I have soaked cuttings for more than 12 hours but more than that would be trouble. Really only very stressed and dessicated cuttings need such treatment. Water is H2O, an oxygen molicule with a pair of Hydrogen molecules, one positioned off to each side. Plants don't starve for oxygen while under water although if their tissues are not made to endure such conditions they can certianly rot. Shallow non moving warm water can be very low in available oxygen but an air pump can fix that easily. I think the best method to root involves a moist substrate which can be organic or inorganic in nature, soil, peat, perlite or hydrotron for example. The next most important or perhaps the most important factor to get a nice fast rooting response in delicate or fussy cuttings is high humidty. Many commercial setups use a misting system where plant cuttings are placed in plugs or on moss and automatucally misted every minute for a few seconds. Using a sealed bag or rooting chamber is much easier and it really works well, heat speeds up all plant processes so hot and humid is what you want. The use of an aquarium air stone and pump is often called deep water rooting and there are cloning setups available althogh you can make one very easily using hydroponic net pots, a bucket and a lid, rockwool and and aquarium air pump and air stone. GG you are growing Hoyas right? LOL Mike

As a rule of thumb, roses are dormant when they have lost all their leaves. This rarely ever happens in the deep south, so we prune sometime during the winter, most commonly in February. I have pruned as early as mid December and as late as late February and it did no harm that I could ever see. Around here, the wisdom is to prune around Valentine's Day. It helps to understand how roses grow. If this is too elementary for you, please forgive me. I'm just trying to be thorough and clear. First, the branches, properly called canes, have joints (nodes) all along them. If you look carefully, you will see slightly swollen to quite prominent bumps (buds) emerging from those nodes. (They tend to be red colored on many of my bushes.) Notice that the bumps occur on all different sides of the branches. These buds are potential branches. They will grow straight out of that bump and keep growing in that same direction. You want to keep the center of your bush somewhat open and free of congested canes. This ensures good air circulation that minimizes disease, and allows sunlight to reach all parts of the plant for good flower production. So, you want to always prune a branch just above (about 1/4 inch) a bud that is facing away from the center of the plant. If there are buds below it that face into the center, you can rub them off with your finger. When you cut, it's a good idea to make an angled cut, so that rainwater will run away from the bud you are encouraging, rather than right onto it. The bottom of the angle should be about 1/4 inch above the bud. If your plant has disease (or even if you are suspicious), it's a good idea to wipe your pruning shears with alcohol or a disinfecting wipe after each and every cut. That way, you won't spread disease to healthy canes. When you cut a healthy rose cane, the cross section of the cut will have 3 layers: the large center is white and clean looking, then it's surrounded by a thin green layer, and then the outer skin ("bark" so to speak). If that center wood is black or brown, the wood is bad. Cut that branch back to healthy wood or remove it entirely. Big, fat healthy canes will produce more blooms and more canes of their kind. Skinny, wimpy canes will produce few, if any, blooms, and more of their kind too. Keep the fatties, remove the skinnies. (Roses, not people. :) So, with these things in mind, here's how to prune shrub roses: 1. Remove all dead branches. If the wood is grey and brittle, it's dead. Cut it off at its beginning point. If the beginning point is dead too, cut that branch back to its source, or to alive wood above an outward facing bud. 2. Remove all skinny, spindly wimpy branches. If they grow off big canes, remove the skinny, keep the fattie. 3. If you see branches that are crossing and rubbing against each other, remove the skinnier one, and keep the fatter one. 4. Clear out the center of the plant so there is plenty of room between the canes you are keeping.(I like to keep a ring of fat canes that are spaced evenly about 4 to 6 inches apart around the center of the plant.) 5. Now, shorten the big healthy canes that are left, again, cutting above an outward facing bud. Typically, you would remove from 1/3 to 1/2 the height of the canes. When I'm finished, I like all the remaining canes to be fairly close to the same height. I have found that alot of antique roses that have been lazy bloomers respond well to really hard pruning. In that case, you can count up from the base of the cane 3 to 5 buds and cut above that point. (Use this hard cutting back with caution on hybrid teas. You don't want to ever cut below the graft, or you'll lose the beautiful flowers you paid for. Leave these canes longer.) cottage girl is right. This is not a life or death thing. Roses are really just weeds that have really pretty flowers. If you cut too hard, or perhaps not perfectly, they will recover quickly and you'll have another chance in short order. You can even do some corrective pruning, following these guidelines, during the season. Just use a lighter hand.

Wow! This really takes the cake. It sounds as if the parents ran the entire show and the bride had little or no say in anything. I agree that the woman was startled and searching for something to say, as she was totally surprised that someone not invited would actually bring a gift. It is absolutely wrong and totally tacky to invite anyone to a shower without inviting them to the wedding. We had a similar experience with our recently married daughter's mother-in-law, who invited 170 people to the rehearsal dinner, nearly half of whom weren't invited to the wedding (we had "limited" her wedding invitations to 150!!!) Many of them were her husband's employees, most of whom had the good sense to decline to attend the rehearsal dinner, displaying better sense than she did. (She also had the nerve to have a gift table at the dinner!) I never ceased to be amazed at the bad taste exhibited by some people when it comes to weddings.

That old clay sewer pipe has a 50-60 life span. After that it becomes a kind of underground irrigation and fertilizer system. Plants are Very happy for a while, then the people become very Unhappy! We re-did most of it when we remodeled our house 15 years ago. Not sure why we didn't do the whole length of it then. I don't remember it even being suggested. Perhaps that last bit was still in good shape at the time. Anyway, the entire part we are responsible for is done now. What I do remember is an enormous climbing rose that we never, ever watered but was very robust and gloriously healthy. That rose is gone, but I have replaced it in kind, a Climbing Shot Silk, definitely a rose that would be on my short list if I ever had to go down to a dozen roses. The young replacement has been in the ground a couple of years and is beginning to show its stuff. I do wonder if the modern pipes made of PVC will end up lasting longer than the clay pipes did, or if that is just a marketing ploy to get us to switch to plastic. If the clay lasts as long it would definitely be a less toxic material to manufacture. I just looked it up, it is supposed to last 100 years. Well, true or not, I certainly won't ever have to worry about it again!