Thanks lynn2006 and aliris19--love the pun, aliris! We don't have flowers all the time lynn (wouldn't that be nice though?), but I should have taken a new kitchen pic with my beautiful Valentine's Day bouquet--DH drove to the store that Friday morning (after, during? the snowstorms we had) to pick them up for me! Flaten, I have a couple sets of Chilewich placemats (one set I got at Century 21 for something like $4 each--I couldn't believe it when I got home and googled them and saw that they retailed for $20/ea!), so I know how nice some of their materials can be! Here are some pics I have in my PB showing a few of our shades: Guest Bathroom: MB (reflected in the mirror--you can see how sheer that particular fabric is): Guest Bedroom (you can see part of the shade): The shades in the Guest Bedroom and in our "Spare Room" are the prettiest ones we have fabric-wise (IMO), and those have the most texture, too. The shades in the two bathrooms, and our bedroom are solid color, flat weave, and are fairly sheer during the day--we wanted to maximize our ability to look out the windows during the day, while leaving the shades down (on nice days, with the windows open, we raise the shades to the height of the open portion of the window). We have room darkening micro-pleat shades mounted behind the screen shades in both bedrooms. We lower those at night, and raise them fully in the morning when we get up. Privacy micro-pleat shades are available as well, BTW. I haven't seen them in person, but would think they allow more light into the room. Some light does seep in with the room darkening micro-pleats--there are pinholes up/down the length of the shades for the strings that help to raise and lower them. FYI, they do NOT make the Roman Shade style Designer Screen Shades anymore (like the two in our bathrooms, and the ones in our office and FR which are not shown here). They are only available now as a completely flat shade (like the one in our Guest Bedroom). They offer a range of fabrics; from very sheer to fairly opaque, completely smooth through textured, etc. HTH!

I'd say leave them alone and feed them as normally you should according to the instructions on the label, especially as the trees were recently stressed. If the roots were damaged from the leaf stress, you should not be using high dose fertilizer while they are recovering as they will not be able to take it up fast enough so it will remain in the growing media. If the media dries out the salts from the fertilizer will burn the roots. The fertilizer burns when it is dry not when it is liquid. Roots usually grow really well in air pots once the plant has time to adapt to the repot. You might have to make sure you are watering enough as the media probably is drying fast with the airy, fast draining media and air pots, especially in a hot, dry, sunny, windy, climate. Did you soak the media before you planted the tree in it? It takes a while for the bark to be able to absorb water when it is new. You might have to water every day with those conditions and also more often because the bark is new and has not decayed yet to easily absorb and hold the water. You said the trees got stressed and lost their leaves while you were away. They probably were not watered enough as it would be hard to overwater in your mix in an air pot like you are using. Looks like a Rootmaker pot. The trees are probably just now recovering. The tops look healthy green in the pictures, so I think you should just leave them alone and have patience and the roots will grow to match the tops. Citrus trees grow in cycles with the roots, tops and flowers growing at separate times throughout the year. When they look like they are not growing, that is usually when the roots are growing. Be patient, try watering a little more often, and fertilize per directions until the trees get stronger and used to their new growing conditions. The higher dose fertilizer may also be causing them to push new growth too fast with the high level of nitrogen you are giving them resulting in weak growth. Slow it up and let this new growth harden up. Also, if the cutting was taken from a sideways growing branch rather than a verticle growing branch, it's growth will have more of a tendency to grow more horizontally and weepy rather than more upright. Good luck. I think you will have great success in the Rootmaker pots. Cory

Look what I found a couple of days ago on my new raised bed! I saw my neighbor in my backyard doing something to the bed he built for me. When I went out later, I found these. They’re for the cup of diet coke that I always have with me! When I was showing him pics of beds I liked, I laughingly told him not to do any of those fancy post tops bcs I needed a flat place to set my diet coke. Now, lo and behold, I have 3 custom made drink shelves!

That is some kind of "big leaf" rhododendron. I don't have one. I have no doubt a grafted one would grow well for me...at least the hardiest big leaves like R. rex. So this is perhaps a good time to express my increasing infuriation with the paucity of what we should perhaps call "performance grafting" in the US. (Vs. something like Japanese Maples, which much be grafted, so is really propagative grafting) . Probably the biggest rhodo nursery in the world, Baumeschule Hachmann in Germany, ONLY produces grafted plants. Namely for performance reasons, too, although the concern there is limey soil, not hot, wet soil. Though they surely also have a awareness that certain cultivars will do better grafted, even in chilly north Europe. The Scottish Coxes, gardening in the most maritime of climates, nevertheless complain that certain cultivars perform better if grafted, in their vast encyclopedia of hybrids. As far north as MA, a R. rex in a collector's garden died one hot summer ,not one winter. The root rot is even a problem up there! So absolutely, grafting onto a rot resistant rootstock would allow R. rex to survive here. Even on the benign North Island of NZ, it's been done to permit certain big leaf species to grow without threat of root rot collapse. But here? I'm not going to name names, but feel like I've exhausted my options for convincing a commercial source to do it. Am I too cynical to wonder if they just like knowing a certain % of what they ship outwith the PNW is likely to eventually die of root rot? And thus need to be replaced? Perhaps. Or maybe it's just "this is the way we're always done things, and we don't like upstarts with new-fangled ideas". At any rate it leaves the only option being trying to breed tougher big leafs. Tim who sometimes posts here, is raising some promising hybrids, including one involving the native Rhododendron maximum. (Which still isn't tough enough to be seen much south of DC, in the Piedmont and plains at least.)