Think of the green shoots that are coming off of the grey wood as the "flower stem" though it may not always produce an actual flower. So in essence, yes your are cutting off the green shoots to the old wood. If you look at the structure of the plant in the winter when there are no leaves, that will help you understand it all better. Spring is the best time to prune for us because if you prune in the fall you are exposing the stems to a possible early frost which will hurt the plant. I'm not sure about leslies advise to prune 1/3 of the wood, and why in the summer. Typically it means that you take out 1/3 of current growth to the ground to thin out the plant. Pruning down into the old wood doesn't necessarily "sprout" new stalks. The new stalks are the "buds" that you see on the grey branches in the early spring that turn into "green branches" and should bloom. But... they don't all always bloom. I can't totally explain why some bloom and some don't but it seems to be a culture thing, i.e. sun exposure, watering, soil, age and health of plant. My bushes always have tons of blooms, but I don't do anything special...just let them be and prune down to the third strongest "bud" on the old branches each spring.

Let me put it this way. If you leave your plumeria out in a frost, it will be damaged. Maybe not killed, but as a succulent stemmed tropical tree, it is very susceptable to cold damage and then subsequent rot. SO if you like it, be certain to bring it inside before the frost occurs. I take mine in when the temps start to get into the 40's. You can do 2 things. You can leave it in its pot and set it in a corner...when the light is drastically reduced they will defoliate and try to go dormant. Water ir very very sparingly...maybe a cup or 2 every 2 weeks or less. Just enough to keep the trunks and branches from shrivelling. Or you can unpot it, rinse all the soil off the roots, and store it completely dormant in a cool dry place. Brugmansia and bananas....again, if you like them, bring them in before frost. Brugmansia is like plumeria, a soft-wood tropical tree. They will defoliate in temperatures between 28/29-32, and regrow leaves if it warms back up, but in a hard frost below the high 20's, damage to the wood will occur. In an ectremely hard frost (here that means 20-26) they may freeze to the ground. Ours are perennial, they come back every spring because our ground never freezes and over a single season reach heights of 12-16 feet. Yours probably won't be perennial. I have never had to winter a brug indoors, but I have heard others say that they will go dormant. Bananas, again, mine are perennial. Even if theleaves burn off in a frost, the trunks stay up. But I have grown bananas indoors as potted plants and they do fine if they get enough light. I don;t bother with hibiscus here, they get too many whitefly infestations for me, and I don't grow mandevilla either. WHatever you bring inside to overwinter, really REALLY reduce your watering. Many people lose plants in the winter that they bring in and then overwater and rot.

