Hello Wild City Woman, I would get them in the gound right away provided that your soil has been prepared. I just planted mine a few weeks ago and I am sure that they will be fine. I would recommend ammending the soil to ensure that the ph is between 5-6.5 or so. I would also add a decent amount of organic material to the soil. Azaleas like rich acidic soil. Make sure that you don't plant them too deep, its best to put them in raised beds and to put the top of the root ball about a half inch above the ground. Use lots of mulch, I like either pine needles or cedar mulch. Pine needles tend to be quite cheep if you can find a neighbour who wants to get rid of theirs. I planted 3 Azaleas in my garden just last week. Rhododendron prunifolium, R. periclymeniodes and R. calendulaceum. I chose North American native azaleas because they can handle the hot summers better than most other ones. Enjoy!

A lazy, hot starter sounds like a good place to look since this has been identifed in service bulletins as a problem area. One more thing: Does this model have electronic ignition - one with a "cam position" sensor in the distributor? These sensors were notorious for misbehaving when hot, but would work again when its temperature was reduced. The bowl of the distributor is elevated a distance from the engine block and sits atop the distributor housing. When you are moving down the road, there may be enough air flow under the hood and over the distrubtor to hold its temperature low enough to keep the cam position sensor operating. But sit at a light, or pull a hill at slow speed, or shut down a hot engine and park, and then the temperature of the bowl rises. It will not start or it may misfire until the bowl temperature reduces.

Loewen is the best of what you have listed. I know the Loewen dealer in Huntsville. Loewen makes really good stuff, but its pricey. Burt Dale owns the Marvin distributorship in Huntsville and he is also pricey. Pella in you market use to be Frank Day, but he sold out to a company in Indiana I think. Rumor has it, they are a train wreck. The Loewen dealer in your market is relatively new. Loewen practically pulled out of there when the market went bad. The current dealer runs pretty lean and I doubt they will have nearly as much of a mark-up as Marvin (Dale inc). Windsor is not a quality product. Its mid-level builder grade. The sales rep is pushing it for a reason. Could be they get higher margin/commission. Could be the manufacture is paying a spiff directly to the sales rep (not uncommon). Weather Shield use to be a good product when the old man was still running it. His sons took over and pretty much gutted the quality control. When Ed Schield still ran it, they made good stuff. I think Ed is still alive but not active in the day to day operations. Give Loewen a call. I would use them on my projects, but they are made in Canada and if I need parts this time of year I'm pretty much out of luck until they thaw out. I they had planned on building a plant/warehouse in South Carolina before the recession hit just to address the issue of weather delays and service, but I don't know if that ever happened.

My recommendations: Vinyl-Sunrise, Okna, Softlite/Gorell, Affinity (Energex). Composites-Okna, Interstate. Fiberglass-Inline, Marvin. Wood-Marvin, Kolbe-Kolbe Please don't take this list as the only good windows out there. There are some regional manufacturers that make some very good windows, but I'm just not familiar enough with them to make a recommendation. Most manufacturers of vinyl windows will offer at least a tan/beige exterior and a white interior. Softlite offers a few basic extruded colors and an expanded selection of foil laminate exteriors and then adds in a fairly large selection of painted exteriors and if that doesn't satisfy you, they will also color match to any Sherwin-Williams paint colors. Sunrise offers about 4 exterior colors and a few interiors colors.Okna also offers a pretty good selection of extruded colors and also an expanded selection of painted exteriors. Inline offers about 5 standard factory colors and will also do any custom colors. Marvin offers a decent selection of cladded exteriors.