Lake Co. Fl. Thanks inulover! I KNEW my cousin in Melbourne Beach had only partialy lost her mind due to an accident of birth until she put a ladder up a giant live oak and pulled out a huge airplant. This one must've been the boss hog alien of Jupiter inlet! But, I digress; the plants crowded allover your trees is a chicken or egg thing. The plants aren't killing the trees, the trees are stressed by drought, insect damage, fungus, etc. so the airplants find them attractive. They only attach to the limbs but don't find their nourishment from them; the recieve everything they need from the humid air.

While I like red and I also like orange, I admit to finding that room (on my monitor) extremely bright. I guess because it is a bedroom. I really love the idea of the glaze over the color. I just did that to my laundry room that was brighter than a school bus yellow (ooops!). The glaze really toned it down, and now I like it. It's not a perfect color for my cabinets that will be coming, so the color may eventually change, but at least for now it is tolerable (and my original golden/mustard just was NOT!). LOL! I can definitely see that color left in it's current state, and used on an accent wall. With dark furnishings and maybe some greenery, that could be a very gorgeous "designer" space. If you did the "accent" on the wall where your headboard will rest, you'd never see the color at night when in your bed and supposed to be resting. And of course if you needed to kick up the passion, you and dh could just crank your necks around and glance at that bright wall. :o) LOL! Congratulations on your new cabinetry arriving. Happy for you that it sounds like you are on the home stretch!! ;o)

I'm not using a sprinkler. Just a hose with a nozzle attachment (I mostly use "shower"). I don't trust sprinklers after the disaster the first day. I think the damage has been done though...most of what I see coming up is along the front sidewalk, so I think that POS sprinkler that was put out there for a day washed a bunch of the seed down hill to the sidewalk. And to the base of the electric box, which is kind of funny...apparently enough dirt got washed on the base to grow out of the metal electric box. I think since that first fiasco with the sprinkler, plus having to walk through the seed bed to remove the sprinkler, it's not really nice and smooth anymore, so there's a little puddling, but it all manages to soak in and go away within a couple minutes... not like it stands there for hours. Right now I'm just waiting to see what I have for day 14. I guess I could also buy more seed and chuck it out by the handfuls to the areas that look to have washed out and see if anything happens lol I just don't know whether to blame the failed areas on the rough start with sprinklers, the time it took to feel like I had a good balance of how much water to give it, or the seed itself. Or impatience (it is supposed to be a "slow-growing low maintenance" seed after all...)

