Actually, 100F is very, very rare in Florida. I have lived here 4 years and we have yet to hit 100F. It is much more common north of us. Anyway, back to your question. The big difference is that it cools at night out west. Trees can get a rest at night. This is key to the success of species normally found in cooler climates. In the southeast, the high nighttime temps can lead to stress and also root-rot. Diseases are much more common in humid areas and many take advantage of stressed trees. Also, in California, many cold climate species actually perform much better there despite the overall minimum temps in winter being higher than in Florida. This is because they get a constant cooler temp. in winter (consistent highs in the 50s for example) and cool down at night (but stay above freezing). This provides the cooling needed for dormancy to be retained. Here, we have much wider swings in temp - can be in the 80s for a week, follower by 40s with lows in the 20s or even teens. These swings cause many temperate species to flush out too early and get damaged etc. If i could choose a climate to garden in, it would be the Bay Area of California. They can grow everything. You will see zone 9 palms growing next to white birch, bananas, cycads, monkey puzzle, blue spruce etc. It is mind-blowing what can be grown there.

hello! this summer i went in for some heirloom tomatoes in new raised beds, and it was a disaster! the leaves on one plant started turning brown, and it spread through the bed and to all my plants in the end. the plants kept producing. i would pick the fruits early because if i left them on the plants, they would get a brown bruise (not just surface). if i left them to ripen long enough on an outdoor table, the would also get the bruise. if i left the on the plant, the bruise would start to rot within a couple of days. early on, i thought it might be frost or cold (our summer was cool this year, with a few weeks of hot humid weather, most nights were coldish around 15'C with a lot of dew) so i covered them for weeks with sheets even though i suspected i might spread the problem if it were a disease. it didn't help. do you think it was just the unusual weather? i tried looking at photos on the web but it doesn't seem to be any disease etc. that i saw. i don't want a repeat next year! thanks for your help!

I love doing jigsaw puzzles and never thought of taking a picture of the finished project. LOL My friends and I do puzzles all the time. I like the Springbok puzzles from Hallmark the best but have done others. My favourite puzzles are "mystery" puzzles, the ones you don't have a picture of. LOL I never look at the box when I am doing a puzzle either - takes the fun away. I just got a 1000 piece puzzle on sale at Hallmark for half price and it is sitting on the kitchen table waiting for me to start. When I have lost a puzzle piece and I know I am going to do the puzzle in the future or lend it out I take the the small section of the puzzle where the piece is missing and lay it in the lid of the box and then I outline the missing piece so I know what to look for when doing it again and know that a piece is missing. I do the edge pieces first and then I start from the bottom and try to work from left to right half way up the puzzle then I do the upper half when the bottom half is finished. Anne

My friend was giving away a puzzle of the United States and there are 50 pieces. I asked her if I could have it because it's a pretty good idea to test myself on what is above Colorado and so on. Every once in a while I get it out and do it again or give it to a friend. I can also compete with somebody and time ourselves. These were the kinds of games we played at the beach including those puzzles you showed. Now days you can have a puzzle made of a lot of different pictures. . For instance there is a picture of a scene in the Masterpiece Series Mr. Selfridge I'm going to have made into a puzzle because I love the PBS program and I love the fact that the department store still exists in London..The picture is of the perfume department.