My goodness, everyone has such a neat garden! What's up with that? Even the wild ones are neat! Thank goodness I didn't take any photos because I wouldn't post them anyway, lol. My gardens are way too messy. What wonderful photos! Even though I have a new-found appreciation for hot, bold colors, my heart still belongs to those pink/purple combos. I especially loved christinmk's salvia/campanula combo (gorgeous!), all of mantis' and franeli's pics, and for something a little different (for me!) thyme2dig's daylily and rudbeckia combo - love the way the rudbeckias pick up the yellow throat of the daylilies. Wow, thanks for sharing everyone. Prairie Love is right - we will need to resurrect this thread in about three months for inspiration! Dee

In defense of Realtors from someone who has sold three homes FSBO, the Realtor is an agent for the home owner, which can be a very valuable resource. However, the home owner is the one that sets the price. Price is the single most important determining factor in what drives showings and, ultimately, sales. The reason so many homes don't sell immediately is because of something called the endowment effect. Here is Wikipedia's explanation: In behavioral economics, the endowment effect (also known as divestiture aversion) is the hypothesis that a person's willingness to accept (WTA) compensation for a good is greater than their willingness to pay (WTP) for it once their property right to it has been established. People will pay more to retain something they own than to obtain something owned by someone else "even when there is no cause for attachment, or even if the item was only obtained minutes ago. This is due to the fact that once you own the item, forgoing it feels like a loss, and humans are loss-averse. Blaming an agent is often (but not always) misplaced. Many home owners tend to mistake their perceived needs for funding to translate to a higher priced home sale than is realistic. The facts and psychology back up my position on this.

Rox, Hello. If you would like I can add your name to the waiting list as there is a line of people waiting as I rarely cut the tree. Seems like every time I get one person off the list there are 10 or so new people who want one. Let me know if you want to be added to the list, it is backed up about 3 seasons worth right now. Hey Laura Thanks!!! Anytime there's added major work to my day and I get to it, is a good day lol When I left the patch and was locking the side gate I noticed that the Purple Jack had fallen down again, so I left it as is. I can only imagine how many more branches I will find now.. Plumiejunkie, Long time no see… Welcome back and happy growing. David, OMG… Look what the wind blew in..lol Hey stranger. As for the claiming on insurance, since it is an apartment complex I own and I do not live there (I use the mailing address there sometimes, or a Mailing service as I do not receive mail @ home), I think the policy might be a bit different from a typical home owners in terms of what I can claim, I also did not have a separate insurance binder added to the apartment insurance to cover any plants(do they even have such a thing), it also was my fault. If I had a helper then I doubt I would have had the issue. I guess I didn’t think the plumies and pots would weigh as much as they did. As for the Mango, yes it thrives grows almost wild with no care (no water either as I am bad about going down to water) and the fruits are super juicy and sweet. Manila Mango from 2013 season My tenants pick from the tree. I do not like fruit trees or plumie at my house as they attract vermin and insects and can be messy with the dropping of leaves, flowers, fruits(I am a bit OCD), etc. My patch is located in coastal zone 10 and its pretty temperate all year, no drastic changes. I check the weather for my patch couple times a day especially during the winter @ night. In my patch I have never had any frost, in 2007, during the big freeze my patch got down to 37or 38f for the 1 night. I also have a microclimate as there are mostly 2 story apartments on the street like the one I own next to my patch also that helps with the cold and wind a bit. So in my patch and around the area I have seen Solo Paya’s growing and fruiting, Pineapple, lots of huge old Mango trees (all Varieities), lychee, Vanda orchids, etc., so because of the coastal influence and topography and location, it never gets too cold or hot and has a nice amount of humidity. PS. The package I sent you with the Aurora you won on MPG years ago to Germany with a bunch of other plumies also came back. Actually to be exact, received it over a year after I had mailed it to you…lol Might have even been like 18months later. The package looked as if it had been examined (opened) then resealed, box looked worse for wear, all the cuttings where hollow….basically skins..lol. Good to see your still active with the plumies and forums. Cheers

Thanks for the smart points about rain, klem. And I agree -- there are just so many options, and people are so opinionated about those options, that it's hard to know what to do. My biggest concern remains the weather and how that will affect things, but I know that's a local issue. Maybe I should walk around the neighborhood and survey some people with porches about the sun and the temp, etc. Without adding any new information, my wife and I are divided on what to do -- she thinks just screening it is fine, but I think it would be really nice to have glass for the late fall / winter. If we had to decide today, I think we would either do simple / cheap modern storm windows (which could be opened to the screen on the bottom half during the summer) or do something a bit more adventurous. What I'm thinking on the adventurous front is to screen it in, but do it in a way where there's space to add the old-style wooden storm windows later -- just simple single-pane units that slide into the windo frames and attach with this: http://www.houseofantiquehardware.com/screen-hooks-storm-sash-window-hanger?sc=12&category=91 . The main thing would be attaching the screen on the inside of the frames, or at least creating an outside sill deep enough for the storm windows to nestle within it and still be flush on the outside. Then we could remove the storm windows and store them in the garage during the summer (though that wouldn't help with rainstorms you mention). Does that make any sense? If we did that, we could see how we like the screen in the spring and summer, but add the glass later in an affordable and removable fashion. I haven't seen many people try this, but I think we could build the storm frames and get the glass cut by a local shop. Basically we would recreate something like this company's product: http://chicagogreenwindows.com/storm-window-primer/