Hello, midwaycat. In your location, you probably can use just about any of the macrophyllas (aka, mophead or lacecap with white, blue, purple or pink blooms), arborescens (mophead or lacecap blooms too), quercifolia (aka, oakleaf; has panicle shaped white blooms too... usually) and paniculata varieties (white or green panicle shaped blooms). To obtain best results meaning reliable bloomage, consider use of arborescens and paniculata shrubs as these produce flower buds in Spring and are normally not impacted by winter weather issues. Also, in my opinion, their leaves handle “too much sunlight” issues better than macrophyllas so they have less wilting or drooping. Examples of arborescens hydrangeas are Annabelle (white blooms but sometimes suffers from flopping due to the weight of wet blooms), Incrediball (white larger blooms; less bloom flopping after 3+ years), Invencibelle Spirit (pink blooms; two versions: I or II), Bella Anna (pink blooms; have not seen it for some reason lately at my local nurseries though); White Dome (a lacecap version of Annabelle). The species versions of H. arborescens is also sold out there; has white blooms in lacecap form but White Dome's blooms look better to me. Because arborescens cannot be seen with bloomage some times of the year (nurseries cut them for unknown reasons ???), and since wrong plant labels are a problem that happens, it may be useful to see these arborescens plants in bloom before buying so you can match the bloom against the bloom in the plant label. Thus, if the plant has lacecap-type blooms and the plant label says Annabelle, woops, beware. You can use any of the macrophyllas or oakleaf varieties too but they can be affected by winter weather because their invisible flower buds develop in the July-August time frame and open in Spring. They have bigger leaves too so they can be a pain with leaf wilting/drooping in the hottest part of the year and especially in their first summer(s). If winter gets way too cold for the plant hardiness or if the temperatures fluctuate enough to make the plants break dormancy, that can kill the invisible flower buds. Just recently, these last two winters, I have had issues with both of those 2 types. Last winter, I had some –not all- macs and oakleafs not bloom. Two years ago, I had almost zero bloomage from all those (but the arborescens and paniculatas came thru with no problems). White macs that only bloom once in Spring but which impressed me with their reliable bloomage are Mme. Emile Moulliere and Sister Theresa (or Sister Therese). Those two macrophyllas (mopheads) are non-rebloomers, produce invisible flower buds in July-August and tend to flower when similar ones do not. Macrophyllas that advertise reblooming will have blooms as usual in Spring and then again in the July-ish time frame and perhaps still again in mild winters. These can be good for you because you do not loose bloomage for the whole year when there is a bad winter. You may loose the Spring bloomage for example but there should be another set of blooms later on. The Endless Summer Series, the Together & Ever Series, the Let’s Dance Series and so forth include examples of these mopheads and lacecaps that re-bloom. Most of them are great as they include colored blooms: white blooms or either blue-ish/purple-ish blooms in acidic soil or pink-ish in alkaline soil. But for really reliable bloomage, you may have to winter protect them even if they are hardy. Winter issues are not usually a problem for me so. I do not winter protect. But I pay the price (no or limited bloomage) on 'bad' winters. The oakleaf hydrangeas have oak shaped leaves, are hardy to zone 5 and have plain gorgeous Fall Leaf colors! I have a compact Pee Wee that does not disappoint and it develops reddish leaves in November. There are other compact ones and even much larger ones (10’) so check the plant labels to see if the size will be good in your planned location(s). Little Honey has yellowish leaves and is compact. Other compact ones are Sikes Dwarf, Vaughn’s Lillie, Ruby Slippers, Munchkin, and some of the Gatsby Series. Oakleafs are more drought resistant than the other hydrangeas but, they catch root rot if allowed to sit in water for long periods of time. Paniculatas are extremely hardy to Zone 3, have smaller leaves and develop invisible flower buds in Spring-early Summer. They include many interesting new compact versions whose name has the word “little” in the name: Little QF or Little Quickfire (very early blooming for a paniculata), Little Lamb, Silver Dollar, Sweet Summer, Little Lime (a compact version of Limelight with green blooms that stay green longer with the less sun that they get), Strawberry Sundae (a compact version of Strawberry Vanilla), Wedding Gown, etc. Fall is a good time to plant but during the Fall Season, many nurseries usually have zero or low inventories. If you find any now, the good news might be that the plant has spent the growing season developing a large root system so you get a larger plant than if you had bought it in the Spring or early Summer. Do prune any roots circling in the pots. Size is usually not much an issue as most times, they tend to grow a lot quickly. But I have had some that hardly grow on year 1 and leave growth for years 2 or 3. Go figure. As long as their soil acidity, sunlight exposure and soil moisture requirements are met, you should be fine. Too much sun can make the leaves turn all yellow including the leaf veins. But I suspect your area does not have summers with a strong summer sun like I do. Do not let them have wet-dry-wet-dry soil conditions but evenly moist soil with lots of mulch. Use 3-4” of mulch up to the drip line to protect the roots from the cold temps and lengthen the soil moisture; fertilize in Spring with ½ to 1 cup of organic mulch, composted manure or cottonseed meal; use liquid seaweed, liquid fish or coffee grounds thru the rest of the growing season (but stop fertilzing by thend of June so they will go dormant at the appropriate time); and again, maintain the soil evenly moist as best as you can. Stop watering when the soil freezes but, while dormant during mild dry winter months, you can water during dry months once every week or once every 2 weeks. If your soil is alkaline, plant nurseries will offer for sale amendments that can be used to acidify the soil. I amend in Spring and sometimes again by late summer or early Fall. In alkaline soils, the leaves can turn light green or even yellow-ish colors while the leaf veins remain dark green giving the leaf a skeletal look. Be aware that hydrangea blooms start life with a certain color and, as time passes, the blooms mature and change color until, at the end, the blooms are brown. You can keep these brown blooms for winter interest or deadhead them. Consider too that if you go shopping now, whatever hydrangea bloomage you see now in the local nurseries may not be (color wise) what you will see in Spring. Originally white blooms may now be green-ish or pink-ish. Due to the reduced supply of plants now, consider buying the in Spring instead. But also consider that it may be cheaper to buy now (one of my local nurseries have azaleas and hydrangeas on sale 30% off). Oh, decisions, decisions, right? A book like Hydrangeas by Glyn Church contains good info if you want to learn about these shrubs. For online reading, I recommend going to this website: http://hydrangeashydrangeas.com/ I hope that helps. By the way, if you post pictures of the planting location(s) and its dimensions, I am sure a lot of folks will chime in with specific suggestions. Luis