My Butia palm from Chilly Palm Tree had developed scale a few months later too. The eggs must have been there dormant. We removed it by hand twice because it re-occured. But after that it was OK. I was very concerned that if the scale would have spread in my greenhouse to other plants/palms I would have to do major spraying, which would be unhealthy since I grow lots edibles. Since cold weather palm businesses are hard to come by, I would warn people too, but I would not want to hurt his business too much. I called him about the scale when it formed on my Jelly palm and he did recommend some soaps to help get rid o the scale. If the palm was any larger, removing scale could have been a real ordeal.

We are planning on buying in the Palm Springs area next year, I will be looking for an open plan. It will be a second home, smaller than our main home. Our current house is a partially open floor plan. LR and DR are open to one another, step down to LR. There is a 6 foot doorway between the DR and KIT, the kitchen is open to the FR, the FR is 5 steps down from the KIT. Overall I like the open feel, occasionally it can get a bit noisy when I am cooking and DH is enjoying TV, but I would buy the house again. Our previous home was a closed floor plan and it was fine too, but I had never lived in an open floor plan at that point. I think I prefer a partially open plan overall. In a larger home it would be nice to have the ability to close off rooms. The same concept as hotel ball rooms or schools use.

LOL! The "wimpy ones." The photos I provided above are of plants I brought with me from Seattle that I kept as indoor plants. Many of them will not tolerate the extreme sun and temperatures here. But under the shade fabric they have all done very well here for the first summer in my garden. Looks like your pic is of the octopus agave. Those grow here, I believe. The pics I provided above are from my backyard area. I was talking about the damage to my plants in my front yard which gets south and southwest sun all day. It really bakes out there. Here is the damage done to my plants: I have two of these Mexican fire barrel cacti in my front yard. One that gets sun all day turned nearly completely yellow. It's not going to make it: The yellow you see above is the area of the plant that gets southwest facing sun for most of the day. Here is a photo of it from behind where the sun doesn't hit it: The photo below is of the same type of cactus but because it gets shade from 4pm until evening it looks perfect: A few of my solid green artichoke agaves will need replacing. But it's the lower leaves that are closest to the gravel that are burned: The photos below are of a variegated artichoke agave called kissho kan. I thought I lost so many of them as they were bleached out almost entirely on the area that faces southwest. But surprisingly and thankfully the yellowing is gone. But there are still some dead leaves on the bottom. Two of them will need to be replaced: And I have two pencil cactus plants. The branches closest to the ground were very bleached out. But today I noticed they are looking better. I don't mind as I will trim off the lower branches as they eventually form trunks and grow to 12 foot tall trees. They look amazing when they get big. My pencil cacti actually look a lot better than they did just a week ago. But you can still see the branches near the ground are yellow. They were almost yellowish-white a couple weeks ago. They have improved. My theory is that since I went with a very dark gravel that it's absorbing and therefore retaining a lot more heat and the succulents and cacti can't take it. I say this because I have neighbors down the block who have identical plants that are doing perfectly. The only difference is that they have a much lighter gravel. I'll be better prepared for next year with some shade fabric to protect them. This is what my front garden looked like when I planted it all in December of last year. All the plants looked perfect until July/August of this year when it got really hot. Nothing seems to be hurting my bougainvilleas. They're indestructible and the color is so eye catching. At dusk when the landscape lights come on. The pic below is what the yard looked like when we moved here:

I'm not sure if this is helpful at all, but in general, solar lights just don't last that long. If you're able to run power, you might have better luck with low voltage lighting.