It was so hot in Oklahoma that not many tomatoes made it thru the Summer. I usually have a crop of SuperSweet 100's and Jelly Beans in the Fall, but this year the Supersweets had lots of fruit, but it got too cold for them to ripen. I have better luck carrying over container plants rather than in-ground plants. I prune my plants severly during the Summer, removing all non-productive stems and bigger leaves, and removing bunches where there is more than one bunch on a stem. The only cherry tomatoes that I was able to harvest this year were a couple of SunGold, which had quite a few that ripened. I had to move the containers into the garage a couple of times when it got down to freezing, but did get the satisfaction of harvesting some sweet tasting cherries in November. I also am harvesting some Celebrity tomatoes that are larger than the Spring ones. Here's a pic of a Sungold taken November 8th:

Jubilee, I guess I'll revise my remarks a bit by saying that I'm only going by what my designer taught me about the flow thing... Our house is not huge, it's a medium 2600 sf 2-story, so in essence the downstairs really is not that big. I wanted to mix like that, and she said in a small area (or at least not a LARGE area!) not to have so many different floorings. To avoid patchiness. To give flow, so it, well, flows. And seems larger and more cohesive. I have to say lately looking at model homes, her advice has been borne out as I've seen the same wood flowing throughout houses, with small amounts of carpet and stone here and there. Your carpenter is probably right, but he's probably also talking about very large houses, so that is a different story (than my house). I don't know if yours is a big house or normal house. Also, my own experience has been that the very best and most talented carpenters and cabinetmakers I've had, have not been especially genius at interior design, so I've learned to turn to my designer for design advice, and pretty much take their design advice with a grain of salt. Maybe yours is different than mine have been... Yes I have lived to regret two different floorings in abutting rooms. We had existing yellowish oak in kitchen/family room/hall/powder room (most of downstairs), and added pinkish-yellowish oak to an adjoining study. Actually it was the same wood, just ten years younger. I thought it would blend. It didn't. Since the ten year old floor was pretty grunged, we had someone distress the whole thing, including the brand new... and this included re-staining them to a really warm and mellow toasty color. Now they all match, and I absolutely love it, and have to say my designer was right about flow. I wonder if a solution like that might work for you, then you could have exactly the color you want, and flow as well. It cost me just over $2K to have the whole thing done, and I live in expensive Southern California. Now that I have seen it done, I think I could do it myself if I wanted to work hard.

Bleaching a wood floor isn't a big deal, especially compared to the entirety of work required to sand and refinish. It's the best way to counteract the red in Red Oak if you want a light color. What your suggesting could be problematic depending on the finish you're using. Rubio has a product called precolor Aqua (http://www.monocoat.us/precolor-aqua/) that's white with a minty green tone, but it's meant to be used with their oil finish. It's hard to apply uniformly. lazy_gardens and Couture are correct. If you bleach a floor then apply a standard green tinted stain, the wood will absorb the green stain and be too saturated to accept the white pickle. Also, since Red Oak is very grainy, you stand the chance that the green will concentrate in the soft grain and accentuate it. The Rubio product is mopped on and left. A better idea would be to bleach the floor twice, apply white pickle and a coat of sealer (we use BonaSeal which I think is now called ClassicSeal). Once that is applied you can evaluate the color and determine whether to tint the first finish coat slightly green. You could use a closet floor or an area that will be hidden to do samples. Beware that tint coats can change color as they dry so if you do a test, let it dry completely before deciding. After a tint coat you'll need a clear wear coat. Once the floor is bleached, pickled and sealed you might determine that the slight rosy tone doesn't bother you and you can just apply clear coats.

You'll get a lot more flowers if you stop cutting back all the outside branches. I was always told that trimming the tree encourages more and healthier growth Since trimming = reduction where is the logic here? Does a body want more tree or less? Because trees that are cut back are then smaller afterward than if they weren't cut back. Even if long vigorous shoots come out from below the cut stem ends (creating the impression of invigoration). This phenomenon (smaller now = smaller later) was demonstrated experimentally decades ago, using test plots of all the same kinds and sizes of trees with one half of the group being cut back and the other not. Then digging and weighing each set later, at which point it was seen that the unpruned group had produced more additional mass in the interim than the pruned.