Aw, thank you. I have been trying to hold it back, but it just comes gushing forth these days. I'm just so glad! Band is the bestest ever. Kinda like living my glory days all over again, and enjoying his new found love. Actually, he is still an LF. But he really doesn't mind being little. I'm still waiting for him to shoot up, but in the meantime, he has fun with it. His best friend at this school and his main school is also small. His current crush is small. She could actually be his twin! Her mom and I laugh about it. They call themselves, the midget squad. Cutie pies. I can't wait until the day I say, "'member when y'all were the midget squad? Can't say that any more!". It's coming.

Lynn....... I think you are making the overwintering of these roses too hard. I know you are a planner, but sometimes you just have to wing it. I started my rose life in San Diego and was given the same advice as above. San Diego is also considered to be Rose Heaven. Note the ARS giving that advice in San Diego gave that timing so that the first flush of perfect roses would be ready for the rose shows in early April. It takes about six to seven weeks for a rose once it has set bud to bloom, so if your timing is early April you work back from there. You do not have to follow that timing if you are not worried about having roses ready for a show, but are just growing roses for your garden and don't need perfect roses, but need healthy roses. Cooperative Extensions and Master Gardeners have been parroting the advice given by the local rose societies for more than 60 years. That's because they do not specialize in roses and figure the ARS must know what should be done for their care. In San Diego, we stopped dead heading our roses in October and then began our pruning in December to be completed by Valentine's Day, so that they would be ready to show. My experience and personal opinion is that you stop deadheading in October, allow the rose to set seed and then the rose will go as dormant as nature will allow that rose to go dormant. When we dead head, we are interrupting the plant's natural cycle of getting pollenated and then setting seed, which stimulates the rose to re-bloom. If you don't dead head, the plant will complete it's natural cycle and rest. There is no need for dormant sprays unless you have a serious disease problem or unless you want perfect foliage for a rose show. I believe in leaving the leaves because the rose will abandon them when they no longer perform the function needed for the rose. Studies show that the photosynthesis process stops when temps reach around the 70 degree level. So you can take them off or not. I think they provide a larger mass for the top growth and leaving them on helps protect the canes from the colder temps. Cluster your pots on your patio and surround them with bags of leaves or mulch and stuff the same material in the gaps between the pots to make a bigger mass and to protect the outside pots from the colder temps and to keep the temps within the mass as constant as possible. If you feel you need to protect the top growth from freezing temps, you can cover them just as farmers do with their crops. These are small roses, they don't need to be pruned for the first year except to clean out the rose and shape it. (Note: I don't even shape the rose until it's been in the ground for at least two seasons, but I live where temps get colder.) You want it to grow out of those gallon cans, so you might as well just let it grow. Cutting them back/pruning them when they are small just slows down that process because the roses are storing nutrients in their canes. I now live in a climate with temps lower than you have reported. I over-wintered roses outside for six years in containers before I got them all planted. None of them died. I should have replaced the soil in those pots, but I was too busy digging rose holes in rock. I had to over winter the pots in a totally unprotected yard and I did not go out in the rain or snow to cover them. I also had to maintain those roses in direct sunlight in high temps that lasted for months. The key to my success was the larger mass. Not taking off leaves, spraying or taking off leaves. It kept the temperatures and moisture more consistent. In my best year, I could only get about twenty out of over one hundred roses planted. The only thing you need to do differently than I have done, is to make sure the pots don't dry out while they are resting on the patio. I've been told watering once a month is sufficient, but it doesn't hurt to check and see if you need to do it more often in your climate. Once I got them in the ground, they my roses took off even better than I expected because they finally had a chance to spread their roots. So your choice is to go by the book or wing it. Smiles, Lyn PS ... this rose, 'Kim Rupert', looked horrid in the pot, this is how it looked the first year I got it in the ground.

