Lawns are a lot easier than you are being told. There are two extremely popular grasses in the south. One is bermuda and the other is St Augustine. Bermuda is a fine bladed grass which requires extra care every week while St Augustine grass is a coarse bladed grass. There are two kinds of bermuda: one is a hybrid which only slightly resembles the "wild" varieties, and the other is common bermuda which is started from seed. This bermuda seed is the only grass seed that makes sense in the south. If you mix the two kinds of bermuda, it will always and forever look weedy. The two different kinds of grass just look different. The hybrid looks really nice most of the time. The common looks so-so most of the time unless you really spend a lot of time and money on it. Really both require a lot of care when compared with St Augustine. Bermuda is a FULL SUN type of grass. If it is in the shade of a building, fence, or shrubbery/trees, it will thin out and look poor. Bermuda can go dormant in the winter and when it does not get regular water. St Augustine comes in many varieties. The common variety is rarely seen anymore. The others are all hybrids with different degrees of tolerance for shade, disease, and drought. St Augustine is the only grass in the south that can tolerate much shade, and it can tolerate a lot. In full sun it becomes very dense and very resistant to weeds. The Floratam variety works best in bright sun but will be a little thin in deep shade. When selecting St Augustine what matters most is what's available in your neighborhood. If you find some of a certain variety, please write back and we can explain the pros and cons for the ones you can get. One interesting thing about St Augustine is that you can care for it such that it will wipe out other grasses. All it takes is proper water, mowing, and fertilizer. The difference between proper care for bermuda and St Augustine is slight but important if you want one or the other. If you start with just a few pieces of St Augustine, with proper care it can cover a yard in 2 years. If you want instant lawn, this won't work, but if you are patient, it will work. In fact I just bought a new home with no grass and will be doing the same thing. Sorry I'm being called to dinner. There's more to say, but you might have some more questions.

Dear Jo, I would love to see the plant too, and to hear your description of its fragrance. As Rhizo said, both palma rosa and citronella are grasses, very similar to lemon grass in appearance and culture. They are each such lovely smells, but since the plants are not free with their fragrance (you have to pinch the shoots) are so large, are not hardy here, and are sharp leaved (like corn) I not focus on them. I would love a little loveable cintronella plant that was like lemon balm though! I love the rose like fragrance of citronella. If you have located a variety of lemon balm with a citronella odor, please tell us about it! Or could it possibly be a mint? Best wishes, Sincerely, Matt

Looks like a fungal infection but when it gets that far along that entire leaf stems are wilting, it is often too late to save the plant. You can prevent it from developing by spraying all your plants with a fungicide. You might be able to save them or at least keep it from spreading, with Daconil but at this point it might already be too late for that.

I have not have the laser surgery to eliminate floaters, but I have a feeling it might work. I had 4 floaters that floated across my field of vision for almost 30 years. Last April I was told I needed laser surgery to release pressure in my eyeballs, due to a narrow angle that made it difficult for proper interior drainage. I don't have glaucoma, but this procedure was recommended to prevent glaucoma from developing. The surgeon shot each eyeball at least 6 times with a laser to create microscopic holes to release pressure. I noticed immediately after the surgery that my biggest floater had suddenly disappeared! Although I still have the smaller 3 floaters, the most annoying one vanished and has not returned. So I'm thinking when he was zapping out holes with the laser, he hit it and it disintegrated, or it was at least propelled right out of my field of vision. Obviously I can't vouch for the actual floater surgery, but I can testify that my worst one totally disappeared after being 'zapped' just coincidentally for a completely different reason!