For those who don't have access, there is a commercial product called Surround which is an ultrafine kaolin clay. It can be applied at 4 oz/gallon in a sprayer, and up to 3 coats may need to be applied for full effectiveness. It covers plants with a white film. A possible application for roses might be if japanese beetles are ravaging the foliage. The material has been shown to repel JBs effectively. It would not protect flowers because they are always opening. It might serve to get some flower buds to the openable stage where they can be cut and enjoyed inside. Obviously you wouldn't spray mud on an ornamental garden unless there is a catastrophic short term problem like a massive invasion of JBs. My father used to spray papaya fruits with a coating of lime to protect them from fruit flies.

I'd sure try an apple and see - very often, snow cover isn't enough to freeze anything, and some varieties of apples can take a fairly heavy frost and still taste wonderful - this is an old orchard area, and a lot of the old timers won't pick any apples until they've had several frosts. This year, my Pink Lady and Roma were wonderful, a few days after night temps dropped down to 17º, 28º, and 30º. OTOH, if they were frozen, then they likely would be mushy.

I normally don't post on the birthday threads, but I've enjoyed your daily threads so often that I just had to add my good wishes. HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!

Steph - See the link below. To quote Groundspeak/geochaching.com "Geocaching is an entertaining adventure game for gps users. The basic idea is to have individuals and organizations set up caches all over the world and share the locations of these caches on the internet. GPS users can then use the location coordinates to find the caches. Once found, a cache may provide the visitor with a wide variety of rewards. All the visitor is asked to do is if they get something they should try to leave something for the cache." MaryAnn - Someone on the central TX site was selling a gently used unit last week: I'll try to email you the link since I just got a warning about trying to post a yah00 address. Here is a link that might be useful: Information about GeoCaching