Well our televison has a mute button so I amuse myself by pushing it and then saying what i think the commercials should say. e.g. "See all these policemen they are coming to arrest me but since I have all these law books I will just throw the book at them." Or "this is the star wars missile defence system, I was playing with it and hit the wrong button and wiped out my opponent." But for phone calls i just hang up.

Thanks, Mad, that's what I needed to understand. I'm in zone 6 and it gets pretty darn cold but winter is our driest time of the year so I don't have that problem. Even the snow is dry as weird as that sounds. The thing that is worst for my roses is the fluctuating temperatures. It can be 40 in the daytime and below zero at night. Or we can go a week or ten days in the teens and then have a week in the 30s and 40s. The roses get confused, try to bud out, then freeze, then thaw, back and forth. I've found that they can only do that so many times before the stored energy in the roots and canes just gives out and they die. Mulching them insulates them from that yo-yoing effect to some degree. I look for a hard freeze to get them dormant and then winter protect to try and keep them dormant until I know the temps will stay warm enough for them to start growing. Yes, Natural, you can winter protect pots. I have 30 (it was as high as 60 last winter) in pots that I've been winter protecting for 6 winters now. If you have a garage, and with only two to protect, I'd say put them in the unheated garage for the winter. Put them up on pot trolleys or blocks off the cement floor (Michaelg thinks I'm nuts about that BTW, lol) and remember to give them a little water every month. It's doesn't have to be a lot but they're dormant, not dead, and need some water. Desiccation will kill a rose quick too. A lot of people I know who garage their pots will take a shovel full of snow when they shovel their driveway and put it on the pots to water them. I do that with the one and only rose that will fit inside my shed, the tree rose. It gets the prized spot because I can't winter protect that top graft in the pot ghetto. All the rest of my pots winter outside on the back, south facing, wall of my house. I group them all together, drive in wood stakes, surround the whole thing with burlap and then pack it with leaves. In 6 years I've lost way more roses in the ground than in the pot ghetto. And those were usually sickly going in. And don't do it too early. I don't do mine until after Thanksgiving usually. Like I said you want to make sure they're completely dormant and then keep them dormant until night time temps are consistently above freezing. So don't get itchy in the spring (a bad habit of mine) and pull them out too soon either. Hope all that helps and if you have any other questions, ask away! Through trial and error I've done most everything you can do wrong but eventually figured some things out, lol!

FOUR times!! Blimey, I guess that's a rose you really like. True, regarding rubbish...but they will have to toss it high. I am allowing 2m between chainlink and compost piles as I recall this rose as being vigourous but not anything like some of the famously huge tree climbers such as Bobbie James, Rambling Rector et al.The compost is frequently turned, emptied and generally messed with so I will be able to get at the rose for pruning. The heaps are about 4feet high, enough to keep the rose reasonably contained and upright until it has gained some size. Tip rooter, hmmm, can also be handy, but warning heeded. My recollection of seeing this as a full grown rose was almost like looking at a white wisteria, although much later in the year (I seem to remember this was a very late bloomer) - great hanging corymbs? panicles? clusters, anyway, of tiny white flowers and, later in the season, orangey hips. Minis: well a lot depends on how and where they are being grown. I love tiny plants (my first gardening loves were alpines) as well as great sweeping perennials so I would like to display little treasures the same as auriculas - in a 'theatre'. Have you ever displayed plants like that? Essentially, an auricula theatre is a series of shelves or staging, arranged in tiers, each individual plant in its own little pot - I have used various things over the years, from matte black painted terracotta to scrubbed tin cans. Total artifice, of course, with no attempt to place these perfect little plants in a landscape - they are to be admired at close quarters. So, minis. yes, I think so. To my joy, I have found a nursery which sells Little Buckaroo and I want, want, want Si.

They do that all the time here in Oz. Don't engage with them, just hang up. They claim to be calling on behalf of Microsoft to fix a potential problem with your computer. If you follow their instructions you may end up giving them remote access to your computer at worst and ending up with thousands of viruses (one of DH's customers had over 2,000 viruses!) at best. Then they charge you $200 for the insult.