Bestlawn, no offense taken. I'm kind of playing it by ear. While at first I was out to prove that KBG can survive here, My big thing is that I believe in reasonable amounts of maintenance and not wasting money and not wasting time and not driving an hour away to get some professional product during business hours. There is a correlation between the performance of the grass and how much time/money I will spend on it. The minute performance goes down, the minute I leave it alone and go do something else. I don't have it in me to force the entire yard to stay green in full sun and heat in a drought when we get maybe one or two showers a month. Some people can. The golf course manage to do it. But I don't. I'm trying to simulate reasonable amounts of care to see if the grass will grow with average care. I basically follow the UGA lawn calendar for tall fescue on all the cool season grass that I have except the bentgrass which I mow much shorter. And the only reason I put so much effort into the bentgrass is because it performs. It's reasonable IMO. Auteck, please send me an email. Click on my page. I also grew up in So.Fl. and we seem to have the same tastes in flora. I can tell you about what I'm growing. It's apparent we are both allergic to tropical plants and swamp grasses. I can't stand palm trees and bananas. Some people here try to plant them. Douglas fir is a more out-westy tree. If you want to prove you're not in Miami anymore, get some balam firs, red spruce and fraser firs going. The latter two are native to the mts of western NC. I saw some this past saturday when I drove up there. I have a couple of balsam firs in my yard. also have 3 white pines. White pines are native to my area but not all that common this far to the south. You might also try out some of the cool climate birches, Betula lenta (sweet birch) and B. papyrifera (paper birch) Don't forget quaking aspen and lilac and blue spruce. These are just a handful of things people insist do not grow here. I say they're wrong. It's called reverse zone denial.

Just to respond to the planting of entire bulbs, I think it is a viable option because I've done it with pretty good success. I do separate most of my bulbs to individual cloves for most of my garlic beds, but sometimes I will get lazy, and just put the whole bulb in. The key to making this work is to make sure that you have adequate spacing, at least 1ft apart, fertilize them, mulch them, and make sure the weeds don't take them over. A balanced 10-10-10 slow release fertilizer will get them growing faster in the spring, and one crucial step is to remove the scapes as they appear. You should still get decent sized bulbs about 60% the size of the ones from individual cloves. Now if we were to leave these in another year, then the root & bulb competition just wouldn't give enough space for good bulb formation.

Butterfly, thanks for the detailed info. If it can be maintained under 3-4", I can live with it. I am going to check that nursary again in the fall when the plants are on sale. Freki, Marquest, excellent choices. Plant some annual in between might be another solution. Frankly, among all the fragant blooming plants, annuals, preannual, shrubs, trees, the longest lasting fragrant and wafted plant I have is the old fashion petunia. It blooms none stop ever since it started . Boy, I love its sweet scent!. In spring time, I have tons of fragrant flowers blooming. lilac, mock orange, sweet william, flowers from various bulbs, iris, etc. which last till sometime in June. after that,there aren't many fragrant in the air. I try to fill the gaps. Butterfly bush zoned to grow in 5 but in reality does not grow/flower reliablbly here. I planted summersweet this spring. it started to bloom in mid-later July. It is done blooming now. Its scent is not as strong and waft as I thought it would be. It may due to its first year, the root system has not fully established yet. Do you have summersweet grow in your yard? What is your comment on this plant? I did bought a clematis few weeks ago, Sweet Autum. It is supposed to bloom around late Aug to Sept. But it is stilll in container, has not been planted in the ground yet. Does anyone know if there is a fragant trumpet vine that grow in zone 5? My neighbot has one with very showy salmon/orange flowers,beautiful leaves, but has no scent. I thought knock-out roses are not scented? How strong is the scent? If you get one, please post some commets on its scent.

There were 2 fatalities that were on the news but for the most part it mostly created a traffic nightmare. I was able to take the train down to Seattle for a soccer game yesterday during the cleanup without any problems and most areas have power back on now. We're used to getting strong wind storms in October or November but this one was particularly early and because of the prolonged drought and since the trees haven't lost their leaves yet, the trees were particularly vulnerable to high winds (the leaves act like sails and create drag forces on the tree).