Ellen 17 is right changing the climate can kill. I have bought orchids from Hawaii and they seem to decline till I figured a way around it. You might try to save some by vase culture. I have phals. growing in vase culture no medium just long fiber coconut husk put around to hold in moisture. When your plants are dying you really have nothing to lose but try things. I use RO water and make sure my TDS are around 115ppm or less . With this method I fertilize every few days with a very low rate keeping that TDS at 115ppm. You do need to water a vase plant everyday as it really has no medium. Being in a humid climate maybe you will just mist. I do not know. Right now we are cooler and I water the phals if the roots do not look wet. Vandas I mist everyday right now and cyms like phals only if they look like they are drying out. I do live in a very low humidity area, dry as a desert sometimes. Under vase condition I have new roots coming out right and left and already some have spikes and flowers. Vase lets you see exactly what is happening and holds even moisture. I just do not know how this will work for you being in a humid area. I would post a picture, but I had trouble and the system kicked the file out. I tried to download. Things I grow in vases cymbidiums (till I did this I could not keep them alive, never produced roots)( use large florist vases with long fiber coconut husk)now have lots of roots green tips, phals, vandas, phaps, phrags, The phaps and phrags both have stones halfway and then they are in a cypress bark, moss, and lava stone mix. I have roots like crazy and tall standing plants. I make sure after watering that I go back a few times and knock out all the water left at the bottom of the vase. Don't want rotten roots. Again I do not know how this will work for you in a humid climate. You could maybe try one and see if you could save it. Hot weather I fill vases and soak a little . Cooler weather I just mist them and the coconut long fiber husk and knock out the water. Plants like vandas I remove the fiber before night fall so they can breathe.

Thanks for the responses! Rayama, I love to grow everything. My mother was a horticulturist so I come by it naturally. Unfortunately, she has been "gone" for 35 years and I can't ask her for help. When she was alive, we lived in Atlanta. I am thinking Mentone will be different from there - probably colder, maybe rockier but simlar, I hope. As for plants, I like the old timey pass-along plants. I love all of the bulbs. I know last Spring the bulbs were in bloom in Mentone before they bloomed in the FL Panhandle, my current home. How can that be? I love lillies and iris and hope to be able to take lots of mine with me to Alabama. I love roses but have not had the greatest luck with them in FL because of humidity and black spot. I enjoy growing different varieties of anything edible from herbs to fruits and veggies. Currently in FL I have figs, blueberries, pears, plums,lemons, limes, oranges and blackberries along with all kinds of veggies and herbs. One of my fears is buying property that looks like good soil and finding out it has big old rocks under the surface or some soil component I don't know how to deal with. That could be discouraging. I am hoping that some folks on this forum will live near enough to me after the move for swapping plants once I get there and get my gardens going. I read the posts on plant swapping and get all excited just as if I live up there and can come over and swap along with you! Gee, it's only a 5 or 6 hour drive down the road to B'ham and another couple to Huntsville (grin). Rhizo - thank you for the Alabama Extension Service URL. I bookmarked it for reference and know it will answer some of my questions. Question for anyone who cares to answer: I will be leaving a hurricane area and going to a tornado/ice storm/earthquake area. Hurricanes do tremendous damage to trees and plants in my area - mainly defoliating them and knocking them over or breaking off limbs. I know Mentone has had ice storms which broke lots of limbs. I also know that tornados don't give much warning. And then there was the freak earthquake in the Ft. Payne/Mentone area a couple years ago. Tornados have generally higher wind speeds than hurricanes I have experienced (Ivan in 2004 was a Bear!). My question is this - which is worse, tornados or hurricanes? Thanks for your help! -sweetshrub

"I've had zero problems with flushing line sets. I use Pro-Flush with nitrogen, it's a $150 cost. While line sets start at $500. Upstairs, could be much more, and depends on how you want the line set ran. " See, this is the problem I have with the HVAC industry - The markups on parts and supplies are HUGE, and the installers want to double their money on everything they touch as well, so the customer ends up really getting nailed, or skipping NEEDED parts, and the installers really don't care. Add to that contractors that really don't want to do anything but slam in a new unit, even if they're choking it with insufficient return air, dinky linesets, and disconnects and wiring that was installed when Ike was president. I got a 1 1/8" 50' lineset for $209 + shipping, and that's pretty much the biggest lineset available for residential. A 25 foot 3/4" lineset is closer to $125 - Paying $150 to re-use a 20-30 year old lineset is just silly, especially since the newer units often want bigger lines anyway. If a retail customer can find these prices on the 'net, then the installer - rightfully imho, loses all credibility. I had one installer make a big point about how he would cover the cost of the extra refrigerant I'd need because of my long lineset. I looked in the service manual, and found that I needed .8 of an ounce per foot of line over 25 feet...15 x .8 = 12 ounces - LESS THAN A POUND of REFRIGERANT! Needless to say, I was underimpressed with his Charge a FAIR price for your labor, and quit trying to bury profit in your parts - it makes you look shady.

We went with a national franchise company, and the franchisee here near where we live gave a wonderful presentation. The machine we decided on is the Frigidaire iQ. It is fully eco-friendly, has a rotary inverter in the compressor, is a 22 SEER. Comes with a special programmable thermostat with bells and whistles, better quality UV lite (bulb replacement every 2 yrs instead of the usual 12 months), controls the indoor temp with sliding Hz instead of 2 stage, etc. There's also a mfr's rebate of $1000, plus $1510 FPL rebate, and of course the tax credit. Price before tax credit is: approx. $5200. I was very impressed with this guy's knowledge after we had others coming into the house. The SEER is much more than we originally thought we should get, but when faced with a much larger energy saving by doing this as well as the higher FPL rebate (the energy saving was the greater incentive), we went for it. A neighbor went with a Trane 14 SEER (can't understand that - it doesn't qualify for tax credit), and already has had 3 service calls for the great condensation buildup!! I took into consideration the foregoing about Trane not being able to handle the great heat and humidity we have here in So. Fla. Thanks to all for your input. I will update after installation which should take place on Oct. 12th.