Agree with 3 strikes and you are out ------ don't necessarily follow it. After 2 strikes I take pause and try to find out as much as possible about the natural environment of the failing plant. I also try to identify a grower who successfully grows them. I have tried over and over again with Dendrobium cuthbersonii and have always failed . So I finally talked to Tom Perlite from Golden Gate Orchids who grows these things like I grow Dandelion and got some hints from him. Now it takes me 2 years to kill them instead of one. I have finally given up on these little beauties. Dendrobium nobile is another example. No matter how closely I follow the instructions as to how to grow them, winter rest etc, I cannot get a decent bloom. Either they don't bloom or they make a few lackluster blooms. So I finally talked to the grower in Hawaii who is the source of most of the commercial nobiles you see on the market every spring. Success, last spring all 3 of mine bloomed ------------ with a few lackluster flowers! Enough, they went on the plant table of my society and I'm done with them. Miltoniopsis; Killed every one of them in the past. Finally talked to Theresa Hill form Hillcrest Orchids who grows beautiful Miltoniopsis. Her advice was simple, keep them cool in the summer, warm in the winter, they like to be within 5F of 60F. Doing this I am now growing them successfully, meaning the plant is increasing in size. Last year they even bloomed, one or two spikes on a large plant. That should have been 10 spikes or more. So I'm not there yet and unless they pick it up may also give up on them but not yet. Parvisepalum Paphiopedeliums: I just got started with these so have no failures to report. Go to the Gallery where you see an entry I placed yesterday of my first success with Paph armeniacum. They also have a reputation of being a little difficult and I had a discussion with Dr Holger Perner at the San Francisco show who thinks most people are growing them wrong. Most people treat them as cold growers. True in the winter but not true in the summer. In their natural habitat, the ones from China get treated to a bright, sunny, cold, dry winter and a shady, hot, humid and very wet summer. The result of the monsoon season there. So unlike Dracula who should be kept as cold as possible in the summer, these Paphs should go in the warm greenhouse and drenched every day. Since there are 35,000 species of orchids available, I generally don't mess with ones that don't like me. My greenhouse is full of robustly growing plants. Not because I'm a genius but because that is the price they have to pay in order to stay. If a plant lingers, grows poorly and fails to bloom, I will get rid of it. Visitors to my growing area think I do magic because most plants look very healthy when in fact it is a process of throwing them against the wall and if they don't stick, they don't stay. There are innumerable others to replace...

Hi, everyone! I think I posted to this forum last spring when I was trying to choose plants to put in, and I did follow the advice you gave me then to go for less-variegated, darker leaved varieties. I'd have to go back and look at my notes, though, to tell you the names of what's there. Obviously I'm not a "real" hosta person! So, as to what's shading that spot: a house, a deck, a fence, and a nearby apartment building. Oh, and a few bradford pear trees. And a couple of blue atlas cedars. Even if there were no trees at all, it would be pretty shady. But the trees do make it worse. We've reduced them once before and will probably do it again in a year or so. It made a huge difference. But those trees provide an important privacy screen from our neighbors, especially the lower branches (which are not very low). In certain seasons, at certain times of day, some direct sun sneaks in, but never much. I actually watered quite a lot, since I'd put in so many new plants. I was pretty diligent about it. We also didn't have all that dry a summer here in the end. However I did slack off on the watering later in the summer when things seemed better established, so maybe it was an issue constraining that second growth. More likely, though, there just wasn't that much new energy gotten from the sun--that's my concern. About the critters and the ferns, I just don't know what else can make all of the foliage on a plant just disappear overnight, or sever a frond from the roots, or drag a plant two feet from where it was planted. Drought for sure does not make that happen. Some of those brave, tough little ferns grew back new foliage two or three times, only to have it stolen away again. I took a lot of pictures as the garden developed over the summer, and as soon as I figure out how to post them, I would be happy to. Thanks so much for your attention.

Virginia Creeper does stick to objects in the same manner as Ivy. It will grow straight up the side of your house, very quickly. AND although easy to remove, it leaves the little marks where it's suckers or feet attached to the house. I know they are native and birds LOVE their berries and where you are located, they may NOT be invasive. BUT here in SUNNY FLORIDA where they can grow year around, they grow for enormous distances horizontally and vertically. The birds devour the berries like candy and consequently they come up volunteer anywhere and everywhere, Apparently every seed that passes through the tummy of a bird is fertile and will grow wherever it falls. They are colorful and provide lots of food for the birds and I would rather have it growing in my yard than poison oak (whose berries are well liked by birds also, by the way) but surely there is some other vine that you would like better.

Thanks for responding, pamghatten. I tried to discourage the seller from engaging in this because (1) it's fraud and (2) I didn't want them to waste time off the market because I was sure the lender would catch this and it wouldn't close anyway. I'm still stunned that the underwriter and/or appraiser went along with it. I would think that multiple submissions with different contract terms would have raised a red flag. Additionally, someone should have been skeptical as to how these borrowers suddenly came up with tens of thousands of dollars cash for down payment -- they couldn't have shown that these funds had been on deposit and a gift of this size should have been suspicious. If a gift letter is involved, do lenders check the financial wherewithall of the donor? The realtors removed the house from the MLS when it went under contract, but don't appraisers or underwriters check the history of listing prices? This house had been on the market for over 2 years with numerous price reductions. Appraising isn't an exact science, so I can understand that the appraiser starts with the assumption that the sales price is accurate, but knowing that inflated sales prices are a common basis for fraud, it seems that a closer look would be warranted. If this deal wasn't exposed during underwriting, it seems unlikely that Quality Control would catch it. The scrutiny really needs to happen before the funds are disbursed. I can't see the payoff lender returning the funds. I know that the seller really wanted to unload this house, but that doesn't justify the commission of fraud. Even if your conscience doesn't kick in, people need to understand that it's very difficult to cover your tracks. A transaction of this size leaves a paper trail, and fraud is a crime which can carry pretty stiff penalties.