I am in agreement Kim, I have been moving my pruning back recently. I used to do it all on or around New Years Day. I would be cutting off long long stems with roses and making New Years bouquets of roses and sweetpeas. The HTs and FLs never really stop, they just slow down Dec-Feb. Iceberg always has flowers. The Polys usually always have flowers. Minis and David Austins put out flowers here and there. I do a big trim to keep plants from falling over and clean out dead wood and really old canes. The sporadic Austins and HTs are large in the cool temps. Only the plants that got a big trim are unable to make blooms until they get new leaves and wood grown again. One thing I have learned is to stagger my pruning so that the spring blooms don't all come at once. If the weather is bad one week, I still have plants waiting to go or have already finished peak bloom and I haven't lost the whole spring show.

Oh, KYgirl--Big hugs coming from me, too. I haven't been on his forum in a while because I've been dealing with our own build from He$$, and I didn't read all the responses in this thread, but I did read your original post. We've just gone through something very, very similar--different problems, but similar in scope, jerk of a builder, almost no on-site supervision, several horrible subs, lots of stress and tears. It has been horrible. We ended up moving into our house ten days ago while it was still unfinished because of having to be out of our rental, reaching our bank deadline for closing, etc. I just wrote you a long post, but realized that it ended up being about me, not you--and this is your thread! So, I guess I just want to say that I sympathize with you, and I think I understand a lot of what you must be feeling. It's a good day if I haven't cried more than once before 9 a.m.! This has been the most stressful, unpleasant experience of our lives. Friends will say, "Oh, you must be so excited to be in your house," and I feel like a spoiled brat if I don't respond positively. It has been a nightmare. There's still lots to be done here, dh and I are doing and/or redoing stuff that we've already paid contractors to do, but they either did a crappy job or haven't been showing up. It just sucks. As badly as I feel for you, reading your post at least made me feel as though I'm not the only one who has gone through this and I thought you might want to know you're not alone. The old misery loves company routine, I guess! Take care of yourself, and try not to let it get you down--I know how hard it is, but if we don't look at the positive side, we'll go completely crazy. Although, at least you could then plead insanity when you're charged with killing Mr. Peanut!