I hope everyone, who has been dealing with flooding issues this past week, is recovering and drying out. This is a long post, but maybe the construction parts will be useful to some. I have been on the road since Sunday and really wondered what I would return to yesterday. First, some background. Even though I live on a 50+ foot deep sand hill in the Connecticut River valley as Ive described in other postings, the pitch of the main house roof onto the rear Âbarn or extension roof has meant that, for the last 236 years, water has poured down into the corner made by the main house and the extension, pooled up, and run down through the stone foundation and into the dirt floor basement. So, the basement is always damp, making it unsuitable for storage and also a source of dampness and odor that can affect the whole house. Last fall, when those poor people died in Alstead (about 15 miles south of me) after the dam on the Cold River broke, my basement flooded deep enough to cover the furnace motor (nancylouise, I feel your pain). Fortunately, the motor fired up, once I got the sump pump working and drained the basement, but then and there I decided to tackle the centuries-old problem. The solution was two-fold: 1) build a 50-foot long, seven-foot wide (eight-foot roof) farmerÂs porch on the north side of the extension (which houses the kitchen, mud room and garage/carriage house) to deflect the water that comes off of that side of the roof out into the lawn, and 2) build a 24 x 16 foot great room addition into the other corner where the larger quantity of water has always pooled and leaked into the basement. The frost walls from the addition have perforated piping along their outside base and there is even a pipe along the old foundation of the main house that goes through the frost wall and links up with the other pipes, all of which empty into a drain pipe that goes under the drive and dumps into the stream. The new room is framed out and, as of Sunday the roof had been felted, but the metal roof was not on, yet. My rainfall totals for the past eight days have not been nearly as impressive as those of the folks in the Merrimack Valley, but still added up to way more than normal: Friday: 0.40 Saturday: 0.93 Sunday: 1.03 Monday: 0.12 Tuesday: 0.53 Wednesday: 0.01 Thursday: 0.03 Friday (So far): 1.10 Total: 4.15 Odd how, for me, today has been the wettest day, so far. So, how did things fare? The farmerÂs porch was completed earlier this spring and has completely solved the problem on that side of the house (so far). The ground on that side of the basement is slowly drying out (was soupy for most of the winter). On the other side with the room, which now has the metal roof in place, but where the ground has still not been finish graded, the water came off of the roof so hard last Sunday that it created a 2-foot deep sinkhole next to the new frost wall up against the main house. If you can imagine all that rain coming off of the main house onto the new roof and then pouring off in one spot, it kind of looks like Niagara Falls. As a result the water had nowhere to go, backed up under the frost wall and came through the foundation and into the basement. The water was pouring over the rocks of the foundation like one of those indoor waterfalls. I saw this just before I left for my trip, and it freaked me out just a tad, since the whole point of the new room was to carry the water away from that piece of foundation. . But, my contractor put some wood up temporarily to deflect the water over the sink hole, and no water has come through the foundation since, so it is a specific problem with a solution. The site guy is coming up this weekend to dig it out and run additional piping along the wall and a second drain pipe out to the stream (After the grass seed I spread two weeks ago finally sprouted in all this rain, of course). Once everything is graded, we will be adding a couple layers of 6 mil plastic sheet on the ground along that entire wall, which will be under a permanent eight-foot wide, full room length deck. This should move the water away from the foundation and finally provide a permanent solution to the wet basement problem. As a side benefit, the new room is going to be wicked cool  lots of windows and skylights in a south-facing room. Out in the gardens, all the plants seemed to have taken this deluge well. The daffodils, tulips and hyacinths didnÂt lose any petals, and the constant watering has certainly helped all the new plantings. All-in-all, except for that one glitch with the sink hole, which is really a function of the ground settling, things seem to be moving along. Again, my best thoughts and wishes to everyone, who has not been so lucky. If there is a take away from the ramble it is that for anyone considering running exterior ÂFrench drains to remediate a water problem, my advice is to not underestimate the power of water and to overbuild the solution. Better to add larger or extra pipes that will Ânever be needed than to wake up one morning to a cold house, a flooded basement and a submerged furnace. My contractor, the site prep guy, and the foundation guy all thought I was overreacting in my comments about how much water came off of the roof and into the house. In one sense, IÂm actually glad the water came into the basement this week, because it showed everyone what I was talking about. Also, if you have the option, just moving the water away from the foundation might be all you need. The farmerÂs porch didnÂt cost much more than the trenching and piping solution would have cost. But, with the pipes I would have been left with nothing to show on the outside of the house. Now, I have a functional covered porch that actually adds beauty and breaks up some boring lines on that side of the house (before it was just an 80-foot straight piece of wall). So, sometimes you have to think Âoutside of the box. narcnh

I found out why Julian Lennon wasn't there. "Well, let me see here. IâÂÂll do a little roundabout. So there were talks about the whole Grammy thing, being involved or being part of that. It was all a bit mad and trying to get information out of that scenario was like blood from a stone. WhoâÂÂs playing what, everybody was keeping schtum about whoâÂÂs doing this, that, and the other. And I live in Europe anyway, not that I canâÂÂt get on a plane, but it was like if IâÂÂm going to be involved in any way, shape or form then I need to come out there for rehearsals. Like I said, blood from a stone. At the end of it I said, âÂÂYou know what, IâÂÂm just gonna wish you all well. Have a great time. I love you dearly, but uhâ¦â Another thing I wanted to do was stand in the audience, you know, clapping with the audience (laughs), watching other people sing Beatles songs (laughs)? For me it would be Celebs Do Beatles Karaoke Night. I donâÂÂt need to see that (laughs). IâÂÂm not being rude. That whole thing is not my cup of tea. IâÂÂm just not wired that way. Again, I wish them well. I just think events like that can be�"not saying that it is because I havenâÂÂt seen the performances yet�"can be a little on the cheese factor side. I prefer to know The Beatles as they were, when they were. There can never be a reunion anyway so I just thought IâÂÂll send them my love, wish them well, hope they have a great time."