Talk about outside kitchen! Kitty, I always adore those outside kitchen in magazines, like the one with a barbecue pit, and stone/brick wall. They are so cozy! We can never have such in our cold winter, so it sounds wonderful. Even without a permanent gas range, the idea of a stone barbecue pit is awesome. All three of my neighbors neglected or gave away their gas-grills, and they cook on Webber charcoal grill instead ... they told me it charcoal gives better flavor. I agree 100%, we used to use charcoal for 40 years, until my husband bought a fancy gas grill, I'm not thrilled about the taste... even stove-stop taste better (more moist). I wrote to a friend about how to create her own Pinterst pinning board, using mine as a template. So I'll copy the instructions here: "About my Pinterest, last night I made salmon, a detour from the routine. I chopped shallots and green onions, fried them, then put salmon faced down on a saucepan. I cooked for 10 minutes, squeeze some fresh lemon - my kid & husband loved it. For the past 1 year, my husband HATED my salmon until the dinner last night from Pinterest. The original recipe called for "garlic, green onions, dill and lemon juice." It's easy to set up your Pinterest board: log on to Pinterest, they'll ask for your e-mail account. You choose your user's name, and your board's name. I put alias "Straw Chicago" instead of my real name. Then you get into my "Straw Chicago" board, and click "re-pin" on any recipes you like, it will pin those onto your own board in your account. If you click the "FOLLOW" button on top of my board, it will give you my new recipes in the 1st page of your Pinterest. You don't have to log-on to Pinterest once you create your own account. I put Pinterest onto my Favorite Bar tool, so I click on it to get recipes. Once you set up a Pinterest account, there are 2 pages: the first page will give you daily free recipes based on who you follow, so whatever new stuff I pinned, will show up on your page. The second page (under your name) shows what you choose to pin, and no one else's recipes will show up.

Wow, it must be hard to make rose decisions in a place where it's hard for a rose to die, Suzy. Sometimes i'm secretly glad when a rose that really doesn't thrive in my yard has the good grace to die over the winter, so I don't have to be a rose murderer. As for the rate of failure, it's definitely a product of being a zone pusher and wanting to try something different. Plenty of people in my zone have never lost a rose because they're smart enough to only plant roses suited for their climate- imagine that! I'm more like Ingrid, in sandandsun's timely quote, that I prefer to look at winter survival as a challenge rather than the roses of a particular type (or breeder) having a specific death wish in my garden. You're all absolutely right that knowing the breeder isn't enough to judge health, survival, or any other qualities in your yard. I absolutely do the kind of trial and error experimentation that Lyn was talking about in my own yard, it's just that I haven't really come up with particular patterns for what thrives in my yard, except for the obvious ones like "lavenders and russets are usually weak" (understatement of the year) or "roses with teas in their heritage are a long shot". Rick, I admire you for checking the breeding history of the roses, and it certainly would be a more logical approach with fewer failures. I'm afraid I don't follow the breeding history or even keep track of which parents do well for me, though I have noticed that climbers with New Dawn as a parent are likely to be a good match for my yard. Wow, Nastarana, I hadn't been familiar with Jacobus as a breeder but I looked up Dream Girl, and - wowza zowie is she ever! I love those fat blooms with swirled packed petals, and it's great to hear it thrives in zone 5. Might be a nice counterpart to Nahema on my fence. You ought to share your observations with Helpmefind, since there was very limited personal information on this rose. Where did you get yours? Cynthia

Glad this post has been helpful and thanks to folks for filling in points that I'd missed. Michael and Kate are right that burying the graft (the knobby part) of a rose is one of the better winter survival strategies for a rose, since the couple of inches that need to survive are under the ground, and the ground protects that graft. A little leaf coverage around the base, including well-shredded miscellaneous leaves as Seil says, can add all the protection many of us need. Since that leaf coverage also provides spring mulch around the rose, it's a terrific strategy for lazy gardeners like me! Jim, you are indeed cruel, but not necessarily too early in your post. We had 3 feet of snow in western Nebraska last week, and parts of the Dakotas and Colorado are still digging out. Toolbelt - don't waste any time kicking yourself over missed insights in past years of not knowing about GW. Just keep joining in the fun of the discussions, and sharing what you've learned with your friends and neighbors, so they get hooked on the rose bug too! Zaphod, all of these principles apply to band roses as much as any other type of rose, with the added caution that the tender canes are more susceptible to things like moisture and critter gnawing. I plant all my bands in the ground too, though I try not to buy them too late in the summer, and any relatively scrawny plant is going to benefit more from winter protection than a well-established rooted plant. However, even a little canker or squashing from your protection methods can be enough to make it give up, if it doesn't have much of a root system. My method stays the same, to put protection around but not touching the rose, and one-twig wonders, I may make that protection as high as the rose (not usually a problem for scrawny runts) but make sure nothing is touching the base. Beyond that, I keep track of how poor the growth is in its first year, and I might try a more substantial plant (or heaven help me, keeping in a pot over winter like Seil suggests) if it doesn't grow fast enough to survive as a band. Bottom line is give some basic protection a try, but don't kill baby bands with too much material over their little heads. Cynthia

Hi Charlene, I mulch my veggies (plants and seeds) with grass clippings from when I cut the grass right after I plant them to help conserve water. I just put a thick layer in a ring around each plant or spread a layer over each row when I'm seeding. Every week when I cut the grass I add more to the garden and eventually have the whole thing covered which makes it much cleaner to walk and work in. Since grass is fine the stuff on the bottom keeps decomposing and adding organic matter to improve the soil. If you have annual weed grasses growing in your lawn you might wind up with grass seedlings coming up all over the garden, but I've never had a problem with ordinary turf grass (bluegrass), even though my grass is producing seed like mad right now. In fall when everything is done I turn over the soil and the remaining grass gets mixed in and decomposes the rest of the way over winter giving me better soil for the next year. Bark or other wood mulch would work too to help with the water conservation, but it takes much longer to decompose if it gets worked into the soil, so you might wind up with a lot of "lumps!" Also, if a LOT of wood mulch winds up mixed into the soil, you could wind up with too little nitrogen in the soil---decomposing matter temporarily binds up the nitrogen in the soil (making it unavailable to the plants) until the decomposition is complete. Should that happen you could always feed with a high nitrogen fertilizer, or, to prevent that problem, you could rake the bark or wood chips back off of the soil at the end of the season rather than mixing it into the soil. There's not enough decomposition going on from wood or any mulch just laying on top of the soil to affect the nitrogen levels. If you decide to use a bagged wood mulch, I just bought several bags of small bark chips for around my perennials and the best price I found was 3/$10 at Lowes. Now for the BIG question! Are WE going to survive this summer? If it's this hot already, I don't even want to think about what it's going to be like in July and August! Happy gardening---and--- stay cool, Skybird