Hi Mark, we're also in PSL - near Airoso & St. James. I don't do veggies but I do have one idea for you. My husband and I used to own a Greenhouse/Nursery/Florist back in the late 80s and we found an amazing product called SuperThrive. It used to be hard to find but I saw it at Lowe's and Walmart recently. The product was developed to help increase the harvest for vegetables (or any plants maybe?) but we discovered that it is incredible at completely eliminating the shock of transplanting. Just a few drops in a gallon of water. We discovered this quite by accident. We used to rent out our ficus trees for weddings. You may know that if you just look at a potted ficus tree wrong, it will drop all its leaves, just moving it from one corner of a room to another would throw it into hysterics. You can imagine how ours felt being thrown into a van to travel to a wedding and back again the same day! We used to have to rotate trees so that the traumatized ones could re-grow their leaves between weddings. One day my husband thought to use the SuperThrive on a group of trees just before they headed into the van and they didn't lose their leaves at all! Since then, we've used it for everything. I think it might have prevented the leaf-drop in your banana trees. I hope this helps your garden this fall/winter! I'm going to try out your pepper idea to see if I can discourage some of our many rabbits - our greyhounds are quite entertained by the rabbits who seem to virtually live in our back garden. They sometimes come right up to the door and peek in at the dogs. It's fun until you realize they've eaten every single viola seedling and half your impatiens!! Urggg. I'm trying again (with chicken wire) this fall. By the way, I followed the link to your FB album and "friend requested" you. Your work looks quite professional so far! Great photos. I'm looking forward to following your progress as you grow food and teach your children. Good for you! (By your spelling, I am guessing you're from the UK. Did I guess right?) Madeline (a/k/a Gram to our grandchildren)

It s a bigleaf hydrangea, Hydrangea macrophylla and appears to have modified lacecap flower. But which specific cultivar it may be will be very difficult to ascertain with any certainty. Greenhouse grown plants forced into bloom out of season - as this one has - generally do not display the same characteristics as those grown in the ground in a suitable climate. And there are literally hundreds to choose from. The 'suitable climate' poses issues for you :-) Understandably this is not a plant that will tolerate your climate out of doors. But that does not necessarily make it a good choice for a houseplant, either. Most 'houseplants' are tropical or semitropical plants that cannot tolerate colder seasonal conditions of the more temperate areas of the globe and do not require a period of dormancy triggered by day length and colder temperatures. And most are evergreen as well. The hydrangea doesn't fit any of these qualities. It is deciduous, requires a dormancy and vernalization period to thrive and produce flowers and is native to mountainous areas of Japan, so neither tropical or even semitropical :-) And so is not very happy indoors for any extended length of time - too warm (too even a temperature), too dry (low humidity) and while it will tolerate lower light levels, needs some sunlight to produce blooms. The best I can suggest is too keep it in the coolest location indoors with bright but indirect light and keep the soil mix evenly moist but not wet. But don't plan on having it for "years to come". Lack of a dormant period and proper vernalization will eventually kill it. Even in my significantly cooler and more distinctly seasonal climate, indoor flowering hydrangeas last at best a few months unless transitioned to the outdoors.

Just wanted to update since I'm slowly getting my house together. I had added rugs to my living room space. Neutral cotton rug (didn't want so much shedding from jute) with a cowhide layered on top. I'm now trying to incorporate accent colors. I was thinking greys, blues, and browns? The rest of my home has been painted either Hale Navy or Revere Pewter soI'm trying for colors I can mix and match throughout the house. I will be adding tables when I can decide on wood, marble top, or glass. Any suggestions for colors or coffee/ accent tables?

I'm going to take a different tack. After nearly a decade as a wellness nurse in an independent living retirement community, I see this as a safety issue. Throw rugs aside (well known fall risk), you should be able to theoretically walk around with a yard stick across your waist and not touch any furnishings. If you can't maintain this three foot clearance, then it's too cluttered and unsafe. Clear passages with no trip/fall hazards is a crucial part of home safety as an older person attempts to age in place. One fall can change the trajectory of a life in an instant. There are many good home safety checklists available online with helpful tips and pertinent information (cdc.gov and ncoa.org-the national council on aging are just two). Beyond the safety issue, as a daughter who spent four months clearing out my parents' home (three story home and two story garage) after the death of my mother in 2013 (my father had died ten years earlier), please purge papers and at least some extraneous belongings now. My sister and I had a paper trail going back to the 1930s to review/trash/shred. Our parents dearly loved us and yet we were driven to tears at times that so much stuff had been saved over the decades (and never looked at in the garage attic or house attic again) that we had to physically haul out and either attempt to sell (nearly always unsuccessful), take to Goodwill or the county dump. That experience absolutely changed both of us and we resolved to never put our own children in this position-we've taken steps to purge our own papers and belongings and are much more hesitant when buying more "things."