We use a combination of Nickel Plus and K-Phite. It's working great. We spray with both, using a sticker-spreader we got at Tractor Supply. We also add their blue dye now, because it helps us see where we have missed a spot. It isn't very easy to see through goggles, with sweat pouring down in your eyes. Just avoid spraying any blossoms, unless you are really desperate for a blue daylily. We were advised to spray once a week for 3 weeks, then wait 3 weeks before spraying again. I've only sprayed once this fall, since it has been raining off and on ever since. Occasionally, I will have a plant that shows sign of rust, but nothing like it was before I started using the nickel. I wouldn't use anything else. Well, let me take that back. I am going to try some Actinovate on just a few isolated and unimportant plants to see how it works. The only thing I don't like is having to don all that protective gear, but I wouldn't have it otherwise. I'm very cautious. We use goggles, a special pesticide mask we bought at Lowes, chemical gloves (also at Lowe's), rubber boots and a yellow rain slicker. My hubby and our yardman refuse to put on a garbage bag drawstring skirt, but if I'm doing the spraying, I wear that, too. I'll have to get my hubby to take a picture of me in that fancy outfit so everyone can get a good laugh. When the weather is warm, we get very sweaty in all that garb! We start very early in the morning while it is still cool. We have a big tank sprayer on wheels we pull behind our riding lawn mower. It runs on the lawn mower battery. We got an extra length of hose so we can cover more territory. One of us drives the lawn mower while the other sprays. I could do it by myself, but it takes longer to have to keep stopping to move the mower ahead. We wash the tank out thoroughly after spraying and run clear water through the wand when we have finished. Aren't you cold climate people lucky??? Nancy

I noticed that my Trachys (while still not looking great), ARE looking much better than just a few days ago. So, don't panic if your Trachys are showing signs of discoloration or those characteristic rings. Some of the leaves will return to normal, and as long as the bud is firm, they should be good to go for the growing season. I finally broke down after those predictions of 0 F and ended up providing some protection (regular, small X-mas light, bubble wrap, and an relatively light weight (insulating blanket) I picked up at the nursery. I used the blanket more as a scarf draped around the midsection (including the growing bud but leaving the leaves at the top and the base of the palms exposed. I tugged gently at them today and they seem very firm. Careful, for those of you that are protecting with lights. I was surprised at how efficient this little set up was. The air inside the bubble wrap felt very mild (not hot, not too warm, but relatively mild). I opened it up a bit as I don't want to encourage growth at this point. TZ, it would take a monsoon to quickly melt all the snow I have in my yard. I would go out with a yard stick to measure it, but I would have to climb the glacier that borders by driveway area (it was built with all the snow accumulations we've had. I got sick of shoveling and ran out of space for the snow so now my "blacktop" is covered in a few inches of snow. I really am expecting another big time weather 'event' from this latest storm.--And though I am sick of the snow, I like it much better than the arctic cold. I certainly hope Feb. is milder, but expect it to be just as stormy--along with that other notoriously stormy month--MARCH!!

