,Barb the funny thing is, YOU just made me even busier today with the plants that arrived today lol THANKS. I will find them a good spot in their new home. Mary that is probably a tree I would bring back from Florida lol I think Magnolia blossoms are so gorgeous. But the yellow blooming forsythia does indeed bring nice color in early spring. I only have to small twiggs from arbor day foundation. So how long did our sweet actress sleep? She must have had great dreams from her play! Eloise thanks. It worked. No rain and painted all morning. Almost done with the front now. I will give it a rest on sunday. I did however plant some of the seedlings and worked all afternoon in the yard. Lucy

A heatpump will work fine for your pool. I like RayPak (I have the RHP115) but all the major brands will work fine. heatpumps are slow to heat the water but once the water is at temperture they do a great job maintaining temperature. The problem is, if you don't use a cover (and I don't) some (actually alot when its cold) of the heat will escape the water at night when the pool pump if off. You could run the pool pump all the time if you want to. But it gets expensive. I like the water temp in my pool at 85. When the air temp is low at night (say 75) the pool will be around 80 in the moring (my pool is 20K gallons). The pool filter pump turns on at 7AM and the pool is back at 85 by 2 or 3PM (with air temp reaching 80-85 during the day). So it takes 5 or 6 hours to raise water temp 5 degrees. This works for me. Now that it's summer, I don't even use the heatpump. The sun raises water temp on its own (pool is now around 88 by noon). I just use the heat pump at the beginning and end of season to get an extra month or two of swimming. It's not possible to maintain water temp at 85 (or even 80) in the cold (FL) winter months unless you use a cover and/or run the pump all the time. I think your night time temps are too low to expect to have warm water all year unless your willing to run the heatpump 24/7 or use a cover. I also have a 400K BTU gas heater for my spa (probably 700 gal - its 7ft diameter). It is fast heat. It raises water temp from 85 to 100 in about 25 minutes. It is also expensive to use. It would be way to costly to use it to heat the whole pool. A heatpump will not raise spa temp fast enough. You need gas. It sounds like you need a heatpump (or solar) and a gas heater. This is what I did. I'm pleased with my choices. Good luck

Drought tends to feed on itself. So..., once an area gets into drought, it tends to persist, grow in extent and worsen. (That part is normal enough.) It will take a MAJOR pattern change to alter what has been occurring in the West for a last few years now. Meteorologists have coined the phrase the 'Ridiculously Resilient Ridge' to describe the abnormally persistent heat dome in the West. As the West has experienced this, the Midwest and Northeast have been cooler and wetter than normal (seen most clearly the last two winters which were both brutally cold in theses regions, and offered record snows to many). We are still stuck in the same weather pattern and the beat goes on...

Thanks, guys..... I'm encouraged by your positive comments. I will def try grow-lights for my plants. I killed some of the best plants, expensive too, over the years because NYC winters are really terrible for my fat-plants, that usually grow in sunny deserts. I will tell you, NYC ain't no sunny desert when winter comes. If I'm lucky, I'll get maybe 4 months of good growing conditions....May-Sept....and then, the cultural challenges begin. But, try, I must....once again. Adeniums, culturally, are far more difficult to grow well than my other, way easier, fat-plants, i.e. Bursera fageroides and Operculicarya decaryi/pachypus. These fat-trees go dormant in Nov-Dec, and stay quiescent until early-spring. I give them a little moisture, usually around the end of March, and then, they're off.....and get fatter each year. They grow in classic gritty mixture with ferts. Nice plants, but no showy flowers. On a scale of 1 to 10....(#1 -being easy, and #10 -very difficult), I'd rate Adenium between 7-9. A real PITA under less than ideal growing conditions. But, it's those flowers! If it wasn't for the showy flowers, I wouldn't even bother with growing them. Fat trunks and odd, twisted, roots can be found on other, much easier, plants. Just saying. Frank NYC/7b