Thank you, Laura... such wonderful sentiments! :-) Our weather has been crazy, too... but we half expected it. Last year, we were already laying out soaker hoses and starting to water...and this year, we've gotten so much rain that we're completely saturated! We're just now able to get in and cut grass, and talk about tall! It's hard on the mowers, I'm sure, but what can you do?! If it's grass, it has to be kept mowed at least semi-regularly... and if it's garden beds, they must be kept weeded or the grasses, thistles and other nasties take over! So, we're darned if we do and darned if we don't! Mother's Day was nice... calls from my kids, and the husband made a nice dinner... while I spent the day relaxing, for the most part. There are certain chores that must be done regardless of what day it is, like cleaning and feeding dogs and other animals, but that's no big deal... I have it down to a science! ;-) I finally got the old guy to help me get photos off my camera, so I thought I'd share a few this morning... Here's a mama and her twins... My very best mouser... I call her Vixen! The next generation of excellent mousers... one of Vixen's 3 little ones... Walking from the shade garden area toward the new rose arbor... A young Peony Tree in the dappled shade garden... notice the rambler rose runners everywhere on the ground! Closeup of the flower from the Peony Tree... Another Peony Tree in the front yard... north side... And this is a Trillium that opened white and is turning a pale pink shade. It's among a patch of purple flowered hybrid Trillium I planted several years ago... you can see the mottled leaves of the hybrid... I didn't plant the white one, though... And finally, the first of the Irises are starting! I hope you enjoyed a walk around the yards with me... stick around as all the roses begin blooming and other perennials begin to color the gardens a wonderful rainbow of scented color! Thanks, Al... I can finally view Youtube, but the monitor I'm using has no sound on board... for a girl with a technological genius as a husband, I'm always the last to get upgraded! Would you believe I'm still using Windows XP?! I desperately need an upgrade to Windows 7, which should be coming shortly... when he has time to upgrade me. :-) It's kind of like being the plumber with the leaky toilet handle that sticks, or the barber that doesn't have time to cut his own hair... when you're in the business, you're last in line! :-) It looks to be another gorgeous day... sunny and hot with strong humidity... I may spend some time weeding and edging today, instead of killing myself cutting grass! Hope everyone has a lovely day! And... Happy Gardening!

Mdcitrus, Thank you for the posting and I understand your confusion at all the options! I think you are not alone in your quest for an efficient and inexpensive solution. The problem as I see it is that delivering enough light (in other words, enough light to make them reasonably happy) to more than two or three moderate-sized citrus trees is going at some point to become inefficient with standard fluorescent fixtures. My best guess is that four or six 40 Watt by 4 feet bulbs would provide enough light to quite nicely maintain two or three smaller trees (a growing area of about 3 by 4 feet). But if you are looking to go beyond that point, I think it starts to become harder to avoid the HID lights. The two light sources' respective efficiencies really are that different. Of course, once you start down the artificial lighting road, then you need to employ all the ways you can to increase the efficiency of your set-up. Back in the 1970s when I kept my houseplants under regular fluorescent fixtures, I learned to use white walls and white surfaces to reflect light back onto the plants. This light would otherwise be wasted. Ideally, you could create a small room that was set up to maximize your available light. I too would love to see what people are doing--I had to overwinter one of my citrus trees, a rather large Calamondin, in the attached garage because there was not enough room for it in the living quarters. The other reason I posted this thread in the first place is because I have seen questions about the topic in the forum, and when I looked at the general postings on the subject of indoor lighting it struck me that citrus trees are not the same as small vegetable or flower seedlings or African violets, or similar plants that can do quite well under more modest lighting options. I will check this thread to see if any one replies, but perhaps it is a bit too specialized a topic to generate a lot of feedback in this forum. I hope your trees get green quickly! Don

Rant: Once the yuppies get ahold of an idea to sell for big bucks... once packaged, the grassroots are instantly fried when it comes to those who's lives could truly benefit from its concept--the poor. The assumption now rules of, "if someone can make money off implementing these ideas, so am I". Well, not everyone is out to become a wealthy organic permie farmer! Mollison and Holmgren brought the narrow growth of permaculture upon themselves from the get-go by continually being paid big bucks to hoick permaculture to the non-poor, (who, more often than not--and much to everyone's chagrin, have freebooted permaculture's basic ideals and actually make them work--without any "experts" fancy-schmancy financial input!) Permaculture founders could have burst on the scene for free for the greater good of all Mankind, like Alexander Graham Bell's (who's freely given inventions are still with us). But, nooooo..... There goes a profoundly worthwhile ideal before it ever got off the global ground and changed the world. Nowadays you cannot get within an official "permaculture course" outside of a few thousand bucks. Greed rules, even there. Nothing changed, Bill and Dave. Just the scenery inside your heads. And don't ever believe that they don't make money off permaculture. Their conference speaking fees rival former president Clinton's. But, thank God for the internet, where anyone can search out permaculture basics and take it from there, without expensive "permie teachers" droning on. IF they have access to a computer, that is. Few poor do.

elmer, that entire area used to be part of Mexico, so should we refer to it as Mexico rather than South Orange County, El Toro, or Lake Forest? Although Lake Forest did not incorporate as a City until 1991, there is a specific area that was most definitely known/called Lake Forest in the late 1970s and early 1980s. In Sacramento County, the areas known as Carmichael (population 61,762 as of the 2010 Census), Fair Oaks (population 30,912 as of the 2010 Census), Orangevale (population 33,960 as of the 2010 Census), Folsom (population 78,038 as of the 2010 Census), and Gold River (population 7,812 as of the 2010 Census), to name a few areas, are all unincorporated and known as "Census-designated areas" but they each have their own ZIP Codes, and I can assure you the residents would argue with you if you told them that they don't exist. Oh, let's not forget "the Pocket." If anyone in the greater Sacramento area says, "I live in the Pocket," everyone else in the greater Sacramento area knows exactly where they're talking about. (Population in the Pocket is somewhere around 30,000.) Also, it's just as easy to look up UCI Medical Center as it is to look up Disneyland, and I mentioned the three freeways only as a point of reference to the fact that it is easy to get to.