Keith, You know, I'm just kidding about him being a weather weenie! He is, in fact, the bravest man I know and puts his life on the line for his fellow citizens all the time, both in his professional career as a police officer (back when he was hired, they all were cross-trained as firefighters too) and in his volunteer capacity as a firefighter. Our son is the same way...he works as a professional firefighter/paramedic and then also as a volunteer firefighter on his own private time. You can bet that we immediately had a discussion here at our home about the Fulton fire as soon as we heard the story. Both DH and DS said the family clearly was at fault for failing to pay the fire membership fee (or whatever the heck they call it there), that the family knew the consequences and that the family gambled they'd never need the fire dept., and they lost. So, the family received virtually no sympathy from my two firefighters. Also, please note that they were burning trash in metal burn barrels and set their own place on fire by leaving those unattended. (I'm assuming the barrels were unattended since a person sitting there with a water hose could have quickly put out the fire when it spread from the barrel to the grass.). I would have liked to see them stand in front of the camera and say "This is entirely our own fault and we accept full responsibility. Since this particular area's fire fee has been in effect since 1990, there is no doubt in my mind that the family knew exactly what the consequences would be if they didn't have fire protection and had a fire because the same thing happened there just two years ago to another family. I have really mixed feelings about this, but I do want to defend the firefighters. Their hands were tied. If they had fought that fire, each and every one of them who fought the fire would have been dismissed from the department. Those firefighters had a moral and ethical obligation to obey their policy and could not fight that fire. I hate that the family put them in that sort of position to begin with. After all, if you choose not to have auto insurance or homeowners insurance, you surely do not call up an insurance company AFTER the fact and ask them to pay for your damaged home or car. Why should fire protection be any different? If the fire dept. disregarded their own policy and fought that fire, they'd be opening the door for every resident to decline to pay their annual fee. Then, the dept. wouldn't have enough money to operate and would cease to exist and no one would have fire protection. So, it is just a big mess, isn't it? My personal feeling is that while the family was wrong, in my heart I wish the fire dept. had the latitude to fight the fire and then to bill the family after the fact. In that case, the fire dept. should be able to bill the family for the FULL COST of fighting the fire, which my son tells me would be approximately $500 per hour. Then, it would be your choice as a homeowner to pay the $75 per year annual fee or to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars per fire incident in the event you had a fire. However, that was not an option the Fulton firefighters had available to them. You might be surprised to learn that more property owners in this country are in areas covered by volunteer fire departments than by professional fire departments. Volunteer departments receive miniscule amounts of funding from the state of Oklahoma and the amount that most receive from their county or city are not very large either. In our county, if you add together the money you get from the state and the county, you might...just might...have enough money to pay your annual fuel bill. Sometimes you don't have enough. I have personally witnessed, quite often, volunteer firefighters paying for fuel for the fire trucks or parts to repair fire trucks using their own personal funds with no expectation that they'll be repaid that money by their department. In order to have money for gasoline, insurance, fire station utilities, etc., we have to spend tons and tons of time on fund-raising. Our guys spend as much time on fundraising some years as they spend fighting fires. Something is wrong with the way we fund volunteer departments in this country, but you cannot blame departments for that. It is the fault of the governmental officials we elect. Do some departments get federal, state or local grants to help buy equipment, fix equipment, buy personal protective gear, etc.? Of course they do. However, to receive a grant you have to apply, apply, apply over and over and over again, year in and year out, and if you're lucky AND extremely good at filling out tons of paperwork over and over again, you might get a grant once or twice a decade. Smaller depts. who lack grant-savvy members rarely, if ever, receive grants because they haven't mastered the paperwork nightmare. Our dept. is very fortunate because we have a couple of guys who spend probably hundreds of hours per year working on grants, so we get a grant about once every 2 or 3 years. Without them, I don't know what we'd do but think we'd be in worse financial shape than we currently are, and we'd have older, less safe and less reliable equipment. It used to be that professional departments had the funding from their entity, be it a city or county or fire district, to cover their needs adequately. However, in the tough economic times we're in now, every fire dept. I know of, no matter how big and marvelous they are, is fighting to do more with less. Many depts. nationwide have laid off firefighters and even closed down entire stations because they lack the funding to maintain the level of service they once had. I think incidents like the Fulton incident will continue to occur because you'll always have people who won't pay their fair share until their house is burning...and, by then, it is too late. For the members of our fire department, there is nothing worse than being unable to save a burning structure, but sometimes by the time you arrive, the home is already fully engulfed and all you can do is try to keep the fire from spreading to the adjacent dwellings. I cannot even imagine our dept.'s firefighters standing by and watching a house burn because a family hadn't paid their fire protection fee. Doing that would go against everything the members of our department believe in. However, our county doesn't have a fee like that or a policy like that, so it isn't something we have to deal with. The only thing that really disturbs me about the Fulton policy is this: what if people are inside a burning home and are likely to die if firefighters do not suit up, go inside the house, find them, and carry them out? What then? I think that, morally, it is one thing to stand and let someone's home burn because they CHOSE not to pay the fee. It would be something else entirely different, though, to stand by and let someone perish in a fire. I would find that morally reprehensible. I know this isn't gardening-related, but I am glad we discussed it. For all of you who are involved with your local dept as a volunteer or who financially support your local dept., THANK YOU. For all of you who don't, please remember they need your support! There used to be a bumper sticker (it first appeared during a campaign to unionize firefighters and give them collective bargaining rights) that said "Suppose You Had A Fire, And Nobody Came?". Well, if you don't support your local volunteer depts., that could happen to you. Carol, If you're in a fire district with a required membership fee, I believe the insurance companies do require you to pay it or they can deny you fire coverage. Our county doesn't have a fee, though, so I have no first-hand experience with it. I do know, though, that if we send an insurance company a letter notifying them that we fought a fire at a piece of property they insure, most of them send us back a letter of gratitude and a check to help cover our costs. Unlike some residents, the insurance companies understand EXACTLY where they'd be without the volunteer and professional fire depts. Finally, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention this: our local fire department had a big fund-raiser a couple of weeks ago and our whole community turned out in force and they brought their money with them. The fundraiser was a success and virtually ensures we'll be able to pay our bills for the next year, assuming no major disaster occurs. I am SO GRATEFUL to all the Love County residents who attended and who made our fundraiser a success. The residents are the reason that we do what we do, and they also make it possible for us to serve them by contributing money to the department to help pay its operating expenses. I feel so fortunate that in Love County the citizens support their VFDs. Dawn

The palms should have survived 87 but as TZ notes that should not happen too much. Your winterizing is really good, its that your plastic does not have much air space which is OK as long as you keep the lights off on sunny warm days. I made the same mistake today, left the lite on in my tracky enclosure with the sun out and I am sure it was 90*. I had my wife turn it off a few hours ago. I did not realize how warm it was today - 35 is too high in the sun for the lites. The weather report said today was going to be harsh cold and they are off by a crucial 6 or 7 degrees. Aviod using lites on sunny days over 30, it really has not been that cold. I use my lites only at night usually. I would use them if days are stuck in the teens or 20ish.