Serissa is a very popular bonsai subject and you should be able to find it in the literature quite often. Ive pasted a link that might be helpful. Serissa is a plant that inspires great admiration and great loathing. It can be a bit fussy. They are easy to grow in warm humid areas, so So Cal ought to be a good place to try it.Here in Ohio it can be trouble getting them through the winter. Here is a link that might be useful: serissa link

My local garden retail shop publishes a hard copy document that shows what is plantable for each month. And our University extension office has a "Garden Planning" center online with planting dates. You might be able to find one for your zone. I don't have beds, but I have limited space and have to plan ahead and track things, or I go nuts. I am a planner by nature, so I tend to overplan. Being an overplanner, I doubt some of my tips will work for you. But here they are. I use a paint program that uses layers so I can color code. Like this: Not all graphics programs offers layers, but I think Gimp (used to be free, it is open source) does, and Adobe Elements, an abbreviated but very capable version of Adobe Photoshop does, and you should be able to buy for under $50. Here is the key I use to keep track of things: The blue shaded areas are planted, those with a blue check were recently seeded and need to be watered daily. The bright pink S indicates I have started seed inside and will transplant later. The yellow-orange areas mark what I need to plant next, probably at the next opportunity. The pink areas need to be planted, but are not targeted for anything yet - still open. Using this little chart makes it really easy to plant in as small as 30 minutes chunks of time, which is all I have most of the time. As far as what to plant, you need to make decisions based on what will grow in your area. I am in 8b, but on the east coast, or I would gladly share. But I don't want to mislead you. Hang in there. I am only at it three years too, and I have much to learn. It helps to be an optimist - I harvested 14 pounds of tomatoes tonight, but I also have 7 dying squash plants. I look for the unexpected surprise sometimes. The gardener provides the framework, and sometimes needs to stand back and be a witness. So much is not up to us. The surprises are what amaze me the most. This morning I found another volunteer tomato, the third one. The first one is a gem. It probably is a Sungold descendent - it is dwarf and fully loaded with little tiny tomatoes. The Black Beauty Eggplant I bought is really a Fairy Tale and it does not care about this hot weather. We are having straight 95 degree days already, the peppers are shut down, the tomatoes look stressed, but here is this little dwarf eggplant setting fruit like nobodies business.

I'm the tree specialist & buyer (and certified arborist) for a retail nursery in Menlo Park, California. If you are still looking for this cherry, I have some suggestions that will allow you to be hands on before you purchase. Monrovia is a national wholesale grower / supplier for the Paperbark Cherry (Prunus serrula var. tibetica). If you have a local garden center that orders from Monrovia, they should be able to order one for you. Monrovia does require minimum quatities of each plant be ordered, so you may need to locate a larger retail garden center (usually an independent) that's willing to do this. Another wholesale grower is Loen Nursery, out of Oregon. I'm not sure if they ship to Charlotte.

Assuming they hired a professional designer to do the model living room, what I see is that under the best of circumstances, that living room is awkwardly set up. In the model room, there is space for three, maybe 4 people to sit. Only one seat directly faces the TV set. Look at the furniture in that room. One small sofa or loveseat. One armchair. One TV stand. One end table. One large coffee table that was chosen to fill up the empty space in the center of the room to make it look more furnished. Imagine that room without the coffee table and it starts to look a lot like the OP�s room. There are three lamps, one of which appears to block part of the TV. And then at least 4 plants, to make the room appear more furnished and welcoming. I think they did a wonderful job making that room look open and inviting, and hiding the more obvious flaws in the design of the room. The room�s layout simply doesn�t function well. Either you have the sofa on the wall in the model room, and then you have a hard time watching TV, or you put the sofa on the window wall so you can see the TV set, and then you lose the view out the windows and have an awkward layout. OP, it�s not you. It�s the room. Working with the furniture you have, the first thing I�d do is take out the two small chairs. They don�t work with the rest of the furniture. Then I�d try to put the sofa on the wall where it is in the model room, and buy a table top TV swivel stand so that you could easily watch TV from there. Move the blue chair to the same position as the woven chair in the model picture and place an end table between the sofa and the chair. Down the line, look for a coffee table similar to the one in the model picture�glass or Lucite to keep the space looking open, and slightly oversized to fill the space better. And maybe a smaller unit to hold the TV.