Hi Sherry, Have you ever tried adding native nitrogen-fixing plants to your rosebeds? I don't know much (like zip!) about Florida natives that fix nitrogen, but I found a few pretty quickly on a Google search--the small partridge pea (annual) and Elliott's milk pea (perennial). Both of these were on the website of the Florida Native Plant Society (link is below). Maybe this wouldn't do a lot, but it might give just a little boost to the soil so your roses could possibly benefit from mini snacks throughout the year. I use a variety of nitrogen-fixers in my garden. Many are California natives, with some non-natives that like the climate here. I have palo verdes (love this tree so I have 3 Parkinsonia 'Desert Museum'), Lotus scoparius (deerweed), Lotus crassifolius otayensis (Otay lotus), pink fairy duster (Calliandra eriophylla), Santa Catalina Island Mountain Mahogany (Cercocarpis traskiae), lots of California lilac (Ceanothus cyaneus, spinosus, tomentosus, 'Snow Flurry', 'Zanzibar', 'Lemon Ice', 'Diamond Heights', 'All Gold'), as well as non natives like white Bauhinia, various clovers, Austrian winter peas, birdsfoot trefoil, etc. Guess I'm just a lazy gardener who would rather not have to add stuff to the garden if the plants can do my work for me.;) My plants are lucky to get a little fish emulsion--although a small number get a mild powdered organic fertilizer occasionally. Many plants I feed nothing. Don't know how successful this would be in a much different climate/soil. Here I have mostly sandy loam, with some strips of the garden being clay or sand. Both the soil and water are alkaline and rainfall is low. The only problem being that the city water is high in boron with varying effects on plants. Melissa Here is a link that might be useful: Florida Native Plant Society

Since Aug.6th, I have released: 1Zebra Longwing, 2 Polydamas,1Eastern Black, 2Sulphurs, 1 Spicebush, 5 White Peacocks

Thanks, dualref. Today, 4 full days after the fact, it's starting to feel better. Yowzer! Who knew? Just a few little scratches.... As to why don't installers remove the plastic? Well, maybe that's some of the answer... I'm sure it wasn't this hard to get off prior to it being baked on, OTOH it probably wasn't completely simple either. Though truthfully, my installer likely just never thought of it. He's a little, um, dinged. Nice guy, I think he did a nice job with the hood, but, well .... I'd say I assume responsibility for this!

Just thought I'd remind you about checking for doorstop, bumper, and transom chain needs. Once cabinets and doors were in place, I realized just how many places I have where my doors or knobs will end up bumping into neighboring things and making marks or dents. A transom chain gets installed in a cabinet and even though I've got some spacers, there are places where I don't want a cabinet door to swing past a certain point. (I did learn about hinges for the opposite case, when I want a door to swing open wider) Some of my new doors, knobs or handles could bump into neighboring door trims and walls so we've walked around to figure out whether we want dome bumpers, wall-mounted door stops. Just thought I'd mention it because we turned out to need a lot of these. jayne