Jim- Good to know about Golden Showers. I decided to get one William Lobb to go with my two Fantin Latour roses. I suspect that it might not grow as tall as they say on the website, in my colder climate. In this location it's okay it it's just a big beautiful shrub. Thank you all for your input. I was leaning towards New Dawn for the kitchen garden arbor, but was afraid it might be too exuberant. Finally decided to zone push a little and ordered two Lavender Lassie roses that should arrive early next June. They'll be own root and the arbor will be in one of the most protected locations we have, so I'll keep my fingers crossed :)

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

Hank, I do remember the heat wave of 1980 although I was living in Texas at the time. It was the worst summer ever and I know that I will never forget it. I was in college and working full-time, and I had a car with NO air conditioner. (That was the absolute last car I ever bought without an air conditioner!) My dad had a garden that year, as always, and all I remember about it is that he had a HUGE crop of the biggest, tastiest tomatoes we'd ever produced until the red spider mites got the plants in early August. In Fort Worth we went 69 days between June 23 and September 6 with high temperatures over 100 degrees, a record which stands to this day. We also recorded the all-time highest temperature ever officially recorded in the D-FW area on June 26 and June 27---113 degrees. That same year the second highest temperature ever recorded in Texas was recorded in Wichita Falls--119 degrees. In Oklahoma City, y'all had 50 days of triple digit high temperatures and recorded OKC's all-time high temp of 110 degrees--the hottest day on record outside of the Dust Bowl days. The Heat Wave of June-Sept. 1980 did an estimated $20 billion in damages/costs to agriculture and related industries. In addition, an estimated 10,000 deaths during that time-frame were classified as heat-related deaths including those caused by heat-related stress. I worked for an international airline and I remember that people would walk off the air-conditioned aircraft into the UNAIRCONDITIONED jetways, which were said to be in excess of 140 degrees, and they would collapse right there in the jetway. It happened over and over again. We sure kept the police officers, paramedics and firefighters busy that summer with all the medical calls. I also remember that you just couldn't seem to cool off, no matter what you did, because the nights were so incredibly warm too. I have been thinking along the same lines as you that we ought to have good gardening weather next year. For as long as I can remember, we have often had several hot and dry years in a row, but I don't ever remember having two excessively wet years in a row.....well, maybe in the late 1960s, but I was a kid then, so am not sure the memory is accurate. Dawn

A forest will choke out a thicket, I often recomend that fruit and nut trees be planted on purpose, so that we lock up carbon and produce food for ourselves, and chocke out the brush plants that are unpleasent to walk through. When you go on a hike along a tail it seems that you are always either bordered by clearing/lawn or by a thicket, but once you break through that thicket you can useually travle quite quickly and easily and have plenty of space to move about. The main reasonfor removing trees and brush historicly wasn't to make things more pleasent, it was to open up land for agricultural use. with a field we can grow staple cerial grains, or legumes, or use it as pasture for animals, while some trees may provide seasonal food for some critters it takes alot of work to survive off of them year round (and trust me when I say thing, willow does not taste that good) . Our modenr day lawns were not contrived from thin air, you need to look at were they came from to understand how they fit in. Lawns are popular mainly in the south (sure, lots of people like them, but in the south they are sick for them) the south had a large portion of its caucasian inhabitants come from scotland (the southern drawl is very closely related to the scots accent) in schotland they have huge green field that are kept down to a few inches all summer long, this is because there is alot of rain and people raise sheep. Now, in the south there isn't as much water in the summer, and there aren't as many sheep, but people still liked the look of home so a lawn with mowers and irrigation is what they came up with.