Hi Islandgal I think for now the cold is worse than the dryness that you are experiencing in your garden, it reminds me when I lived in Arizona and everything was so dry. And I looked at your blog and you tamarind writings. Remind me of me and my childhood, I love tamarind! I have one now, the sweet kind in the outdoor bathroom protected from the freeze. Silvia

I don't have a garage either, and I'll be moving the car this afternoon to get it farther away from the old birch tree that's not aging well. Many years ago the previous birch tree in that location fell in a storm and just missed my car. I'm mostly finished with the evacuation; just the deck houseplants and the birdfeeders. Correction, bird and bee feeders. This is the jam feeder I keep for the orioles and catbirds, but the bees must have heard about Hurricane Irene and they're busy stocking up on Jam. The orioles usually chase the bees away but I've never seen these numbers before. They ignored me completely when I photographed them, although I wouldn't try to stand between them and the jam. I think I'll leave that feeder up for a while. Claire

jsv. I have loved the Golden Rain Tree since moving here and have had a devil of a time getting my hands on one. several of my neighbors have them in their yards, I understand they are very easy trees to start even a clipping will do. Have not seen them wild here, could be I simply have not noticed one unless it was in bloom. Their are a couple of other trees here that I have noticed in the wild and in yards but do not have a clue what they are. One I am interested in has a bloom like a dogwood, but it blooms in summer and seems to hold its flower for a long time. Speaking of Dogwood, how do they do here? I assume not well, since I do not see them. I have high hopes for the weeping cherry, I had one in KY I know it can handle the cold snaps, but I wonder if it can stand up to the heat?

I'm not finding the thread now where I wondered whether I should prune a particular branch on my 18-month-old Alphonso mango or not, just as a flush of growth was winding down during the summer--but I did prune it. I had pruned the rest of the tree awhile earlier and it was growing like crazy, a little too much so in this one spot--it was just one solitary branch going almost to the ground. And then it just sat there looking stumped. In October (!) the tree finally responded to that pruning with a flush of tender new growth, there and in one other random spot; slower than summer, but still, five new branches, and now there's budding. So cool. (Is it normal for it to be budding in November?) But why I most wanted to come back was to thank Stanofh for his help. For the advice that my Alphonso mango needed to be kept warmer than I'd been doing in order for it to bloom. This is a warmer fall than last year's, which helps, but I've been putting my two frost cover layers over the tree right at sundown rather than waiting for the temps to get down into the fifties--what I'd read previously was that it just had to stay above 40 for the inflorescence and that cold prompts it to start budding. That appears to have been incomplete information at best. And I reset the temp control attached to the incandescent Christmas lights to click on sooner. I went looking again for a book, any book, on how to grow them and found one by Lee Reich that had a short entry on mangoes. He said they have to stay above 55 consistently to flower. Which is pretty much what Stanofh had said. So I guess there's cold and there's its idea of what cold is supposed to mean. Stanofh, when I taste my first homegrown mango I will be thanking you for it.