Talk about the urge to kill.......... I was gone for two days and when I came home I found a big stray cat had decided to make a bed in my WS containers. It was a flat with eight pots in it and a plastic cover over it. It had plant markers but he had just wiggled them over and made himself a bed. I guess the sun had warmed the warm soil but the plastic kept him dry. I hate it when people drop off pets. Obviously he was accustomed to having a basket or bed of his own, so he didn't mind that it was on a shelf three feet off the ground. We live a few miles out of town and people get tired of their animals and just drop them off. This is the 2nd new cat in the last couple of weeks.

Zone 4a and this will be my fifth year doing this. I start around new years, typically with hardy perennials in my zone, shurbs/trees and seeds that i don't really care about (e.g. old seeds). I typically wait until late February to start putting out a lot of my annuals, and I leave the following til the end of march or early april: zinnias sunflowers ornamental millet abutilon dolichos lablab morning glories 4 o'clocks cosmos and pretty much anyhting tropical in origin Most of these will sprout if sown earlier, but their foliage is sufficiently tender that I lose them in the cold nights we have earlier in the winter/spring. If I wait til then, they typically don't pop til mid april or later and i typically don't have to worry about the seedlings freezing then.

crsliz, I think there are as many ways people store their Cannas as there are Cannas. I grow most of mine in pots and I bring the pots and all in to the basement after the frost takes the leaves down. I give the soil a good washing with the hose. The Temp in the basement is between 50 -60 degrees. There is very little light. I water my pots about a 8 oz glass of water once a month, Just enough so they do not dry out. They start to sprout in March and I usually can put a good size growing plant outside at the end of May. You have to experiment and see what works for you. I just do not have time to dig up plants so any tender plants I grow are grown in pots and are used on the Patio, and Deck.

GG We had frost on the ground this morning...just a light one. I moved some of the seedlings back onto the porch so I hope they are ok and I postioned things around a new salvia that I had planted the other day that was just starting to flower yesterday. I think we are going to have a frost advisory for tonight (Sunday night) also so i will try to keep things sheltered a bit today. Then MAYBE after tonight we will be in the clear. This cold weather is getting very very old. Penny