I don't have a lot of experience with this, but my instinct is that it may be better not to stake the trees. Trees bend to the wind so the wind does not break them. If you stake them, you may do more damage because as the wind pushes the tree, the bark or even the entire tree can be strained against the wire with which you have staked it . Some things that may help if you are prepared and safe in all other areas: 1.you could prune buds blooms off any shrubs ( the rose lilac etc) You can prune down the blueberries blackberries and even the trees so there is less for the wind to catch. 2. You don't mention where you are, other than zone 5 NE, but you said the magnolia has defoliated. Since my magnolias are just in the process of losing their leaves, but I am zone 4 central NH, I am going to assume a seasonal similarity. If you can, bring the magnolia into the garage, or inside. If it is heavy and its worth it to you you can usually rent a dolly at the hardware store that makes moving large pots easier. 3. If things are going dormant for winter where you are, as I am assuming, you can cut back any perennials. Even if they are still green, they will be going dormant before they can send out new growth - so its okay to cut them back a little earlier than you planned. 4.If you winter prune your fruit trees, you can do that now to limit wind damage. The risk is that the winter will be bad and freeze the new cuts - but my guess is that is a pretty low risk. Depending on how the forecasts progress I may do this step myself. (I have already cut back all perennials in my garden and in my customers gardens) 5. If I am correct that you are in the NE, I would also prepare for heavy wet snow. ANything you would do in your region to prepare for that I would recommend doing. Except maybe wrapping shrubs. I drove through Vermont several times this summer, and the devastation there from hurricane Irene is tremendous. The mountains funneled the torrential rains, flooding streams, rivers towns and roads. I took some pictures intending to post them for discussion; maybe this is timely, but I will start a new thread. We could also call this Hurricane Kelsey: My daughter Kelsey is flying from santiago chile to miami tonight and then to Boston tomorrow after 3 months away. The path of the hurricane is threatening her flights and I think she will be pretty upset to go from spring in Chile, completely miss fall and land in Winter here. Whatever, I just can't wait for her to get home!!

Looking at your new list of roses, I doubt you will need to worry much about wind damage. Perhaps when they are very young, but after established, they should be fine. If your experience to date is mainly HT's as you indicate, then you'll be in for a pleasant surprise. HT's are notorious for suffering cane damage in heavy winds when in full bloom. For instance, all but the most sturdy HT varieties are essentially long sticks with big blooms up at the top. This makes them very top heavy in heavy wind and when the blooms are filled with rain they tend to bend over or just break off at the base or down the cane. Some thoughts on your new roses: - Cinderella Fairy Tale- Almost tip hardy in Toronto. Almost bullet proof in terms of disease resistance, but can get some very mild late season mildew here. Just like everything else in our gardens... - Morden Blush- Beautiful and tip hardy in most winters in Toronto area. Will get some BS by mid-summer, but can usually shrug it off and keep blooming. Expect about 30% defoliation from lower leaves. Few roses bloom as heavily and repeat as well as this rose if it is deadheaded after each bloom cycle. - Crocus rose (Bit of a risk. I'm hoping I grow to love Austins) Not risky. Very hardy and decent disease resistance. Early season mildew more of an issue than BS here. Needs a few years to grow a frame and can be floppy in the first 2 years with the big blooms. Not much fragrance for an Austin, but a winner in cold zones. - Julia Child- Nice yellow Floribunda with a great fragrance and is a good bloomer. Fades from bright yellow to off-white yellow. Stays pretty small here and will likely get some BS by mid/late summer. A nice rose though and pretty good hardiness for a yellow Floribunda. - Betty Boop- Blooming machine and very eye-catching when in bloom. Decent winter hardiness, but will also likely get some BS here by mid-summer. A favorite of mine and a good rose. Good luck and enjoy.

