Wow! If anyone says we are having a greenhouse affect, I will, blank my pants! lol Those temps are just ridiculous! Whhat gives? I can't beleive the snow you had Mike and for that area. Good golly! looks like you are just about to engulf your greenhouse into an igloo very soon as I did..lol Now, what's next, tornados? I is such a good feeling to ee the temps in there that warm right, those lucky trees. I lost my heat last night, ran out of oil. It was 55 in my home this am and it was 68 in the greenhouse. I almost slept in there this am.. Mike: The one thing that ALWAYS scares me, especially this time of the year is loosing the electricty while asleep or not home! Luckily, that is the one thing I can be grateful for. Pgde!!!! Now that is a bad dream you had! Oh wait, is that the real Macoy? Ice hanging from the fountain way down there in Tuscon? Your kidding, right?... What about your trees? How are they doing? Wow, and yet beautiful.. Unbeleivable... I will come back and show a few shots of my snow too, since it hasn't stopped for over a month. A snow storm about every two days! Mike

Hi Wendi, Just my theory but here goes....It may have been in transplant shock during the time (early last fall) it would have normally set its bloom buds for this year. I'd definitely give it another season or so as I hear it is not uncommon for a hydrangea not to bloom during it's first season in the ground up north......yg

Tried this on Big Daddy today to start with. 2" of stem does seem to leave one bud node in most cases. A lot riding on those two buds if you ask me! But if you trick the plant into producing a set of terminal buds here, so be it! It's actually kind of nifty too, because the shorter stems are normally half the length of the long ones, so cutting those shorties down makes *no significant change to the overall appearance of the plant!* Lastly, I would not try this pruning technique on plants that aren't at least semi-mature (putting up 20+ canes a season). This is because you want to both leave enough canes standing and while cutting a good number down. It's also important to leave enough foliage to keep the soil moist and cool (shaded).

Thx kindly unfortunately for me it takes a lot of words at times to really explain well. Best then be entertaining. Was it worth it? ________ Current 2017 Winter Spring yard plan We currently have an nice range of hydrangea getting underway in the yard as well as some being installed this winter through esrly spring. This is Hydrangea macrophylla 'Mathlida Gutches' with acid pH soil with Aluminum Sulphate added a few years prior. Electric Blue Division of same bush in new yard in the process of the root ball adapting to the new pH enviroment. Obviously there are local pH range variations working here. Over time it will stabilize to purple or pink, unless I act on it. Liking the effect I added dolomite lime to one side of tbe bush and Aluminum Sulphate to the other. Summer Yard Plan I'm going to add some serious Alocasia, Colocasia, Banana, Giant Canna and Giant Ferns this year. Many are hardy here or might be hardy enough and possibly survive a wet long winter too. That is if tricked just right. Others will need to be over wintered inside, until I have expanded enough stock to test for more effective outdoor methods. We have sodium vapor and T55 lights on timer and gas heater installed in an insulated side shed also an unheated 40 F garage holding Brugmansia planters, now in suspended animation. To have success as a zone shifter, one has to know why a (semi)tropical didn't work outside. Was the actual cause cold hardiness, drainage, rotting, or slugs or other pests eating roots and bulbs? Mulch type, tarping, soil amendments, correct bottom drainage, and/or correct pH* could make a huge difference on meeting challenges. I'm getting a little electronic temperature datalogger to help save me on making repeated measurement trips. For a highly desired buried rootstock survival outdoors, one could even lay a 20watt seedling heatmat over the crown area, dry mulch, and cover with a waterproof tarp (e.g., for a Colocasia 'Thailand Giant'). With our 50-ish F ground temp below and an 85 F small zone above, it just might work. 100 watts / winter for protecting 5 prize tropical plants zone would be much more cost effective, and last longer, than a tropical vacation. * pH could effect root health or function, fertilzer loading or type needed and possibly microbe aggression or pest range too. I've used so much commercial compost in my new yard that I better watch plants here liking either an acid pH or drier soil. I know this for sure because most of my purple to blue hydrangeas shifted to pink and red and I can also see that my ammended soil for hydrangeas stay more moist than before. Soil ammendments found here to shift hydrangea color and/or a pH test kit can teach me how to pH adjust here.. My soil is too dry, clay filled and rocky in fact to not add compost. My yard is not hardpan, having a solid clay layer, but is more of a glacial till. It has small to large rocks stopping most digging tools quickly. Having not pre-tested and already moved here, I must use an iron rod for initial digging. Then I screen out excess rock and add compost back, 20 to 50%, to make decent soil. I dig "root pits" and "bog pits (plastic lined) mixing the ammendents needed with my screened soil as I go. i dig a pit as wide and deep enough needed to support an adult plant size. My soil structure thus permits me to ammend, on a plant by plant basis, for that plants needs. For hydrangea, I can seperately adjust pH differently for side by side plants to display different colors. I can even try making a single hydrangea a bicolor red/blue or a have a mixed blue, pink and purple color range. The range is created with focused line addition of ammendmenrs lightly mixed into the soil, above the root ball. If concerned about eventual pH blending yielding a single color try a below ground water drip diverter(s) such as plastic edging strip(s). These effects work only becuase plants roots feed more verically than horizontally through the plant with major root zones feeding primarily above. Yes plants are more simply wired than our brain body connections. Or gardening success would be likely be thought to due to insightful plant psychology rather than plant physiology ... except for that Elf riden Butterfly Orchid that I'm growing under lights. Yes 'Hildos' rides again! Psychopsis Mendenhall 'Hildos' FCC/AOS Hildos' 'Papilio' clan was first seen by Westerners waving to them in the wind, while clinging onto trees in Trinidad and Tobago. Hildos' direct ancestor was promptly captured and brought back to England in the early1800s, where the seated Elf Rider likely magically initiated the craze for orchid collecting in Europe. An award was granted the butterfly in 1825. Interestingly, most viewing this stunning sight still only have seen the Butterfly and not Jockey rider. With plants you sometimes need to look closer to truely understand them.