meslgh......... You have gotten advice from people local to you, so my two cents is of less value than what they have told you, but it may add a dimension you can use in your decision making. I live in a latitude further north than you and I live at a higher elevation, so even though we both live in zone 8a, the light is different up here than where you live. That's why the local advice is much better. Also, since I live in the mountains, my night temps cool off by 40 to 50 degrees and that gives the plants a chance to rehydrate themselves during the night ... pull moisture up from the root zone to the top growth. I don't know if that is true where you live. What I have learned about growing roses in an area of high heat (Heat zone 8), is that roses with thicker petal substance can handle more light and heat. Since I don't have any disease pressure once the day temps hit 85 degrees and stay there or higher, I prune for foliage. That means I don't take out anything that might produce foliage. The rose will abandon what it cannot use. I have found that the roses need as much foliage as possible to stimulate the plant to pull moisture up from the root zone. Once my roses have been in the ground for 3 to 4 years, they are much better at handling the light and the heat. I have some roses that only look wonderful in spring and fall and pretty lousy during the summer months. That's fine with me because I love the roses and I have enough other roses that do well in the summer months. My goal is not to strive for perfect blooms, but for a healthy plant. A healthy plant provides enough blooms to keep me happy. I hope this helps. Smiles, Lyn

Thank you Deb. I had to take all my plants of the window sills. Wind came in to much. Even though the windows are new. But then I knew that this is one disadventage of metal framed windows. I just hope nobody has to go out there in this bad weather. Bob and others are probably out in the yard enjoying the sunshine lol Have you all noticed who is here? rofl The ones with bad weather roflmao Just kiddin. Lucy

ILovetoGrow, I'll be looking in the WalMart plant section to find one in Mobile, maybe. Like Ken says, it is a marketing ploy which may or may not work for them. Certainly, as I scanned the thumbnails at Ken's linked site, I saw beaucoup plants that I'm growing already. No scarcity of plant selections for here. However, Mobile is a subtropical zone, not really tropical, and I have to be quite particular about what I put in the ground, what I pot. And some of those POTS, man, I am not able to move them with a dolly if they are full of soil and a big plant too. (Hence restoring a derelict garage into my Teahouse/Greenhouse for wintering tender plants.) When my potted banana trees get big, they'll stay inside the Teahouse all year long, they thrive on heat and frequent watering, heavy feeders. Why should I love hosta you are wondering, with all the other stuff....well, Ken, I had a taste of northern gardening for several seasons, and I became enamoured of the hosta variety. No other plant species can change so much in its lifetime, or over the course of one year, and they all seem beautiful. Plus, if I can manage to give them the REQUIRED DORMANCY, which is my puzzle right now, they might prosper for me. I intend to give it a good try before I say Uncle. And I'm not known to give up easily.

I had wondered about this because Christoper suddenly stopped posting a couple years ago. We’d had a couple of messaging conversations & when I DM’d him 9/2023 he didn’t respond. Christoper had told me about a blog & author of the blog that lives in my area. I happened to encounter that blogger in a local nursery & asked him about Christopher. He’d met him once at a large garden show in NC. That blogger told me he’d heard Christoper passed away but had no other info. I was saddened to hear this and now, reading this thread I’m feeling sad again. My understanding was Christopher had moved from Hawaii back to NC to care for his aging mother. His blog from Hawaii had a lot of stories about his cats which sadly were too old to make the trip back to NC with him. I do hope that he was able to make arrangements for his current cat companions before he passed. Two of them are in one of his pictures in this thread. He really was a valued contributor to this site. Very sad that he’s gone and nice legacy that so many of us miss him.