Another pic from September 12th. From here on out the lemons get heavy and really weigh the branches down. I cant wait for them to ripen, I want to taste my own meyer lemons :)

LL Bean's holiday commercial ("The snow is coming down on this New England town...") makes the NE seems so charming! And then I think about being cold all of the time...it makes 90/90 summers (90 F, 90% humidity) seem downright bearable. For those of you who dream of moving south, you'll feel right at home here in the NC Piedmont. We have a HUGE influx of folks from NJ and NY! Yes, our summers are hot and humid, but the weather is delightful from October through June. Of course, we're getting a bit of that cold air here as well -- our low on Friday night is forecast to be around 10 F (very unusual), so I too am taking precautions with my figs and other potted plants. Good luck to everyone... As for the global warming comments, the shift to the "climate change" label hardly qualifies as vacillation. Rather, it better reflects the reality of what we face -- an overall, average warming trend that is likely to make weather a whole lot weirder (the key here is "weather" as opposed to "climate" -- there's a big difference). Some areas will be warmer, some colder, some drier, and some wetter. The climate will be warmer, but local weather may be anything but.

Kathy, You sound like Steve....... Turkey day up north for him was about raking leaves before they ate. He isn`t very warm and fuzzy about it either LOL. I am a Florida girl...... guess you can`t miss what you don`t know. The pictures are pretty :)

This is a new reply to an old post, but there are native live oaks in the area roughly between Ft. Worth, Abilene, and Wichita Falls, Texas that should work beautifully in your area. For some reason, nobody has developed commercial cultivars from this area. Live oaks, especially along the northern margin of their range, can vary in their characteristics. The ideal would be one with dense foliage that stays dark green all winter on a non-stoloniferous tree that branches With strong crotch angles. For commercial growers, it would probably require two trips to western North Texas—one in February/March to identify trees with the right characteristics, and once again in September/October to collect acorns. Maybe ten years of field trials would be in order after that. Of course this would be more of a long-range project than collecting an annual or perennial, but it could fundamentally change the landscape in Tennessee, Kentucky, and the Eastern Seaboard up to Philadelphia or maybe New York.