I would plant the pansies in soil well amended with compost (not composted manure, but just plain compost). I don't think it's too late to plant them. I plant mine in containers filled with good potting soil, and they look good throughout the winter and all spring--they fade out and/or die come summer.

"But do you have an irrigation system? Dormant seeding won't make watering unnecessary. If you seed, you will need water." Actually, one reason some people dormant seed is to avoid needing to water. This assumes that there will be winter snow and/or spring moisture. Usually, there is enough moisture from the snow and rain that additional watering isn't necessary. I've never killed the existing lawn and tried it as the article above seems to be recommending, but I've overseeded an existing lawn with some success. I've got an irrigation system, but the air is so dry here that it's difficult to keep the surface moist. Since we get almost all of our precipitation between mid October and mid May, dormant seeding is about the only chance I have to benefit from natural precipitation. I'm planning to dormant seed late winter/early spring to help fill in the spots that never seem to get enough from the sprinklers. Since I'm overseeding with native grasses, once I get them established, I won't need to worry so much about whether they get any water.

It hasn't yet. I've made three piles spaced about a month apart starting in Novemeber. None of them has turned to compost. THe first one was used horse bedding (with lots of wood shavings, a little rabbit manure, some plant waste and sawdust. It got to 130 and built back up to that after two turnings, then stopped getting hot. I left out the sawdust in the second pile, and it heated up ok, but lost it's heat pretty quickly too.I just mixed some chicken manure in it in hopes to get it hot again. The third pile was more random, with chicken offal, leaves, sawdust, and whatever I could find to mask the smell of the offal. Maybe they are getting too wet. Would being too wet affet the heat too much? Cuz these piles are COLD. How wet is too wet? Should I cover them from the rain?

The question really is whether you think you'll get a hard frost (e.g. the moisture in the soil actually freezes to any extent) or not. The tubers will survive in the soil with cool temperatures, just not frost. Remember, they are shallow root plants so you only need to freeze a couple of inches of soil and you'll kill or damage the roots. It would take several weeks of ground frost to kill the tuber (think about what happens at the end of the season.) I too am in Zone 5, and am on the side of a lake (which usually means our temperatures are slightly higher than others) but you are more daring than I. But my reason is that most of mine are 8" tall already and I don't want to have to bother with coverings for frost warnings. Most of my tubers took 15 days to go from nothing to a cuttable sprout. Were they in the ground, that sprout would have had a couple of sets of leaves above the ground and would have been highly susceptible to frost. The up-side of your plan, however, is that even if the above-ground part gets frosted, a root system should get established as well, so a new sprout should come up quickly. Good luck, and let us know how it works out for you. Cheers, Russ