Just as a warning, although I'm sure he's told you - we have had upper 90's temps for several weeks with practically no rain. You may need to wait until fall to get your garden going. Good luck with your move.

ya i've heard, thats crazy.. Yet here we've had more rain then i can ever remember, out of 30 days last month it rained 23 of them.. I'm ready to leave the rain behind, or maybe you all will get lucky and i will bring it with me :)... I will only be starting about 10 pots (i think thats what i have packed) so a watering can or two a day and i think they should be ok.. Again I'm new to these temps so i dont really know.. But here we have crazy high water costs we pay about 200 buck a month for water, only 60 of which is the water we use the rest is what we have to pay for getting rid of it.. I dont know the cost of water down there but it cant be that high, is it??
Oh yeah its raining here again... off to close the garage..
jen

No, you're not likely to get a $200 water/sewer bill here unless your pipes spring a major leak. We've actually had several fairly decent rains in the last week or so. Not enough to break the drought, but enough to ease the watering chores.

Hope the hubby finds a nice place quickly and that the move goes well. Keep us posted. Alice

From what he has told me its pretty cheap for all the bills down there, well compared to here.. Hes been looking but he says since the tornado its a bit more difficult to find a place to rent, most who's homes need major work or are gone have rented something already.. I want to be there july 1st so bad but its not looking to good yet.. If its ment to happen it will, if not i'll be there shortly after that..
jen

I had a neighbor who easily ran up a $200 water bill every month in the spring, summer, and early fall. She showed me her bill at one time. This was withOUT an irrigation system! She ran a useless oscillating sprinkler nearly every day....watering the air for a few minutes all around her property. Crazy!

Anyway, Smurf, we'll keep our fingers crossed for a good place to live and an easy move. And be sure to follow that good advice about fall planting. You'll need to leave your Canadian gardening routines behind when you come here. You can count on us to help.

well my problem is i have canna seeds, and with canna seeds they need a growing season on order to have a big enough root system to last through the winter.. When do other lilies die off over there??

I have elephant ears also but those if i have to I can grow them in the house until its cooler.. those i put a pot in a bucket and theres always some water in there so it would have to be really hot for a few days and me not check on them at all before the water would be gone...

As for watering a few pots, it would take as much water as flushing the tolite a few extra times..

But we'll see how i feel when i really step into the 100 degree weather, how much i will really get done.. Plus i will have lots of unpacking to do, so who knows might not even get to planting

Most water utilities in Alabama offer irrigation meters. It helps those who use a lot of water outside the house. It's seperate from the house meter so there is no sewer charge.

Most cities also add a garbage collection fee to the water bill and it can make up the majority of the amount.

I'm sure that each municipality is different. Our utility bill includes water, electricity, gas, garbage and recycling pick-up. Each is listed separately on the bill, along with the meter readings. It makes it easy to compare, from month to month, how much water or electricity is being consumed.

Mine is like you described also, rhizo. Last month my water and sewer were $34 together.

That's for a house of 3 people who bathe daily, wash dishes, do laundry, great dane who goes through about 20 gallons/day including dumping out old icky water from his dish (which is one of the crisper drawers from my last refrigerator), 7-10 hours per week running the garden hose at full-blast, and one washing of a 4-door sedan.

WOW purplinopp i cant believe how cheap that is.. They say the cost of living down there is 30% less then what it cost here, i'm just now believing them haha... everything is just so much less down there, its going to be so nice, i'll have money to increase my gardening collection haha... hubby goes look at a place tomorrow, its a bit more then we wanted to spend (same as our mortgage here) but with alot taken already we have increased our budget.. We wanted to live cheap as we could to save for a house but either way as longs were all together i dont care how long we have to save for.. So hopefully i find out tomorrow, and if we get it then i'm on my way next weekend...
I'll keep you all posted
jen

Jen;

Something to bear in mind when comparing costs of things is the unit of measure. We use the US gallon for water and gasoline, cubic feet for natural gas and kilowatt for electricity.

For example, in my city gasoline is $3.43 per gallon so you would have to convert that into CAN$ per liter. The water in my city is $9.00/1000 US gallons and sewer is the same.

All water utilities have a minimum that they charge per month and it will vary from system to system. Some will charge a certain amount for the first 2000 gallons and then charge a lower amount for each 1000 after that.

