I just say goodnight to tender plants. Gardening never really stops here -- it is easier to garden in cold than in summer's heat and humidity. Light frost expected this week. I'll still be planting spring bulbs in December after weeks of chill in the fridge, the ground doesn't freeze. We'll have some real cold nights before winter is done, but the days are generally well above freezing and sunny after a cold night. The upper lawn beds need lots of attention. Not seen from the road like the island beds are, I haven't tried before to make them as visually interesting, just attractive to butterflies. Edges everywhere need attention; centipede grass crawled into every bed. Cameron, I have to 'speriment with V. bonariensis, perennial here. Insects took out some in the very dry summer. Some has persisted. What seems to work well for me is V. bonariensis in spring and summer and Salvia leucantha for fall, cutting the verbena back late summer. I hope everybody will find a system to use pics to their best advantage in planning. Now that I have them in folders by months, I'm going back and moving some into folders by location. I have to get out and take last-minute cuttings of tender plants. There's no guarantee that stachytarpheta and pentas will return if the winter is colder than usual. I kind of promised the butterflies there will be more fav nectar plants next year. I dug my one pineapple sage plant, which could be kind of iffy, too and took additional cuttings. Thanks for all your kind comments. Nell

Thanks for sharing! She looks so sweet! How's the housebreaking coming? I had a puppy that took a year to train , but she was a fantastic loyal dog.

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I was referring to potential damage that might have occurred between point-of-sale and your home. You didn't mention how deep the pot is, so I'll just say watering any plants in pots deeper than about 3-5" using that the top inch or two of soil is dry, is more often than not a recipe for over-watering. After a thorough watering, most bagged grow media will support a 3-6" layer of soil 100% saturated with water at the bottom of the pot. A 10" deep pot could easily still have 6" of 100% saturated soil at the bottom of the pot when the top inch or two feels dry. It's far more important to know what moisture conditions are at the pot bottom, and a moisture meter isn't a reliable tool for that; instead, a sharpened (in a pencil sharpener) wooden dowel makes a much more reliable tool. Using a 'tell' Over-watering saps vitality and is one of the most common plant assassins, so learning to avoid it is worth the small effort. Plants make and store their own energy source – photosynthate - (sugar/glucose). Functioning roots need energy to drive their metabolic processes, and in order to get it, they use oxygen to burn (oxidize) their food. From this, we can see that terrestrial plants need plenty of air (oxygen) in the soil to drive root function. Many off-the-shelf soils hold too much water and not enough air to support the kind of root health most growers would like to see; and, a healthy root system is a prerequisite to a healthy plant. Watering in small sips leads to avoid over-watering leads to a residual build-up of dissolved solids (salts) in the soil from tapwater and fertilizer solutions, which limits a plant's ability to absorb water – so watering in sips simply moves us to the other horn of a dilemma. It creates another problem that requires resolution. Better, would be to simply adopt a soil that drains well enough to allow watering to beyond the saturation point, so we're flushing the soil of accumulating dissolved solids whenever we water; this, w/o the plant being forced to pay a tax in the form of reduced vitality, due to prolong periods of soil saturation. Sometimes, though, that's not a course we can immediately steer, which makes controlling how often we water a very important factor. In many cases, we can judge whether or not a planting needs watering by hefting the pot. This is especially true if the pot is made from light material, like plastic, but doesn't work (as) well when the pot is made from heavier material, like clay, or when the size/weight of the pot precludes grabbing it with one hand to judge its weight and gauge the need for water. Fingers stuck an inch or two into the soil work ok for shallow pots, but not for deep pots. Deep pots might have 3 or more inches of soil that feels totally dry, while the lower several inches of the soil is 100% saturated. Obviously, the lack of oxygen in the root zone situation can wreak havoc with root health and cause the loss of a very notable measure of your plant's potential. Inexpensive watering meters don't even measure moisture levels, they measure electrical conductivity. Clean the tip and insert it into a cup of distilled water and witness the fact it reads 'DRY'. One of the most reliable methods of checking a planting's need for water is using a 'tell'. You can use a bamboo skewer in a pinch, but a wooden dowel rod of about 5/16” (75-85mm) would work better. They usually come 48” (120cm) long and can usually be cut in half and serve as a pair. Sharpen all 4 ends in a pencil sharpener and slightly blunt the tip so it's about the diameter of the head on a straight pin. Push the wooden tell deep into the soil. Don't worry, it won't harm the root system. If the plant is quite root-bound, you might need to try several places until you find one where you can push it all the way to the pot's bottom. Leave it a few seconds, then withdraw it and inspect the tip for moisture. For most plantings, withhold water until the tell comes out dry or nearly so. If you see signs of wilting, adjust the interval between waterings so drought stress isn't a recurring issue. Al