Leave it dry and protected from cold and excess water. Once you see some new growth popping out, you can start watering. You can also trim back but you must INCREASE THE LIGHT. If you trim back and grow in the same conditions, it will continue to look the same at the end of next year. These will take full sun every day in So Cal. I've kept one alive through four Winters (see 'don't water while dormant', above by previous posters). A newly purchased plant bloomed this year and I am officially 'hooked'! I've been watching closely a Cactus & Succulent Guru who trims them down to stumps willy nilly and pots up as bonsai! I recently asked him about cutting my lanky bloomer back and his recommendation was to wait until spring and full growing season. I find with mine after winter dormancy is broken, plenty of water and some fertilizer will pop out those blooms! This adenium is four years old and has never been cut. It is in full sun all year, except for Winter (known as Rainy Season in SoCal) when I move it in and water about three times during it's indoor stay. (Still hasn't bloomed, but I only started working on that this year.) I am getting ready to 'raise' the plant so the fat root (caudex)is exposed, part of the allure to C&S growers for this plant. DISCLAIMER: None of the plants shown in the following are MY plants! They are examples of local-to-my-area C&S enthusiasts and their art. This plant, in 2008 took four men to lift up to the table. This pic was taken in 2006. The proud grower and plant in 2007.

I wish I could give the person who came up with the bright idea of using RRD as a multiflora control method a good screaming at. It makes as much sense as cutting the rodent population by giving them the plague. I'll put in a plug for Rosa carolina, which last I heard, was still not getting RRD, and is an attractive and fragrant rose, and some strains have a litt;le rebloom. Likewise for R. californica and Burnet roses. Rosa palustris and setigera should be safe picks, though strictly once-bloomers. Aside from switching to wild American roses such as those, there's not much you can do, unless your can talk all of your neighbors into adopting a sane multiflora control method (e.g., bulldozer). Virtually all garden roses, no matter how disease resistant they may be otherwise, are vulnerable, whether they're OGRs or moderns, as are Eurasian wild roses and even many American wild roses. I suppose you could try Baltimore Belle, Souvenir de Brod, Commander Gillette or Bonica, since the latter has shown at least *some* resistance, and the others are hybrids of resistant species. This post was edited by ffff on Sun, Nov 2, 14 at 15:28

We ended up getting a quote for the PGT 5400 Energy Vue line as well. It really comes down to the Simonton 9800 w/ laminated glass and the PGT. Slight nod to the PGT for the installation. The price difference is 6.84% more for the Simonton. Simonton's warranty is better by far, mainly because the installer matches the manufacturer for the labor warranty. Thus, if we go with the Simontons, we have a 25+ year parts AND labor warranty. PGT is only 1 year labor but a good parts warranty. Simonton also comes with a lifetime glass breakage (due to the laminated glass). Simonton offers dual sliders (I think that's the term, where you can open the slider either way) while PGT's only open one way (the equivalent of single hung). Thus PGT's air infiltration numbers are substantially lower (.02 vs. .13). SHGC are virtually the same at .21 and .22. The SoftLite's came in significantly more expensive (50%). We really liked the Alside installer, but aren't sure of the product, so we eliminated them.

Thank you all so much for your words of wisdom! Diane & Seil, thank you for helping me regain my calm, my mind has been a bit frantic lately, coping with these unusual weather conditions! I definitely did not do any pruning last fall, I felt like I may have even been overly cautious, as I stopped pruning in late August & it didn't even start to get cold here until late November (also unusual), so it's definitely not that. We have just been having many very spring like days smack in the middle of what should be the coldest part of winter! Ann, Thank you so much for chiming in! I very much look forward to your posts & responses as we live so close and often are dealing with the same weather issues. I wish you had a blog or were an author or something so I could just read your gardening advice during all times of the year, concerning topics local to our region. I used to post under another name, Dinglehopp3r (a reference to a movie) but I felt like a name change was in order because it sounded too close to dingleberry (lol), I've received quite a bit of great advice from you in the past as well, so thank you. I googled chickweed as I had never before heard the name of that plant, but sure enough there is already tons of it growing in and around my beds, I had been wondering recently if I should be pulling it up, as I was afraid it may be wicking water and nutrients away from the roses during winter, but I'm glad I hadn't taken the time to do so yet. How handy that this little plentiful "weed" has a use all of its own. Luckily I only have basal breaks on the one Ducher, so I won't have to worry about doing this for many roses, and this particular Ducher grew by leaps and bounds last summer, it seems to be quite happy where it is, so hopefully if it does take some damage, it will continue growing at this pace next year. Buford thank you for chiming in as well, since we are fairly close neighbors as well I value your input on this matter. A very big thanks to you all! I know you all must be chomping at the bit for spring to come just as I am! Hopefully the ups and downs of temperature this spring will be gentle on us and our gardens! Jessica