Hello, Citrus can be a little difficult but as long as you do a few things you should be fine. I would simply lift the tree out of the pot and see if the roots are rootbound. If you notice roots coming out the bottom of the pot then it needs to be repotted. Citrus require a feast draining mixture that isn't going to hold water. They can suffer from root rot fairly fast. Several people here use Al's gritty m ix or a variation of it. Judt don't use any potting soil, even if it says that it is good for citrus. I tried something similiar. I used it for a dwarf moro blood orange and a dwarf keylime. A few weeks ago I noticed that my blood orange was losing leaves, and the stems were turning black. I almost lost it, but the second I changed the soil to a bark mix, it recovered and then some! I would use a black plastic container. The heat will not hurt the tree and it actually will help dry the soil out. Citrus are heavy feeders. I would check the Lowe's were you bought the tree at. If they sell citrus, then they should have citrus fertilizer. I managed ti get my hands on bag and that is what I use with a combination of Foliage Pro and a also a teaspoon of white vinegar per gallon of water. The vinegar helps to keep the ph in the acidic range which the citrus require. If you can't find a citrus fertilizer look for something high in Nitrogen. i also use a product similiar to Super Thrive. Some people here don't think it helps any but it helped my keylime tremedously. When it comes to the cold temps, I would be very carefull with any temps that go below 32. I won't risk it myself but some people say that they can handle 30. I keep my citrus indoors by then so I don't know if it would hurt or not. As long as you can keep it in your sun room with temps above 30 you should be fine. If they temps get much cooler, the tree may go dormant. Not dropping leaves or fruit, but not really growing. That should help you a little and I am sure there will be more people that can help you. I wish I could go to my Lowe's and buy citrus trees like that! Andrew

We also have had good rain, Kathy. It rained Saturday, Saturday night, all day Sunday, and is raining now at 10:00pm Sunday night! WE are happy! I, too, have had a few harsh words with my dog. She looks at the rain, looks at me and goes and lays down again. She will come back in a few minutes for me to open the door so she can look out again, but she doesn't want to go out. It is wet out there! And she is scared of thunder.....I finally made her go out, but I went out with her. The rain rolls off her. I get soaked. Janie

a2gemini - thanks for the lesson of the confusing land I know only from Robocop and Home Improvement. :p Never been over there before. Before moving to the southeast I normally stayed from Texas to west of the Rockies to that whole north central/northeast US portion of the map is still unexplored. MGMum - I have some friends from London, ON who mentioned something like that. The whole area sounds really different from parts of BC that I've spent time in. Texas_Gem - all I can say is that my eyes get as big as saucer plates every time I read something about the tooth problems! cal_quail - comeon and join the not at work today club! Painting is on the list over here too so I can put things back on the bottom shelf of the pantry. greenhaven - using up stuff you already have is loads of fun, especially if you're a minimalist. I did find everything I needed eventually. It's like this... Hardware needed for the front door is a deadbolt, doorknob set, and at least one round thing that goes around the doorknob (escutcheon) that makes it look nice. The escutcheon I already have has a satin brass finish. I also have a nice non-locking doorknob set that I found at Habitat a couple of years ago but it's satin bronze. So I'm starting with 1 out of 3 pieces of two puzzles. I was able to come up with a way to properly finish both of them. I'll use the satin bronze one for the front door because normally the only thing that takes a key at that location is the deadbolt, not the knob. I already have one of these. Also two escutcheons in that finish were available from ebay and I wanted one for the inside and another for the outside. Deadbolts are easy because Schlage still makes that finish in their commercial/high end residential line. I'll use the satin brass set for the door to the garage because everywhere I've lived had a patio (locking) doorknob to the garage + a deadbolt. This is the only way you can get satin brass doorknobs for some reason. I have only one escutcheon in this finish, which is ok because it would be pointless to have one inside the garage. The finish has been discontinued but deadbolts are still available. I'll wait for the satin bronze set to come in first, then use the key number to have the brass one keyed to match it when I place the order. I'll have to do the same with the lock on the knob since those are available only on ebay with whatever cylinder they came with. All of this lock replacing is a good thing because right now we have three different kinds of locks at home. We only have the key to the front door, and I'll have to replace the door to the garage at some point because some genius decided to cut a dog door in it and they did a really sloppy job. It's also insecure because to get in from the garage all you have to do is reach in from the dog door and turn the knob if it's locked. This post was edited by schicksal on Fri, Oct 17, 14 at 9:57

We haven't had any to speak of in the suburbs for over a week or so (and even then, it wasn't that much). But we found water in the wheel barrel yesterday in the country--so must have rained there this week. I am curious--how many of you (I saw someone else posted they did) use rain barrels? If you don't get much rain, it's a great way to save some of it for later use. We've found a side benefit is that by diverting the rain water into a rainbarrel, less of it ends up in our basement. We suspect there are breaks in our underground drainage pipe, so a rain barrel is a cheap and green way to fix that without having to dig up our side yard from the back of the house to the street. We lucked out on ours--waited till the end of last season, found a store that had not sold their stock of RB's and I was able to snag 8 of them for $25 DOLLARS APIECE!!!