Aaaackk! I'm so far behind I don't know how I can catch up, but I'll try. And, technically, this is a new month and a new week but I want to finish this thread before I start the new one. Bruce, It definitely is encroachment of a major type. Frisco and all the surrounding areas have grown, and continue to grow, exponentially. We drive down some of the roads mentioned in the coyote area occasionally, and they were country roads not too long ago and are city roads now. The development is occurring at such a breakneck pace that one of the things I tend to say to Tim every time we drive through there is ""where's all the wildlife being pushed away into?....what's left for them now?" Amy, It is alright. You've been through a lot recently and I am sure you have a lot on your mind. Now that you've found this thread, I'll go start the new one for this week in a few minutes. Regarding the chickens? We've had ferrets, weasels and ringtailed cats all get into coops we thought were secure, so maybe you have one or more of those sneaky beasties around? The first two, in particular, can squeeze through fences and through tiny openings. Congrats on the contract on your dad's condo. That happened fairly quickly all things considered. I know you'll be glad when you can cross the condo off your list of things you have to worry about. Nancy, The beautiful weather sounds nice. All too soon it will be icky again, either cold or snowy or windy or icy or some combination thereof. Today was only 56 degrees so warm but neither too hot or cold. All the wind the last two or three days brought down most of the leaves left on the trees, so we look really wintery now and even the last remaining red oaks in the neighborhood have lost their red and gone brown or naked now. It definitely looks wintery and I sure miss the green foliage. Fruitcake is an acquired taste. My dad made it as did several of my uncles, but I never acquired a taste for it. Early in our marriage I made one. I have no idea why. I wonder what I was thinking? Maybe I thought that making a Christmas fruitcake was a southern/family tradition I should carry on into my adult life? Nope, nope, nope. It wasn't worth the bother, we didn't even eat it, and I never made one again. If I wanted a fruit cake (and I don't) I'd order this one from Corsicana's Collin Streat bakery that ships tons of them annually: Deluxe Fruitcake A lot of people in Texas, in particular, consider this the ideal fruitcake, perhaps because a lot of it is not fruit---it is pecans. They sell about 3 million pounds of fruitcakes per year (mostly at this time of the year) and ship to at least 195 countries, in addition to the USA. In this particular case, even though I love to bake, I feel like they make a much better fruitcake than I ever could or would or have. Rebecca, I am not even sure my dad and his family members really liked fruitcake, but I guess it was a tradition from their relatively poor youth so they kept making it and eating it....despite not really liking it. I think maybe it is because their parents loved it and they lost their parents really young, so perhaps they clung to the fruitcake tradition as a way of hanging on to their memories of their parents. Larry, It is really kind of you to provide some entertainment for the cows. I know there must be some really good fruitcakes, but most of the ones I've eaten would not have been labeled as good in any shape, form or fashion, which is a shame considering how much work goes into making one. It also is tiring to try to chase down all the ingredients. I've noticed the last two or three years that a lot of the candied fruit type stuff that goes into them isn't even sold in local stores any more. Kim, I bought the Whole Seed Catalog at Sam's Club the first couple of years but it wasn't that special, other than just for reading it to pass the time, and I stopped spending money on it. Jen, I don't know of any way to tell the good seeds from the bad ones when they all look the same at the time you harvest and dry them. About the only thing you could do would be to run a germination test by sowing 10 or 20 of them on a wet paper towel or coffee filter and putting it in a ziplock bag. Check daily to see how many germinate. That at least would give you an idea of what percentage of the seeds you've saved will be viable. Keep in mind if the original plants were hybrids, their offpsring likely will not come true from saved seed. Jennifer, I hope your long day on Saturday went well and that you've spent today resting and recovering. Amy, I was watching the weather when the tornadoes spun up and was horrified when they started issuing Tornado Warnings for a "Particularly Dangerous Situation" type tornado emergency. It looks like it was horrible in the areas hit, but also seems like injuries were minimal and no one died. Why can't we have normal weather here? Tornadoes at the end of November are not unheard of but also not terribly common. We had some very strong wind gusts (likely in the 50s) as our severe tstorms roared through, but no real damage here. Some people in our county had portable structures, like sheds and carports, flipped or destroyed and trees damaged and power lines down and such, but I think it all was straight line wind damage and no twisties here. We got less that 0.20" of rain out of it, but I'm so relieved to not have mud any more that I'm not complaining. Rebecca, I hope y'all found a Christmas tree that was up to your standards. We bought a terrific and beautiful pre-lit one several years ago and I love it. I believe we got it at Lowe's. When I looked at the trees they have this year, none of them were anywhere close to it in quality though. It seems like everything we buy anymore just keeps being made more and more cheaply, although prices continue to go up. We had the girls this weekend and had lots of holiday fun, but I am exhausted and ready for the new week so I can catch up on my rest a little bit, Good-bye November! Dawn

Lilyfinch, I didn’t plan on stripping any leaves. They seem to fall off on their own. So far I have only removed leaves that had mildew or rust on them. Only two of my roses are fungi prone: Paul Neyron gets rust and Gruss an Teplitz gets mildew. The rest of my roses are clean, but I have been spraying Spring and Fall with Bonide copper fungicide concentrate and cold pressed neem oil: 1 tsp neem, 1 tsp dawn soap, 1 Tbl copper conc into 1/2 gallon warm water. I put this mixture in a Chapin brand one gallon mosquito sprayer recommended by someone here. Half gallon is enough for 35 young roses. Probably by next Spring I will need a gallon to cover them all. It keeps both fungi and grasshoppers away and is nontoxic. Can’t spray this in hot weather, plus roses don’t get fungi in summer, but I had some grasshoppers over summer and just ignored them until it cooled enough to spray again. So far sprayed just once this fall a couple weeks ago when the weather started cooling.