I was just telling my hubby my roses have never looked so good this time of year. Granted they don't look as good as they did in the spring but usually half mine by now are completely defoliated. Boooooo! I've fertilized more and kept them watered better this yr so maybe that's helped. I agree with boncrow and could never imagine your roses looking tacky!! They always look so beautiful and healthy!! I've already received 2 small orders and really don't need more. Lol. Noooooo room!! Judy

Schoolhouse> I have several tips that have really helped this year. Make sure that you use a plastic liner in the basket/container...I cut up old mulch bags or potting soil bags...you can poke a few holes or not as you wish. We are usually so dry here that I didn't poke any and even though we are getting a LOT of rain it has not been a problem. Next use the Miracle grow soil w/ time release and then add Osmocote and then dip the little plants roots into transplant hormone and water with it the 1st time too. I know it seems like that will be too much but believe me this is the very best mine have ever done. I also have left some of the plants in their plastic pots and just set them in the planter. The key is also to have a way bigger planter than usual so that you can have enough dirt. Hope this helps you. Nell my regular gardenias haven't started yet. c

Don't know if there is a perfect answer. But flushing more money down the toilet is not the big fix for sure. Lets see...the little guy has created too much debt, has lived beyond his or her means and can't pay their bills. So we need the bailout, so the little guy can borrow more money, continue to live beyond their means and create more debt that they can't pay? Sounds like the bailout, is more of a Ponzi scheme not meant to bailout the taxpayer, but instead reamout the taxpayer as it makes the rich...richer. Would an alcoholic be fixed if he inherited a whiskey factory? Would a limitless supply of free alcohol cure what ails him? Or would it just increase the sickness? We have learned nothing from our bailout mess. We can see this from the debate on how to water down the 'mark to market' accounting standards. Instead of restoring high financial and accounting standards, we are further relaxing them, in effect increasing the sickness that got us here. I would add that any accounting standard that discards mark to market accounting would be off my screen for investments. Even with mark to market, we have all these accounting lies. Can you imagine how it will be when asset values can be assigned by the holders of those assets with no reckoning with what the 'actual market value' of those assists are? One of CNBC's commentators chewed out Rick Santelli a while back telling him there is 'no time' for discussion of ideology in the bailout crisis. We must have the $700 billion NOW! At CNBC they seem to think that if money is just thrown at the problem all will be fine. If there is no time to change the underlying sickness in our broken capitalist system, how will more alcohol fix the alcoholic...or in this case more money fix the dishonest, greedy thrives of Wall Street CNBC? Every once in a while CNBC offers some words of wisdom other than the poker playing, crap shooting, compulsive gambler mentality of trading that you promote. Rick Santelli offered one such pearl of wisdom when he said the powers that be in America need to 'take their medicine like men' and stop trying to avoid the penalties of their financial shenanigans at all cost. To avoid taking their medicine is just making matters worse. Fix the underlying sickness before you loan out a dime. Take your medicine like men CNBC as well as thieves of Wall Street. Don't give taxpayer money out, not a dime - loan with high grade collateral and interest. But only loan if absolutely necessary. But don't force the taxpayer to buy toxic waste that no one in their right mind would buy. Put the rich, greedy, lying bastards of Wall Street on the line and not the taxpayer that can hardly make ends meet. Paulson had over 30 years on Wall Street. Paulson is said to be worth half a billion dollars and we never heard a peep of warning out of him until the crisis was full blown. This seems to be a case of honor dies where the interest lies.

"Any candidate who doesn't begin each day on his knees isn't fit to be commander-in chief" spoke Ted Cruz, among other equally vile things. This, in response to a question about how important it is for the POTUS to fear G-d. That leaves out Jews, atheists, agnostics, Muslims, erect Christians, et al. Lotta folks. This from a Harvard Law School grad, a practicing attorney, U.S. Senator, who apparently missed the classes on the constitution. He passed the bar but how? Was he lying then or now? He may be predictable, per Beagles, but still. Predictability v. espousing the bashing of the Constitution? Predictability (with which I do not agree) is overrated but does give comfort to too many souls.