Hmmm, I have the same kind of issues with my balcony, except I'm in San Francisco. I have a westward-facing balcony which gets a lot of sun (on the days we get sun in SF!) but it's also extremely windy because I live on top of a hill. I'm interested to try the wave petunias that someone recommended above. I think my main concerns for planting are, a) that my plants get enough water, b) my plants have enough growing room, and c) they won't blow over. My general plan is to plant a lot of vines and trailing flowers that I can guide along my rails for stability. I'm going to grow morning glories, moon flowers, and four o'clocks, and nasturtiums to let trail downwards. My nasturtiums did well last year. For flower boxes, my guess would be to find flowers that won't grow so tall (otherwise you'd have to stake them). I think that California poppies are quite sturdy against windy weather, at least where I live, so that might be a good choice. Some hardy flowering herbs, like rosemary and lavender could probably handle the windy climate as well.

I don't live in your zone but as a general rule of thumb, you want to look for plants that are 1 - 2 USDA hardiness zones colder than that designated for your area. This recommendation is mainly if you want to keep the plants out in winter. If you have a place to bring them in that is chilled, then you can go with the more marginal plants. Sometimes it is difficult to judge what might do well if you have no direct sun and there are ways to increase the amount of light around plants. In many cases, the plants will grow but the flowering will be reduced without that sunlight. Being south-facing, I expect that it might be a little blessing that you aren't getting full blazing sun all day, which is usually the case for south-facing. I often recommend that people buy and plant things that they like and give it a try. I often go to a nursery looking for one thing and see something else and bring that home. Then I end up researching the care for the plant. However regarding your mention of "droughts" and "severe snow", you need to make sure that the plant gets manual watering if there is no natural rain that makes it on the balcony (if it is covered and/or enclosed) and you may want to consider protection in winter for less hardy plants. Snow is actually a good insulator and I allow my hardy plants to be covered in it, and that will help reduce the incidence of continual freezes and thaws, but again, it's dependent on how much precipitation in general, reaches your balcony and ultimately your plants.

I need to put something on both some pressure treated lumber decking and some cedar decking. Has any one used Deckscapes sold at Sherwin Williams. I read it was good. Otherwise my neigbhor used Behr and liked it in the past but I don't read such great things about it on this forum. Let me know what you guys think and thanks a lot!

to my eye: you have enough going on with 2 different counters and busy b/s... i would pick the darkest color in your flooring and match that the best you can to your island. continuity would be a plus here. totally agree with you, you can add color with all your other elements. best part, if blue falls out of favor with you down the road, no worries about the island.