Purple, you can imagine how low ours is with only the two of us...and no big ol' dog! $34 would be high, most months! I did forget to add sewer to my list of things that are included in our utility bill.

We did drag the hose around quite a bit the past couple of weeks, so I'll be interested to see the bill this time. And I confess to running a little sprinkler for the birds when it's been extra hot and dry. They act like a bunch of little kids running around, jumping through the sprinkler. :-)

rhino, i'm sure the birds are so cute playing in the water..

Jcalhoun we have been getting gas over in michigan for months now its a buck cheaper a gallon once converted.. we save well over 100 bucks a month in gas alone just by going over.. Milk too its 2.49 a gallon over there, here its well over 5 bucks a gallon. I'm not quite sure what we pay per gallon of water but i know its about 60 somthing a month plus about 120 sewer charges, our hydro with water a month in the summer is 600 a month.. but then we have 13% sales taxes on everything even on services now, thanks to the HST combine tax.. Not to add all the eco-fees we have to pay for anything the concider bad for the envioment a gallon of paint has $3 eco fees just an extra charge on top of the gallon price..

Beer is cheaper in the states, even Canadian beer.
I just got back from eastern British Columbia, and was very surprised at the cost of groceries and dining out.
I lost weight in just a week. ;-)
Even the rivers are high!
Mike

Jen: Any news on the hunt for a place to live?

the place he was going to look at sold before he had a chance to go see it.. Hes talking to another couple about renting there house there just trying to work on a price.. Hopefully it will work out for the best.. Its the first house i wanted to buy, it would be funny if i ended up living there anyways.. I'll keep you all posted as i find out, hes thing regardless i'll be there in a week or two and just stay with friends until something comes up..

Well hubby called tonight one way or another i will be heading down there july 9th.. weather we have a place to stay or i stay with him at our friends place.. Cant wait to get down there and finally start our life

well he found one.. he said its just for a short time, but at least its something.. I'm so excited to get down there, I hopefully will be able to make it to the next swap, I cant wait to start gardening :)
looking forward to meeting some of you
jen

dear smurf,welcome to alabama.i hope you enjoy a lovely summer!

This is off-topic but I thought Smurf might be interested and I see no way to e-mail her directly... I ran into another Canadian down here. He is an entomology graduate student at Auburn studying termite distribution in our state, I have been helping him by setting out traps to catch the winged forms here in Etowah County.

One can only contemplate the climate shock these Canadians get, much less the culture shock! But we are glad to have y'all!

smurf, did you spontaneously combust upon arrival? If your brain isn't boiling too vigorously, let us know what you think, how you're doing.

Sorry everyone i've been waiting for the Internet to get hooked up.. Thankfully today it happened.. Well the house we live in is a cute place, nice deck for my pots.. Got some stuff planted yesterday, gardening down here sure is different.. It's so hot!!! I can only last about 10 min out there... Oh while it will cool down soon

Glad to hear you made it to AL! And glad you like your place.

...it will cool down soon... Um, yeah, as soon as it finishes heating up!

i hope so cause wow its hot out here.. Although i dont mind it so much later in the evening say 7ish when its a bit cooler and we sit outside.. I started about 15 pot so far, have to unpack some more before hubby will let me get anymore dirt.. went to walmart here in cullman and was sad that theres not really any plants i wanted then i remembered its way past the start of the season and planting isn't something most people are still doing.. i also started some seeds so hopefully i will see flowers on them before seasons end..
glad to be here
jen

Sorry, Jen, but summer is just getting started. I don't think we've even officially broke 100 yet. But spring and summer both came early this year, so maybe fall will arrive sooner as well.

yea, the hardest thing for me to get used to here were the hot nights. Sometimes it seems the sun goes down and it actually gets hotter.

But then the late afternoon summer storms can be so refreshing. It's why they right songs about southern rain.

well so far i just love it here, but back in march when we came down for a weekend i knew i would.. I live on a dead end street, my back yard is a forest.. Lots of birds signing all day long.. I planted hardy hibiscus seeds the other day and looked at them the next morning and they were some rooting.. Its nice to see that in less then 24 hours.. I hope to see a flower this year, i left my house 2 weeks before the expected flowers on the hibiscus i had there.. So hopefully this heat will make up for it and i will see at least one..

Anyone ever start a hardy hibiscus this late and seen flowers?? or anyone have hardy hibiscus and know when they die off for the year??
jen