I advertise my flowers and teacups on a local Facebook page. Yesterday a woman came and purchased $96.00 worth of things. Hubby says, "hmm, do we need to go look for more stuff?" Guess that made him a believer.I found that the easiest way to keep the items at home is to give each item a number and log them in a book. When I take photos of them,and post them then the customer has an idea of what she wants by the # on the piece. The pieces are packed in boxes that have the #s written on the outside. so I can easily find what flower the customer may like. Yesterday this woman was interested in two pieces I had posted and she liked others more and didn't purchase the two she came for. Now today, I will be shopping for more 'stuff' ! There never seem to be many inside sales down here, and right now it is windy outside all the time. The pieces look so much better outside though.

I would loosen the rootball. If the roots were circling as much as you described, I would also make vertical cuts about every 1 to 2 inches apart to help with loosening it. If you do not loosen it, it will eventually die in a year or so. Do expect some wilting even without this root problem. On their first year, hydrangeas suffer from wilting when the temperatures get hot and when the hot drying winds affect them. This problem occurs when the leaves loose moisture faster then the roots can absorb moisture. However hydrangeas usually recover on their own a few hours after nightfall, when the imbalance between moisture lost and moisture absorbed is corrected. The key is to monitor them during their first summer and to check the soil when you see wilting. If the soil is moist, you can leave them alone and they will recover. If a finger inserted to a depth of 4" (not counting the mulch) feels almost dry or dry, immediately give them about 1/2 gallon of water. Adding and maintaining 3-4" of mulch will lengthen the times between watering and help the water not evaporate quickly. If they remain wilted all the time and the soil feels moist then that indicates another problem: root rot due to too much water or soil that does not drain the water fast enough. Hint: do not fertilize a stressed plant. Normally, there is no need to do that it if the potting soil mix came with those round fertilizer pellets. Hydrangeas do not have to be fed often like roses and only nibble at their food source. Just give them some liquid seaweed or liquid fish with your waterings; they will complement the fertilizer pellets. These are weak fertilizers and should be fine to use on stressed plants. Hint: if the location is windy, this could cause the plant to loose moisture quickly. You can consider transplanting it or blocking the wind with something (a plant or an object). The night before a wind advisory is issued, consider watering.

If you don't beat all!!!!!! LORI - it's a beautiful job and I bow to your ingenuity. I love the shapes of your mirror shards. You just jumped in and had an idea and ran with it. That's what's called talent and a creative mind. Congratulations. This reminds me of one of my first mirror projects. I was so afraid to grout all the shards that I used a cake decorator's bag to pipe in the grout around all the shards. It's been on my front porch these nine years. I used plywood too. Can't believe it hasn't fallen apart, but there's no evidence of harm YET. Hurray for newbies at mosaics.

I think Ashley has zeroed in on the essence of the issue: an opportunity to teach a lesson about 'hearsay', or 'gossip', as opposed to eavesdropping. In reading all the responses that go back & forth on trying to determine exactly what constitutes 'eavesdropping' or who should be blamed, I agree that it's a very ambiguous issue. We all, as fully grown adults, basically 'know' when we're straining to overhear something, and even if it's technically 'wrong', we all know we *sometimes* do it anyway. Or we *have* done it, at least once, even as fully-grown adults. So it's really hard to guarantee that you will be able to do anything to 100% fully prevent a kid from listening in... especially if you have a conversation where you know he's around and could possibly walk in at any second or perhaps overhear. So I agree that in Ceph's case, it wasn't really anyone's fault ---neither Ceph for not fully realizing at that moment how utterly fascinating & tantalizing adult discussions can be to a kid or A____ for being a curious kid--- but that adults should be a bit more careful, and kids should have it explained to them that they may at times overhear things out of context that they are best not to repeat because they can accidentally distort the truth and end up really hurting someone without meaning to. And that they wouldn't like it one little bit if the tables were turned and it happened to them! Maybe make up a hypothetical scenario, using some humorously exaggerated details, wherein A_____ becomes the unfortunate victim of an unchecked rumor spread by mis-heard hearsay. Like for example: "A_____, let's say after I dropped you off one morning at school I *just so happened* to overhear some very cute girls saying 'A____ looks like such a STEAMBOAT in his red-and-white sweater!" And then what if I told some other kids, and soon everyone at school thought that? Then what if I much later found out that those girls had REALLY said "A_____ looks like such a DREAMBOAT in his red-and-white sweater!"? Wouldn't YOU prefer that I'd made sure I'd checked with the girls before I told a bunch of other people that you resemble a big, slow, square-ish BOAT?" So that he gets the point but in a non-harsh way and you both can giggle about it at the end.