Hi - the Fukien (Fujian) is very tropical and needs to live indoors (apart from having to deal with insects aquired outside!) under warm, humid and extremely bright conditions - so cold weather should have no bearing on training the trunk (clip 'n grow works well with them), and in fact on any tree really... apples and oranges. Anyhow, if you post your relative location, I can see if there's a club around for you. HH is very good, though based in the UK, where conditions are different, even if he knows about yours. There are tons of books around, many very inexpensive - go to Amazon.com and look under bonsai, then under 'Used' (they even tell you the condition of each one... 'flyleaf missing' (which wouldn't matter for instance), and how to order. Definitely look for more recent pubs. Also go to www.bonsaisite.com and under 'General Discussions' there's a subforum with lists of good books and comments. Paul Lesniewicz is good for books on indoor bonsai (as are sites www.bonsaihunk.us/cultural.html) and www.evergreengardenworks.com and www.bonsai4me.com for others. Bonsaisite.com has a chat forum more active than this one (any are more so!). Also check into www.BonsaiTalk.com.

Hi Ajpa: I'm in Montgomery County, closer to Philly. Therese you may find in a local nursery. It smells great. The rebloom is iffy for me at the Jersey shore. I have Old Blush at the shore and it defoliates really quickly and is not all that great. Have you checked out Help Me Find yet (helpmefind.com/roses)? They have lists of online nurseries that sell each rose. I would recommend trying the nurseries on the East Coast (Ashdown Roses, Roses Unlimited, Pickering) to save you $ on shipping. Good luck!

Dirt man, They sound like blister beetles and I saw two in my garden this morning. I promptly snipped each one in half with my Fiskars gardening scissors. Blister beetles may or may not be a problem in any given year, and I think it mostly depends on how many you have. One way they are harmful is that they can completely strip the plants they like of every scrap of foliage, and they can do it very quickly. However, most years I only see a couple here and a couple there and I try not to overreact when I see them since they are beneficial. How are they beneficial? They devour grasshopper eggs. I wouldn't have snipped those two beetles in my garden in half this morning, but they were on my pepper plants and after babying those plants through this heat and drought, I'm not in the mood to have to fight the blister beetles. I've seen larger numbers of beetles strip plants bare in just a few days. You already got great watermelon advice. Watch for the browning, drying tendrils. Watch for the yellow spot, and it is more than just the color change. The color will be a creamy yellow and the texture of that spot will be different than the rest of the watermelon rind. Sometimes it even feels rougher while the rest of the melon rind is slicker or smoother. Learn to recognize the sound a ripe watermelon makes. (Try thumping a few melons at the grocery store and listening to the sound. Then you'll know what sound to listen for in the garden.) A ripe melon makes a dull, hollow sound while an unripe one makes more of a sharp ringing sound. Also, keep the DTM of the specific variety you planted in mind. If you planted a melon with a DTM of 90 days, you're not going to have a ripe melon at 65 or 70 days, so use common sense in that way. Size helps too. If you planted a watermelon that should be 25-30 lbs. when mature, then it isn't likely to be ripe when it reaches 15 lbs. You need ALL the above signs....not just the dull, hollow sound or the dried tendrils or the creamy yellow spot where the melon sits on the ground....or the right DTM and weight...but all of them. If you still can't tell, do what my old farmer friend, Fred, sometimes does. Use your pocketknife to cut a circular plug out of the melon. It can be nickle-sized or so. Sample the flesh. If it is ripe, harvest the melon. If it isn't, replace the plug and hope fire ants don't circumvent the plug and get into the melon. (I'm not saying you should do this, but rather that my friend sometimes gets impatient and cuts out a plug to see if a melon is ripe....and if he can't tell a melon is ripe or not after a lifetime of growing them, what hope is there for the rest of us?) I usually watch for the drying tendrils and yellow spot on the part of the melon that sits on the ground, and then I thump it. Then, if I think it sounds ripe, I still wait 3 or 4 more days in case I'm wrong. Mine usually don't split, because they don't get watered as they're maturing...only get watered when the melons are still tiny....and animals can't breach my fence to get them. If you only have a couple of melon plants and can watch them daily for flowering and think you can keep track of which bloom fertilized when, then you might find it helpful to know that a watermelon usually is ripe about 45 days after the bloom was pollinated. About tomato cages....it isn't necessarily the cage. It is the way the cage is staked. You can make very sturdy cages out of concrete reinforcing wire, but mine are made of a lighter weight welded wire fencing because I find it easier to cut. You can buy welded wire fencing in different gauges at home center stores or farm supply stores. All of my cages start out being staked with 3' wooden construction stakes or 3' to 6' tall metal T-posts. I base the decision on which height of stake to use on my prior experience with any specific variety. Some of the really big monster plants get 8' metal t-posts, and Tess's Land Race Currant, usually the biggest monster of them all, normally gets 3 or 4 8' tall t-posts for an 8' tall cage that supports a 16' tall plant in a good year (8' tall and then it cascades back down to the ground for another 8' and once it hits the ground, I lop off any future growth to keep it above ground). If you are in an area exposed to a lot of high wind...like high on a hill, or on a flat plain with nothing to block the wind...skip the 3' or 4' tall posts and stakes and start out with 6' or 8' tall t-posts right from the start. Still no hornworms here, but have had swallowtail cats on the parsley, which is planted just for them. No hornworms here either. It is a pretty good insect year except for te spider mites and grasshoppers, and they're always bad in a drought year.

Private roads (roads without names) are not going to count as your 200 ft. Does this property butt up to this other dirt road? You can't just link up to another persons driveway when the driveway is contained in their property. Maybe if you can upload a Google map or the property map? You really need to go talk to somebody in the zoning office with a list of every possible question you can think of. You also need to know if you do divide smaller parcels like that, if you keep the same zoning. We are residential age, can divide down to 3 acres , but doing so more than once (all the rest is a minimum of 20 acres) , changes our zoning to residential...which is Not what we want! Gravel for a driveway the length you are talking is going to be pricey, you can get an estimate for that by calling a gravel and rock supplier. You really need to call for some estimates on bulldozing 650 ft of trees. You also need to find put how much it will cost to get electricity there. Contact the electric company for that area, give them the site info, and they can give you a good idea. If there is natural gas, find that out too, but you will probably be on propane. Then you need to find out how much it will cost to get either a water line or a well to the property. Another consideration is funding the land...as dar as I know, it is very hard to get land with any less than 50% down.