i always do well with aloes but this over winter and spring i had a lot of cacti and succulent casulties. my hoya has done well as have my spider plants-i just leave them alone pretty much-my purple heart, my pothos and phildendrons, dieffs-they've given me as many babies as my spiders! the snake plant is a goodie and my agave has done well, too. i've murdered a beautiful orchid-but my others are doing well-i tried a potted mini rose and it died a long slow death :*( the song of india kicked the bucket within a week and i had this awesome zebra plant that died in a month...i'm doing so-so with my tropical INDOOR hibiscuses...i think they may be mad at me for bringing them inside now that summer is over. i had a really gorgeous moses-in-the-cradle that looks like craaaaap that u'm trying to bring back. and THEN there was the rather unfortunate plant stand crash that made my poor african violet retarded and stunted...but i'm hoping it recovers :) currently i'm trying to save a violet, a mini rose bush, and 2 potted mums from my job. if anyone has any suggestions, let me know! these poor plants need all the help they can get!

I don't have any damage yet, nothing burst at home (but pipe did burst at work in the back hall, fortunately not in my office). I should be able to leave work at a reasonable hour tomorrow (?), I'm thinking a good idea would be to shovel the patio -- not easy work since it's below grade (but definitely a good workout!), but if I could manage to get that cleared then all that melting snow wouldn't melt into the family room, and it would clear the drain to allow that to thaw. DH shoveled a bit of it by the door, but it's best to get it all out of there. Nothing I can do about the sump line. Nothing of value in the crawl - that's flooded before, a PITA but not damaging (floor is dirt covered with plastic sheeting, the water just gets absorbed), can do the bucket line with DH if have to. Greatplains - that sounds awful! Are you going to have to have the roof replaced?

Wow, Anne. I got to check out Dorothy Perkins, a fantastic once-bloomer that occasionally has a tiny bit of rebloom and is zone appropriate 4b and upward. The once-bloomer Turner's Crimson was also very lively. These must be great weepers/standards, I love their photos on HMF. Unfortunately I didn't know at the time that my hybrid tea tree roses I chose were actually zone 7b and they had fragile genes as well. But the great thing was that they bloomed like crazy no matter the condition of their foliage. I think the major difference is that the Burlington tree roses spend the winter in the greenhouse where there is light and warmth and can be carried back & forth. Mine stayed in the dungeon of my garage with no light and they were not carried back and forth if we ever got a warmer break in the weather. Not that this would have helped that much because our winter remained record-breaking cold anyway. But even a little bit of light and fresh air in February through March might have helped the tree roses a lot! Instead I waited until it was "safe" to bring them out. But I also think that non-stop rains are detrimental to my tree roses. The canker always starts right at the bud-union and spreads upwards on the stem or simultaneously down to the bud union and it always occurs when we get slammed with flooding rainstorms. This drives me crazy! If the canker had started on the upper portion of the stems, it would be a piece of cake to solve (you can easily prune and cut). But invading the bud union from the get-go is absolutely maddening! Next year when I restart my tree roses I will definitely carry them in and out of the garage more frequently and I will also start my severe pruning in winter instead of waiting until Spring. Veilchen, I checked David Austin's tree roses but the only ones they had were Austins and not the Old Garden Roses. Maybe one of these days David Austin will carry them perhaps? that would be nice.

Hey Ann, long time no "see". :) I don't know if silver eleagnus (winter blooming eleagnus) is hardy in your zone but it makes a wonderful hedge. I've got it as a secondary hedge behind the leyland cypress so when that goes, there's still some privacy left. The first plants of it that I planted (gulp) 7 years ago are 10' tall now and they were only 1 gallon specimens then. I've rooted countless others since then as it's really easy to do. Stick a trimming in the ground in fall and it's taking off the next spring. A big bonus is that it blooms in late fall and smells divine. My black bamboo is supposed to be a runner, but in 5 years, it's barely grown 4' in width. It has matured enough to reach 15' high and the canes turn black though. It's lovely! A mixture of it and some white striped passalong clumping bamboo is the basis for a future "Japanese are" if I live that long. LOL! Another neighbor has some shorter holly planted boy/girl boy/girl in a close enough configuration that it all looks like it has red berries in winter. Only problem with it has been the invasion of the honeysuckle. Crawling around under a holly trying to get to the root of they honeysuckle is BAD job! Even on a "single point" holly! LOL! The absolute cheapest hedge you can grow is probably cedar. The ones I planted 16 years ago on this property are now 20' tall and totally screen the neighbors on one side. They were just tiny "bird droppings" plants that I harvested from the woods at the back when I planted them. Those are probably lining your property everywhere waiting on you to either mow them down or brushkiller them. The quick hedge would be the silver eleagnus in larger containers and plant the tiny cedars 15' away and then you'll have a 2 layer hedge with enough room to get in and weed out the blackberries and oak seedlings. Or, there's always poke salad. It's hopeless to weed out anyway, so go with the flow and use it's invasive evil properties! :)