BabyWatson..you didn't say which ones you have...I am assuming they are pruning group 2s which can be finicky and slow to get started..Might I suggest you try the Viticellas..the pruning group 3s..sounds like you are doing everything right..but I find that all these sites that say full sun can be misleading..especially for warmer zones like myself..they can grow just beautifully in 6 hours of sun and therefore my best ones get the morning sun and shaded from the hot evening sun..those I have in more intense sun need watering more...they can also just disappear...wilt?..and then pop back up with more vigor..it's all about their root system..if it does wilt..just prune back to the ground..but don't forget to keep watering if nothing is there...Jeanne ps..I can't grow Fuschia either..too hot here...trust me I have killed about 3 trying to grow them...I either overwater or something....

Thanks Rhizo, Phil all ready gave me an ID on it, but you're absolutely right on your ID, so since I forgot to take the pix off of my other plants page (it's on nectar plants) I credited you on the page with the ID too: http://butterflies.heuristron.net/plants/whiteball.html I've spent more time trying to get the site to display properly cross-platform than I have on content lately (grumble). There are several other plants I'm not sure of on my plant pages; care to have a go at those too? Thanks :) Here is a link that might be useful: http://butterflies.heuristron.net/plants/whiteball.html

Yes, guides with arrows pointing to field marks aren't the ultimate in identification. Guides with notes about other birds with similar characteristics and then explanations about what to look for the tell the two apart are helpful. I have found that in most cases where IDs are difficult it's really beneficial to research more than one resource. We really have some tools now that weren't commonly available even fifteen years ago and that's access to the internet and cheaper digital cameras. I keep a digital right by the regular birding window. I take rapid frames of the birds in question from as many angles as I can. Sometimes you don't have time to focus and be fussy. Getting a less than perfect picture is not always a failure. If it helps you to catch the target sitting next to a known bird, immediately you have a handle on size. I also prefer real photographs I find on this forum, because painted representations just leave too much to artistic license. LOL. I sometimes wonder how many really cool sparrows I missed by logging them as something common? So many folks just causally dismiss them because they look similar. This is where you sometimes find your lifers! Keep a notepad handy to your observation station to mark down anything you notice on field marks. I have a good memory but the image in the brain can play tricks on you quickly. Draw a pic if you must, and try to catch some photos. Document, document and document.

You think birds are eating your cauliflower plants? I've never seen that happen (but I'm not saying it won't happen). One easy way to figure out what creature is "stealing" plants is to lightly dust a white powder (I've done it with flour once and diatomaceous earth on another occasion) on the ground around your plants after you've planted them. Obviously this works best on a calm day or evening when the white powder won't blow away. Any small creature that is stealing your plants should leave footprints in the white powder, and from them you ought to be able to figure out if it is a rodent, bird, rabbit, etc. Bird netting placed over PVC hoops is the quick fix to protect plants from birds. I use bird netting at various times to protect plants. I feed the birds all winter, but sometimes they get hungry for something green to eat. My garden is full of birds and, as far as I can tell, they haven't bothered a thing this year, and I've got lettuce plants varying from 4 to 8" tall. Sometimes they pick at the lettuce, but they haven't this year. I am surprised that the stores up there do not have strawberry plants in containers yet. They were in stores here in 3" peat pots from Bonnie Plants around the end of January, or possible even earlier because I think I saw a variety I didn't want in mid-January and just waited a couple more weeks for a variety that I wanted to arrive. Those first rounds of strawberry plants sold out fast, but then they got in new shipments around mid-February, and the good varieties for this region sold out. Then, there was a new shipment this week. I will say that our local stores here saw the warming trend and jumped right on it and now you can buy almost any veggie you want (well, I haven't seen watermelons or winter squash) as transplants in the stores here the last couple of weeks----not just the cool-season crops, but almost all the warm season ones as well--tomatoes, peppers, corn (silly to buy it as transplants and expensive too), cucumbers, summer squash, etc. Of course, we are nearing the end of the time to plant cool-season plants, so naturally the warm-season ones are showing up, but for most of those it still seems early to me. In Sherman, TX, yesterday, I saw hanging baskets with strawberries in them, plants in 3" pots and some larger plants in 4-6" pots. Meanwhile I found my non-gardening hubby circling the containers of strawberry plants in our garden yesterday, trying to find the almost-ripe strawberry because I had sent him a photo of it on Friday. It was in the last container he looked at, and it still isn't fully ripe. I guess when it ripens we will celebrate by cutting it in half and having half a strawberry each to celebrate the arrival of spring in our garden. I have planted strawberries from bare root in the past, and those plants did well for a couple of years, but I like the small plants in peat pots. I do remove the peat pots and not plant them (because we are often dry and the peat pots wick moisture away from the plant roots) but the plants take of fast since they already have a good root system when planted. During the last 4 or 5 years, stores here have begun carrying veggie transplants much earlier than in the past. It is a trend that kind of worries me---because I fear brand-new gardeners will be lured into buying plants that cannot go into the ground as early as the stores have them. Hopefully people do their research and understand when each type of plant can go into the ground and have a reasonable chance of survival before they buy the plants. I'd hate to see people putting tomato plants or pepper plants in the ground during the last week of January or first week of February just because the plants appear in the stores around that time. On the other hand, once soil temperatures reach the right point, and air temperatures are in the right range, I'd plant early if it felt right, but then, I have heavy-duty floating row covers that give 10 degrees of protection so I can take some chances. New gardeners seldom really understand how much our temperatures spike up and down at this time of the year. Case in point? I believe it was on Friday or Saturday a week ago that we hit 82 degrees here, but then about 5 or 6 nights later we hit 26 degrees. The 82 degrees tempts people into planting warm-season stuff early, and then the 26 degrees kills the warm-season plants. Then the stores make more money as people come back to buy replacement plants for the ones that froze. I wish the stores would post recommended planting dates in stores so new gardeners would know when to buy the stuff they see on store shelves, but they're never going to do that because it would hurt their plant sales too much. Oh, and do you have rabbits or other small animals around that might be nibbling your plants? A rabbit got into my garden a year or two ago and went to town nibbling on nasturtium stems. I didn't figure out what was eating the nasturtiums until I actually saw the rabbit. Then, it ran from me and went back out in the same spot where it apparently had entered the garden, which showed me where it had found a way into the garden through the fence. I patched that spot and haven't had a rabbit in there since. Yesterday I found a hole dug under the garden fence, and after searching, I found the spot where the hole came out into the garden. A big hole. It is big enough that a possum, skunk or armadillo could have dug it, but I've never seen them dig a prolonged tunnel that runs several feet underground. I'm going to fill that hole with large rocks today and put soil back on top of it, and then I'll run the cultivator over the tunnel to collapse it. No matter what we do, the critters seem to find a way in if they're hungry enough.