Arktrees, those pictures just about took my breath away! Such a beautiful tree! Even more beautiful in my opinion than the Autumn Blaze I have, since I am partial to the deeper reds/burgundy anyway. I am happy to hear that they are drought tolerant and also fast growing, which is important. I think I will look for one of these in the fall. I don't mind watering trees at all when its hot and dry, especially when they are getting established, I just don't want something that is going to be very difficult to keep alive in our climate/soil. And I usually don't water my grass... but trees are a different story. Regarding planting - what is the closest to my house I can safely plant? My house makes an L shape with the garage and the front yard is the inside of that L. The builder put the tree about 20' away from the front. Would you plant any closer than that? I just now saw Mackel's post on the soil alkalinity... what is your soil like over there in Arkansas? I'll have to test mine but I think its around 7. Hogmanay, crape myrtles grow very well here and thank you for the suggestion. I gather they are fast growing, so that may give me some shade in the short term. I know they are very common in this area, but since I am relatively new to Oklahoma, and just figured out last summer what all those flowering trees were, they are still new to me :) Thanks again, Shelley

Mike, I had two 50 ft. lengths of drip hoses wound in, out and around the plants with mulch covering them - all throughout the garden in the veggie garden. The mulch was piled on 8 inches thick or thicker under and around them. I put covers over the tomatoes in late July through August. I have good well water, so no chlorine that can damage plants. Notwithstanding all that I did, when temps reached 110-120, everything just turned brown, and then blister beetles ate what was left. I had tall, dark green, beautiful corn plants with 2-3 huge ears on each plant, but upon checking them, they had few developed kernels. Total loss. I planted more than one hundred tomatoes (seven varieties), corn, beans, cantaloupe, watermelon, bell peppers, three types of hot peppers, Red bells, zucchini, and onions. Normally I get enough to can, freeze, eat fresh and sell at the Farmer's Market & Health Food stores and still have enough to donate to the Food Bank. Not last year. The only tomatoes I got were a handful from the plants I grew in large pots, but only a few. They were sure good though. Cherokee Purples were especially yummy and the Lemon Boys. I think I got about 20 tomatoes altogether. I got more than everyone else around here. Their plants kicked it in June and July. I did get some okra from the plants in the smaller, lower garden and a few pitifully small Early Girl tomatoes, and a pretty good harvest of Jalapenos in September when it cooled down a bit, but that was all. I put so much work into it and expense. But it was just too hot. It was like standing inside a furnace ever day. I lost several small trees, one large weeping willow and several Eponymous shrubs. And what the heat didn't kill, the voles did, chewing the roots off several of my roses. What a horrible year! Sorry to go on about it...

I'm south of you in Dallas/Fort Worth, on alkaline clay. For what it's worth, I have a "Wonderful" pomegranate and a 'Celeste' fig that do well. ymmv, since you are north of me. The pomegranate doesn't even need much extra watering, if any (even last year). Sucker's gonna have to be pruned hard since it has gotten about fifteen feet high and needs to be made shorter. Now I know why a neighbor pruned his pomegranate every 3-4 years when I was a kid. Don't know about other pomegranates, but the Wonderful didn't fruit the summer after it froze to the ground. The fruit has been sweeter when the summer was hot, sour when the summer was cool for around here. Hah. That's happened only once. Don't know how the fruit would have tasted last year 'cause the birds ate the fruit to the rind in JUNE. I've never put bird netting on that tree... There are figs around that have grown in-ground for 20 years; they do have to have bird netting or the birds will get the figs. My fig is in a yard tub-- may 25 - 30 gallons and is quite happy as long as it is watered. Good luck, and please keep us posted!

