Perfecting my sourdough bread making - and warming the kitchen at the same time. These Ca. houses aren't supposed to have this much cold weather. Can't complain - have 4 boxes full of assorted lettuces, grn onion, beets, spinach, garlic, broccoli, etc., my best year, cuz I remembered to cover stuff with Remay cloth. A new low-chill peach tree arrived yesterday - hard part is deciding where to dig the hole - things are getting pretty crowded - had to have it tho. Sleep too much but nice warm bed and great place to watch all the golf matches (in sunny, WARM, Hawaii) on TV. Just finished 2nd batch of lime wine - and the tree is still loaded. Found a nice spigot to put on the primary fermenter, cuz I'm not very expert at the siphoning part of my new hobby. Hope it works OK. Also starting new seedlings under lights - more cabbages, parsley, thyme, onions, and daring to try early Roma seedlings in a sheltered place next to the south facing wall - never give up! Bejay

Well, if the vines are dead, and the skin on the squash is hard enough that you can't dent it with a fingernail, then I'd say there's no reason not to bring them in and store them in a dry, fairly cool place.

"You could use a snowblower to completely bury the Forsythias, and that would discourage the rabbits." That's a great idea! Next time we're inundated with snow we will definitely take your advice. We never even thought of doing that. It was in the mid 50's all weekend so all the snow has long since melted. I went outside to look for vole tracks but I didn't see any. And none of my bushes got even a nibble. Thank goodness. We don't own any guns so shooting the rabbits is pretty much out of the question. Dh and I have never held a gun in our lives so I don't think we could do it anyway. There are SO many rabbits out here, thousands of them, because they all live on 300 acres of that my neighbor owns. Trapping them would be pointless. They have it made because he only mows maybe twice in the summer so they have all that land to themselves.... This post was edited by ilovemytrees on Sun, Dec 22, 13 at 17:21

while it does seem to have lost some branches, I would still advise that you wait until July before pruning those branches off. You see, I own a royal purple smoke bush and have noticed they start leafing out from below and slowly work themselves up towards the top. My tops haven't fully flushed out and for sometime I thought they were dead too. Except this week when new buds have started to appear. It is very slowly leafing out and I expect it would be another couple of weeks before it's fully foliated. Also -- yes, remove new shoots from the bottom--- unless you wish to make it shrub like instead of being tree like.