the whole tree over onto my pavement on a hot day just to kill it( That tree case me 79 dollars and it was grafted slated for container growing and I miss it so. The fruit was well on it's way to maturing, so it is possible, Laura, to grow them in our area and long as you keep the varmints away from them. I grew mine out doors on my flat roof all summer in a white pot and would stick it in a sunny warm window for the winter while the fruit just held on until it would start to mature agin come that spring. Fig, I love how you talk about the island and the fruits you like. Believe me, now that you discovered this site and live in that area, growing citrus should be much easier than for use that had to grow them without all this help. It is much easier than you might think. All these hours stories you hear are of those whom have not heard of this forums until they were in dire straights, or not applying the simple concept of growing in containers... Simply put very good well draining porous mix, one of which many make here, a good amount of sunlight which you have, a good watering regimen, and a good fertilizer is all one needs to grow healthy citrus in containers. Constant vigilance on watching for pests will help keep them that way..That's all.. Nice to meet you)