Hi Rhoni Ann, Lots of people are painting red/orangey-red brick homes nowadays. If you're a fan of the Fixer-Upper TV show on HGTV, you've probably noticed that Chip and Joanna Gaines have totally transformed the exterior of many brick homes by painting that red/red-orange brick in all sorts of lovely shades of gray, creamy white or beige. After they add new trim and sometimes shutters and window boxes (depending on the style of the home and the look they're going for), along with new landscaping, those homes look just as transformed on the exterior as they are on the interior. Keep in mind that once you paint your brick, assuming you are going with a lighter color, it will reflect heat and light, but I have found there are lots of plants which grow well on the hotter west and south sides of homes that what a person might expect. First of all, if you will amend your clay with compost or some other organic material before you plant, then your plants will do so much better that it will blow your mind and you won't have to water nearly as much. We have dense, thick red clay (the kind you could use to make clay pots) that had zero organic matter when I tested it when we moved here in 1999. When they dug the holes for our percolation test for our septic system when we built our house, most all of the water remained in the holes after 24-hours, which explains why we have a lagoon instead of leach lines. Along our south and west facing walls, cannas have done really well in only lightly amended clay. If you plant the tall ones that get 4-7' tall, they will form their own mini-wall along the bring wall, and they don't really mind the heat as long as you water them occasionally in summer. They die back in winter, but you can cut off the ugly dead foliage at the ground so you don't have to look at it all winter long. Cannas are very strong, resilient plants, fitting into my favorite category of plants that I describe in this manner: they won't die and you can't kill them. In front of those taller cannas, you could the short, compact evergreen shrubs of your choice so you'd have something green there year-round. Some of the shorter varieties of hollies would work, and hollies come with many different leaf shapes from the very small leaves of yaupon hollies to the larger leaves of other forms of holly. If you don't want evergreen shrubs on the west side of the house, you could plant daylilies, lantana, gomprena (aka globe amaranth), zinnias, cosmos and some perennial members of the salvia family. All of these do well in well-amended, well-draining soil and only need moderate amounts of water in summer as long as they are well mulched. Or, you could plant ground cover type plants that thrive in full sun. Purple wintercreeper is a lovely greenish groundcover that is low maintenance. We just cut ours back to the ground with the string trimmer once or twice a year. It turns purplish-green in the cold season. Its flowers are not very obvious but then they give you lovely little berries. Hollies, by the way, are one of my favorite plants for clay soil because once they are established many of them are really drought-tolerant as well as heat-tolerant. If you like crape myrtles they are very heat-tolerant and come in all sorts of sizes, from more tree-like forms that can attain 20-40' Crape Myrtle Trails--Varietiesin height to weeping forms only a couple of feet tall. Be sure to purchase named crape myrtles varieties so you can Google those varieties before you buy to ensure you're getting the right size for your area. Sometimes the ones sold at places like Wal-Mart don't give a variety name on the tag, so you have no idea what you're getting. There's nothing worse than planting a big variety of crape myrtle in an area that is only appropriate for a small to medium sized one because you'll spend tons of time trying to prune back the big one to keep it small enough. Depending on the color you ultimately choose to paint your brick, you might like some of the Black Diamond series of crape myrtles with their purplish-black foliage. They would look striking against a lighter colored wall and they don't get too large. To give you an idea of the many kinds of crape myrtles available, I'm going to link the page of the Crape Myrtle Trails of McKinney, TX, which is my favorite website for Crape Myrtle information. I haven't tried Rose of Sharon on the west side of the house, but it probably would be alright. I have several kinds of hardy hibiscus in the border around our large veggie garden and they are both heat tolerant and drought tolerant. They are growing in heavily amended clay in raised beds, but there's a couple of smaller ones at the lower north end of our heavily sloping garden and they are equally heat and drought tolerant, growing at grade level in soil only lightly amended. Another perennial flower (often considered a reseeding annual, but perennial in my garden) that doesn't mind the west side of a building is tall verbena, Verbena bonariensis. It is one of the most heat-tolerant and drought-tolerant plants I've ever grown and is a real butterfly magnet. I use lots of autumn sage (Salvia greggii) plants as they tolerate heat and plentiful sunshine. They are perennials and are semi-evergreen. Sometimes they bloom on and off throughout the winter here in zone 7b. I just shear them back pretty hard right before new growth begins in early Spring to keep them more compact and more manageable. There's tons of options for the west side of a house. Just avoid things like hydrangeas that must have afternoon shade in our climate and avoid plants that need perfect drainage. Good luck, and if you have more questions, I hope you'll ask them. Also, watch for the Master Gardener's plant sale in your county, which has a very active MG group that puts on a great plant sale in the Spring. This year's plant sale is May 11th. More info about it can be found on the website linked below. Pottawatomie County Extension Service Webpage The Master Gardeners have a display garden at the ag extension building and you might visit it to get some ideas. Dawn