Patricia, I've had that happen, too, with New Dawn. And I pruned Yolande d'Aragon to about three feet when I moved all the roses out of a certain area of my garden. It used to grow as a tall spider armed thing, and has never done so again, not yet at any rate. The same is true for Pierre de Ronsard. I grow it as a big round shrub and it never tries to climb. It seems odd to me that this is so. Not scientific. I wonder if the same thing is true of Veilchenblau's cousin Violette? My purple multi-flowered ramblers were all languishing by the fence, choloritc and mildewed, so I removed them. Violette had once done well for me in another spot, so I got a new plant and put it in the old spot. The trouble is that there are now lots more plants growing in that area. I'm hoping I can keep it to shrub like proportions. Otherwise I don't know where I'll put it. Somewhere else, that's where. I love this rose.

I tried "minor hoopage" for my unnamed integrifolia hybrid (I know it's not the species...it ressembles Roguchii but doesn't get much more than 3 feet tall). I grew it in a tomato cage, but the stems just bent at the top of the cage and looked awful (and I was afraid they'd break). I've found that growing them through an obelisk works fairly well. However, I needed to find one that had horizontal supports spaced fairly closely together. I have a species integrifolia trapped between a fence and a large daylily. My Durandii is growing up an obelisk with a shrub rose close by. Any escaped stems flop nicely on the rose branches. I don't know if any of the above information is useful to you. In my zone, plants tend to grow shorter than in yours.

You may not be hardening up your seedlings enough also . I use a growing medium of five parts peat moss and one part washed sand , dampened thoroughly with a weak miracle gro solution. Pack full without tamping , into a large peat planter ( 12 oz. pot?). Three melon seeds per pot . If you're starting under lights , after two weeks you need to start getting them outside ,occasionally at first, only during favorable conditions , left still in their peat containers , of course , moistened with good rain water if possible. By doing this , by the fourth week you should have hearty seedlings , that should survive if transplanted when the weather permits. Thats another thing , watch the low temps . You'll gain nothing trying to plant them if the night avg. temps dip below 45 degrees . I think zones 5 and 6 you need to wait until after about June 6th to plant.I'm growing in Redvale Colorado at 6,500 ft above sea level . I experienced a 2 in 5 survival rate because of the late spring cold spells in the four corners region . Nontheless I now have a good melon patch going . I am trying Extra summer sweet , a Japanese variety from Evergreen Seed Company and Maverick Melons from Johnnys Seed Company. In the future I will use clear plastic tents along with black plastic ground covers to give them an optimum start. This year I dug a deep trench and threw in some old composted cow manure and covered it from one side making a semi-dirt-covered-manure ditch . I used this ditch to pin the one side of the black plastic and heaped the other side with the soil that was excavated from the trench . This formed a slight mound with one side deeper than the other . The deep side I flood irrigate . I have used this same method for years , and it works pretty good.Its probably too late for melons this year.You still may have some luck with Zukes . Just throw a whole packet in a small spot . You're bound to have something come up . Just thin them out some. And you know what , you could try that with the earliest of earliest of melons , Maybe minnesota midgets or butterscotch . You can make a tent for them to extend the season. Good luck Dave

For regular household chores, things in our house sort of just get done when they need to get done. We both have things that we tend to do -- he waters the garden, scoops the cat box, takes out the trash, and usually loads the dishwasher, whereas I do more of the general tidying of each room (he's better if he's given a specific task; if I told him to "clean the living room", he'd have no clue). Usually every week or two we jointly clean the entire house, which involves mopping floors, scrubbing toilets, and all that stuff -- realistically, I do the lions share of that work, but he tries his best. One thing that has made housework a little more fun for us is this thing called Chore Wars -- if your husband (or kids) is into D&D or other roleplaying games, it's a way to track your chores, and gain "experience" while doing it. My husband and I compete to gain more points than the other, and right now he's beating me :( Because my husband is such a geek, though, he's been so willing to do chores lately, just to be able to enter them into this Chore Wars thing, so I love it. As far as household maintenance type stuff, like fixing things, generally hubbie asks me what our plans are for the weekend. I tell him if I think we need to work on anything special, and if he's noticed anything that needs attention, he'll add it in. We also keep a list up on the fridge of things that need to be done, and try to knock off 1 or 2 of those regularly. I'm very lucky that my husband is always very willing to pitch in and do his fair share -- I try to return the favor by making sure that he has plenty of his own time on the weekend to do what he wants (play video games, watch TV, whatever).