Hi folks Thanks so much for all your encouragement and support! It's so nice to know that I'm not alone in this, and that there are friends out there who understand that roses are important to us when we've lavished love and attention on them - Bluegirl put that well. Part of the fun of growing roses for me is that they need me in a way that daylilies never would, but this year they've needed too much attention for too little return. And I am indeed a lazy rose gardener, at least as much as I can be with 700+ roses. I don't spray anything except very occasional Liquid Fence or insecticidal soap, and they've all built some resistance from "tough love" for years that will hopefully help them weather all this. RpR, that's one reason I am totally toast if I winter protect before the ground freezes - without the Serenade and more fussing than I'm willing to do, far more roses will die from winter canker in my climate than winter kill. For Nebraska, it's not the absolute low temperature but the constantly variable ups and downs of temperatures all winter that keep no reliable snow cover on the ground, and just enough warm spells to confuse the roses all winter (we've been alternating single digit weeks with 40's and 50's since Christmas). Thanks Hoovb for the sympathies that this is one of the toughest climates for roses! Statistically, Nebraska has wider temperature variations all year - hotter heat and colder cold - than any US state except South Dakota. A perennial breeder in Nebraska named Harlan Hamernik (who created Husker Red penstemon) says "if it'll grow in Nebraska, it'll grow anywhere". Not exactly true for roses, but we do make weather a challenge and a legitimate topic of conversation. Personally, I secretly think folks in zone 3-4 and below have it harder for roses, since I can get away with growing lots of hybrid teas if I winter protect a few inches at least, but the options are so much more limited further north. I totally agree with ehamel and intris and bluegirl that this was the year to hunker down and just concentrate on keeping everything alive. I always mulch well for long-term survival in a naturally dry climate anyway, and always plant new roses with the water crystals to help short-term survival. Yep, mori1 - I was watering even into December too, and my neighbors have long since stopped trying to figure me out in the garden. It's just that watering isn't fun, and a large part of why I don't spray is that it isn't fun either (though I like to believe health principles factor in as well as laziness). Harmonyp hit it right on the nose, in what I was getting across with all the wingeing. Gardening is one of my few "me" things, and the only one besides exercise I "have" to do enough to carve out time for it. I work more than full time and have kids and my husband and other responsibilities, so I rely on the garden for that extra boost of sanity and strength to balance me out with faith and family. This garden year was just plain depressing non-stop, and I didn't even want to sort pictures of better years to post since it so wasn't reality for now. It's reassuring though discouraging to hear the same from others like seil and bustopher and mori1 that have had the same kind of year in the midwest. Even though things sort of grew and stayed alive, nothing thrived - 25 tomato plants and maybe 25 tomatoes total for the summer, fewer potatoes out than I planted, well established blueberry bushes dying. Seil, I agree that roses are tougher than we fear they'll be and that if I can keep even the crowns alive they'll come back in the spring. We know that well in our zone 5-6 winters, and we're used to pruning the puppies down to little nubs in the spring. It's just that the poor things were so stressed already by the limited water, with the freeze added to it. Even with the mulch and crystals and weekly deep watering enough to keep them mostly green, their root systems were stressed. Still - it is what it is, and we'll see what happens in the spring. After all these years, I know that a rose dying is an opportunity to plant a different rose, and I certainly haven't stopped buying roses for spring. Lucille, Kitty, Melissa - I know you have your share of challenges in your year-round warm zone in different ways, so I appreciate your sympathies. And Jeri, don't you dare stop complaining about your drought or I'm going to feel like a real whiner. Tough conditions are tough, even if it could always be worse elsewhere. Thanks again Cynthia

Sammy I have been through the morning glory takeover before. It wasn't so bad on roses like felecia but for the really thorny ones it's tough. I found that if you cant get to them right away, try to sever the stems as they come from the soil and then the whole plant will wilt rapidly so the sun can reach the rose leaves. Then you can cut the vines off with a clippers later but if you cant find time for that then by the time winter is coming on, the stems should be dry and brittle enough to break when you pull at them. Winter or spring pruning does away with most of the stems at that point. The challenge is the next year when the seeds sprout. If you have a shop vac I would use it at the base of the roses so you don't have glories growing there. Then I use Karl's advice about cardboard and mulch to defeat the rest. Karl was a great help to me when I battled these guys. I still love them just not near the roses.

Oh what a pain to be bedridden in the summer! It's horrible to be suffering with anything serious at anytime, but it seems even worse when it keeps you from doing what you love. One thing that I have found is that no matter what goes right in the garden, it's the failures that we obsess about. I had one of the best years ever if you look at the whole garden. But I had an almost complete failure of my tomato crop (damn squirrels picked almost every last one!). That was a pretty serious blow, and then I found I has a serious infestation of narcissus bulb flies! I think I actually considered throwing in the towel (or rather trowel) for a few minutes, but then I turned around and looked at the rest of the garden... Oh my! It's such a lot of work to sow the seeds, plant the seedlings, and tend the plants that it can be frustrating when something goes wrong! But every year I have seeds that don't germinate - sometimes there's something wrong with the seeds, sometimes they're challenging or require a step I left out. Every year I have perennials that don't come back after years of me lavishing care on them. Every year I have a different bug that picks my yard to call home. Something always goes wrong. But the joy you get when you see that long awaited flower open, or see a plant covered in bees, butterflies, or humming birds! When you taste that first tomato after a winter of grocery store ones! When someone says "You grew that from a seed?" and you just flush with pride that you can actually do that! Wow! All that makes it worth it to dig on year after year. Garden on! BP

John, all three are graft compatible on the same rootstock. I've tried grafting sugar apples onto my large cherimoya tree before but it was difficult due to the different stem size, sugar apples have much smaller stems. I wouldn't recommend a cherimoya in your greenhouse if its going to be very hot and humid. They don't do too well in hot and humid climates, it's worth a try but you may expect to have some pest and disease problems. Atemoya and sugar apples would be more suitable for a tropical greenhouse.