How long will they need this shade? Not sure in your area. Mine are still in the shade, but my understanding is that it needs shade until it reaches large size and/or gets it's roots/rhizomes well established. At this time, the bamboo itself shades the ground, keeping it cooler. It may be that the ground needs shade more so than the culms...not sure though. We have temps here in the 100's also, but mostly mid to upper 90's. They're almost 30 years old and from what I've read they've already well exceeded their expected useful life. If you trim the trees carefully, and a small amount each year, they can live much longer than 30 years. Will it still be necessary to give them shade at this point? You may try removing the shade and see what happens. Keep a close eye on it though. If it starts to look unhealthy, immediately recover it. It won't die over night, but you may set it back if the heat does start to harm it. The close-up of the variegated leaves looks like my D. asper, which gets the purple culm sheaths and variegated leaves usually early in the year, but go away by Summer. Not sure about them burning more easily. My asper's variegated leaves never get sun burned. How much direct sun does it get(hours daily)? Kt

I bought a Furminator a month ago and love it~~I got the small one (blue handle) since I have two cats, of course the older white cat that sheds the most does not like it but I make her do it! DS used it on the dog she is short haired and she looked better than the last time she went to the groomer. I was taking my white cat to the groomer 2-3X's a year and that helped alot but she meow's so much and is wiggly they do not want her back:( That is from two groomers. The last trip they called early and had me come get her, she is usually the only cat there and she makes the dogs crazy:(

Hi Minnie, it's nice to see you back. I wish that hadn't been so much trouble for you. Up at the top of the Kitchen table page there is a box that reads Example Title, Need Help for my Kitchen. If you want to start a new post, put your title in there, then drop down to the space below it for your message and click post. And again, welcome back

I cleaned my cache etc this morning and now my pages are Houzz. I had the dickens of a time trying to find the categories. I wanted to see what Hot Topics was doing, and when I clicked on Gardening, it doesn't give all the categories, as we know HT is listed below Hot Peppers. It took me right into Gardening discussions which I don't want. So now I manually change the houzz url to Gardenweb discussions OR click on my personal topics on the left. They are still Gardenweb. And, when it's Houzz, all of my discussion categories (KT, Cooking, etc) are all shown. I don't like that. I like browsing around Cooking or KT, I don't want all the discussions showing on the same page.