Here's another one who keeps the plants inside all year round! It's way too early for me to even think about checking the CC for flower buds, though. Mine will be in full flower sometime in early to mid-December, though. I am wondering about one of my plants this year. It's a clone that I propagated several years ago, it has three identical 'sisters'. Or USED to be identical, lol. I transplanted this one into our pal Al's potting mix, and it has proceeded to double (or more) in size in the course of 6 or 7 months! Good grief. I'll be curious as to whether this will affect the flowering performance. The growth has slowed down, as I would expect it to at this time of year. (Thank GOODness, lol)

Robert, I just love your description of Oklahoma. I have to say that our weather here is never, ever, ever dull. Even though I spent the first 39 years of my life in Fort Worth a mere 80 miles from where we now live, I have seen weather here that we never saw there.....and that includes tornadoes up close and personal just a mile or two from our house (in the air, thankfully, and not touching down) and drecho winds....oh, and thundersnow. I didn't know thundersnow existed until it happened several times here. How about hail so thick that it covers the roadways and they have to close down the roads because driving on big old hailstones is like trying to drive on golf balls. How about driving rain that comes down so hard that snakes and frogs come up onto the porch to get away from the rising water? Or thunderclouds that tower 60,000 or 70,000' above you in the sky and provide some of the most amazing images you've ever seen. What about Oklahoma's wonderful sunrises and sunsets when the sky turns all sorts of wonderful yellow, orange, peach, pink, apricot, mango and purplish shades? How about blinding duststorms that turn the sky brown and cause a virtual brownout? I mean, honestly, does anyone else have all the kinds of weather we have? Sometimes we can have all 4 seasons in one week, and you can't do that everywhere else. We even have earthquakes and wildfires, although in both cases I sincerely wish we didn't. Where else but in Oklahoma can you walk 100' from your house in one direction and have springs and a swamp, and walk 50' in a different direction and have cactus? Of course our highly variable climate and weather conditions wreak havoc with our gardens, but they also give us oodles of magical moments almost every day. Faerybutterflye, I remember when we lived in Fort Worth in the 1990s I had a friend who lived on the north side of Denton and I used to think it took me about 100 hours to drive from our house in west FW to hers in Denton. (giggle) Then we moved here and I learned what a long drive really is. The first year, I went back to Fort Worth probably at least twice a month to see family, shop, etc. Every year since then, though, we find ourselves going back less and less often. DH and DS both drive to Dallas-Fort Worth Airport to work, but they work long shifts so work fewer days per week. The last thing they want to do on their off time is to drive back down there for anything. One thing none of us miss is the traffic in the metroplex! Even Denton has a whole lot more traffic now than in did in the late 1990s when we moved here. Our 'Aristocrat' pear dropped its leaves about the same time your neighbor's tree did. That's the first time it has held them this long. I think that 2009 was just a really wacky year. I have been trying to think of some kind of weather or climate or geological phenomenon that we don't have here, and I think I came up with a few.....geysers(?), tsunamis, volcanoes, and icebergs. Anybody else have anything to add to that list? Dawn

Hi Megaera, If your rose cultivar is the type where the flower has more than 50 petals, it won't open successfully until we get really hot weather, so probably not until mid to late July and beginning August. Roses are heavy feeders, so any fertilizer that has high numbers (20-20-20)plus lots of water, sun and air circulation is necessary to have good growth and bloom.

Most of my citrus get only about 4 to 6 hours of sun in summer. I don't usually have them in full all-day sun. They seem to grow better in pots for me this way. For my situation the pots would overheat too much in all-day full sun. And I've never had a problem with blooming and fruit production. Usually they start blooming before I even set them out. I start them out in shade in spring and gradually -- over a period of 3 weeks -- move them to more sun. I do this because usually they have a lot of tender new growth before I even set them out. Actually toward September/October I do move them to as sunny and protected spot as possible because I want to make the most of the shorter and cooler days. Also want fruit to ripen.