Thanks. I'll have to do that (succession planting) next year. What tips do you all have for keeping the plants healthy and producing as long as possible? Also, how many cukes should you expect from a healthy plant? I have gotten maybe 5-10 from each of the plants. Doesn't seem like much considering how much they all flowered.

Yes, wrong soil, in too large a pot. Cacti need as much sun as you can give them. The cactus should send out new growth just below the cut. Christopher

Oh, they're so young. It's actually easy to imagine them doing selfies in another era. :) The room is really, really nice. Great new rug. And great idea to just put it over the old one, especially if it could be larger, for "extra warmth" until someone with colder feet needs the old one. Definitely bring in something like those wonderful blue-trimmed curtains, and perhaps a cushion for the chair, to make it clear you're doing blue in there. Just so the right rug goes missing. "And we all make our own "contributions" to the decor from time to time and things move around occasionally. We all just try to go with it because we know it's always done with good intentions. The most upsetting thing is when the corkscrew goes missing!" Lol and lovely.

Tiaagrippa: The nursery I work at in southern Wisconsin grows thousands of boxwoods. We too once grew Winter Gem I found that variety while normally winter hardy here discolors badly in the winter sun. It should green up better as temperatures warm up and the plant starts flushing new growth. Just a note that ALL boxwood we grow in the field put on a late flush of growth in the fall. That new growth always comes out yellow in late winter/early spring. We often clip it off so we can dig and sell boxwoods early in the spring. It is not an issue and will happen most years. Will winter gem survive the -22 we had this winter without any damage? That is a good question and too early to tell yet. Even it it does have some die back, do not panic. Let it color up this spring and flush new growth. At that time if you have dead branch tips then clip them back to live tissue. Judging from your photos, your plants really need a good shearing anyway the next few years to get them dense and in better shape. I presume what you purchased are container grown plants based on how they presently look in form. Where I am at we grow at least 6 varieties of boxwood in SE WI and most years they are fine. The worst for off coloring in the winter are Winter Gem and Wintergreen. We have Wintergreen by a building (shade even in winter) and there they stay green. Yet in the field Wintergreen turn off color with the winter sun. They always come back in color once the weather warms up in late May. The least hardy boxwood in my area is Green Mountain which will have more tissue death in cold winters than any other variety. The most cold hardy is Chicagoland Green which is one of the few that can survive even the cold winters of Minneapolis, MN.