Larry, I thought of you this morning when I went outside early and there were 4 or 5 bunnies hopping around the yard. Once the bunnies see our rabbit-hunting cat, Tiny Baby (no longer Tiny and no longer a Baby either) with me, they run off. He'll catch a rabbit and carry it around and play with it, but he won't kill it, so I usually can grab him and set a rabbit free if he is just carrying it in his mouth. It hasn't been too bad of a snake year this year so far. I think all our copperheads are someplace else this year because I've barely seen any at all, but we have lots of garter snakes. Tim sees them more than I do. I think he sees them mostly when he is out jogging or when he's mowing. I see them in the yard and in the garden when I see them. Today a timber rattler could have bitten me if it had wanted. I had just closed the garden gate around 10:20 a.m. and was going to pick up an item off the ground before heading inside. I heard a rattle and froze in my tracks. I quickly located the snake and backed away a safe distance. (Now, yesterday a little voice in my head told me to carry a gun when I went outside, so I did. Today there was no voice in my head, so I didn't carry my gun out there....). If there is one thing I've learned about snakes it is that after you see them, if you leave them to go inside and get a gun, they will not be sitting there waiting for you to come back out and shoot them. I did have my cell phone with me, and Tim was at home, so I called him. I called him 6 times and sent him 3 text messages. No response. I knew if I left to come inside the snake would disappear into the garden, so I waited and watched the snake. I knew Tim had to leave the house within 20 or 30 minutes to go to work, so figured eventually he'd either check his phone or come outside to leave for work. Finally I heard a banging sound in the garage and started yelling his name. Eventually he came down the driveway to see what was wrong. He got a gun and killed the rattlesnake. I was shaking. That probably is the closest I've come to being bitten in a good 10 years. It was less than a foot from me when it rattled and I froze, located it and backed away. It was coiled up against the garden fence and just drew its head back and rattled, and that saved me. It just as easily could have bitten me. After it all was over and Tim had disposed of the snake, he told me how lucky I was that it was a timber rattler (they are rather shy and non-aggressive) and not a western diamondback rattler, because a more aggressive rattlesnake likely would have bitten me. Timber rattlers are supposed to be somewhat endangered, but we have them all over the place here and I normally see several a year, but not all close up and personal like this one was. The venom can be pretty toxic. He also promised me he'd carry his phone with him at all times now whether he is in the house or going in and out from the garage to the house or whatever. I thought we had settled that issue back in the year of the cougar sightings, but so many years have passed now and he's gotten bad about leaving his phone lying around in the house. Often it is upstairs and he is downstairs. I generally keep my phone with me all the time, having learned an important lesson about that when one of our neighbors fell and broke her hip on their seldom-traveled private road and laid out there, helpless, by the mailbox for several hours until someone arrived home and found her. I hate snakes, and I've learned that if I am not carrying a gun, I'd sure better have the phone with me or the venomous snake will get away. They can roam all they want on at least 11 of our 14+ acres, but if they are in the garden, driveway, garage, potting shed, chicken coops or yard, we shoot them. Dorothy, We had a rough green tree snake that used to hang out in the garden and eat stuff. For some reason, seeing the green ones doesn't freak me out as much as seeing other snakes, so I tolerated his or her presence. Its' favorite place was the top of the shade cloth over the peppers, putting it at just about my eye level. I didn't see it last year or this year, so guess something happened to it and it no longer is here. Lots of the ranchers here like having a rat snake in their barns to keep the rodents down, but if I knew we had a snake in a building, I'd never step foot in that buildlng. In an average year, I'll have one or two scary rattlesnake encounters, so I guess that for 2013 this is one down, one to go. Dawn

If you mean gophers...they can be an on-going issue depending on where you live. We fight them constantly where I am. The easiest way to deal with them is by trapping them. I've tried most of the major types of gopher traps, but the only traps I've found to work consistently are these (I know they say they are for moles, but they are the perfect size for the pocket gophers we have here in southern CA). If you are against killing them for whatever reason, the only other option you have is to try to gopher-proof your garden as best as possible. You can buy/make wire baskets for your bigger plants, put the root ball into the basket when you plant, keep a few inches of the wire above ground so they don't climb over. We also have several large raised beds with hardware cloth (wire mesh) stapled to the bottoms so they can't get into the soil area for our vegetable gardens.