Satine - Thanks so much for your thoughts. I'm happy you had a chance to talk to your friends. That's a great big hug for sure. Just be sure that the male friend won't try to burn the candle at both ends - if you know what I mean. Also, make sure you don't get sucked into that as well. Go ahead and enjoy the new relationships though - sound like loads of fun still to be had. RE my daughter - she was a passenger (in my car!!!!!, believe it or not, but I'm not going there!!!). The idiot driving wasn't familiar with the narrow back roads in D'wood and I think tried to pass someone on a 2-lane road that started winding. When he did that, he probably saw an on-coming car and slammed on the breaks. My car didn't have anti-lock breaks, and of course they locked up, and the car veered right into a HUGE tree, on the edge of the road. That tree no longer stands - they cut it down because there were several accidents there within a few weeks of each other(even 2 days later) and decided to widen the road - DUH! Even though the car veered right, and up an embankment, the wheels were tured as though the car was trying to go straight, on the road. OK, that's the accident part - as most people believe, including me. Witnesses pretty much said the same thing, but it was dark and basically, in the woods, so you never know. They were about a mile from the house. The first responders were about a half-mile away, and a friend who knows the fire station, gave us a copy of the report (which we aren't allowed to have, BTW), so I know they were there pretty quickly. The report says w/i 4 minutes of the call, and the call was right away. They were taken by land to different hospitals because his injury was supposedly worse than Cheryl's. He has a ruptured pelvis; Cheryl, for the moment only had dislocated shoulder and leg fracture. He also was on suicide watch (friend was nurse at "his" hospital). Since Cheryl was 18, they could do stuff w/o my permission (thank goodness because again, I was in MB). She did call my sister, who went to the hospital. They joked about who was going to be the one to tell me about my car (almost paid off) being totaled - actually blown up!! My sister was an almost RN and knew some stuff when they put in a catheter and the fluid was a very slight pink. That's when they realized she had internal injuries - a nicked aorta!! They did an angiogram and then medi-flighted her to a major trauma center in DC. My sister saw the chopper land, but it was about 5-6 hours before she saw them take her into surgery - YIKES! No one said anything to my sister. I happened to call "home" to check on things and a friend told me about the accident. I knew Cheryl was a good driver and wasn't worried. BUT, why was my sister's friend answering her phone - he never does. Also, he told me to catch a flight home. Another friend paid for my plane ticket home and I went directly to the hospital. When I got there, they were wheeling her into an elevator for the 2nd surgery, and the Dr. in charge just looked at me, and shook his head - basically saying there was no hope. Good news after the 2nd surgery - they even set the fracture this time. After about a day, some friends and I were looking at her - still wouldn't wake up, and noticed her face began to change. Basically she went from OK looking except from a scratch over her eye, to a pie-faced look. To me, that meant she probably wouldn't be OK even if she survived. The next day we were called to the hospital early in the AM (DD's guidance counselor's boyfriend was a nurse at the hospital and would tell her all the details they wouldn't / couldn't tell us, which she relayed to us). When we got there they told us that she was brain-dead (sorry, don't mean to be gorry). We had to decide to turn off the machines. We told them to wait until visiting hours were over since a lot of her classmates were on the way. At 8:00 that night they shut everything down and she "went" about 45 min. later. The nurse told me that we would know if we made the right decision if that happened. Still, ya kinda never get over not knowing if you did. But, that's my long story about my DD, the bicentenneial baby - 10 lbs, born on the first holiday of '76, and died on Memorial Day - 18 yrs later. Hopefully everyone understands the detail here. I'm OK with it - believe me. We all just question her care when they transferred her. The Dr. at the 1st hospital was SHOCKED that she didn't pull through. He told me that if he had any idea that things would have ended this way, he would have done the surgery there. He just didn't want anything to happen and they not have the truama experience to handle it. The 2nd hospital handles lots of gunshot traumas and he thougth they would beter equipped if anything went wrong. Ya never know. It was good she lived long enough for us to see her alive. Dr. said only 10% with that injury make it to the hospital; only 1% make it after that. I just believe in Malichi 3:17 - she is now a jewel in God's crown (the gathering of the jewels). The driver - he has a permanent injury/limp. I met someone three years after the accident that knows him well. She said he was still sufering from Cheryl's death. That did give me some closure because we never knew him - won't go into that either! BUT, DD was a good kid, and unfortunately, things happen. He had an alchohol problem but was very different and respectable when he wasn't drinkng. So... One thing - WEAR YOUR SEATBELTS! She wasn't, although we had JUST had that conversation the day before. Dr. said DD's injury was typical in accidens w/o seat belts - blunt force trauma. Enough of me - but there is a message for everyone here. Have faith, and you can get through anything!! I'm not Bible-toting, but know that without that faith, I coulnd't have gotten through it - even now. Thanks for listening! Wishing all of you well - sunny side up :)

He gets six and 3/4 days and I get 1/4. I am watching Milk Street even as I type- I intensely dislike this Chris guy. Outside of his serial marrying, affair divorce thing he has going (what women?) he is snide and abrasive. Why are all his co-cooks so short? He tastes a dish somewhere-fabulous! Marvelous! takes it back and makes some sort of bizarre not the same dish. His thing. I neglected to say I am not a Hallmark channel fan but I don't have much opportunity to object to it. PBS, oh mercy. What has gone wrong there? All we get is athon-ing. They are telling us that we are going to get TWO Whole Weeks of no fundraising. Oh GEE. If I send money I get to watch them beg for money. Do they feed it to chickens? We get rerun shows when we get shows and the occasional spate of new stuff shown back to back as late as midnight(?) like glutting on it and don't tell me they don't have ads. They show many of the same ads as mainstream TV plus the special ones for kitchen equipment etc for the cooking shows. Hmmmm. Add a couple more and call it good. Seems like a death spiral as they compete with streaming. Sorry for the diversion. Back to Hallmark-it is the visual version of romance novels so popular with so many. soothing I suppose.