Well, I can't help much with pansies. I seem to have terrible luck with them. As for fall, being in New England, the thought of fall conjures up red barns (hey, your house will be perfect for this, lol!) hay bales, red/orange/yellow leaves, pumpkins and other decorative gourds, mums, and asters. I guess it is common, but I do love mums in the fall. (I actually planted some hardy ones last spring and they are doing well, other than the fact that despite cutting them back they seem to set buds on a daily basis, and I don't think I will be able to hold them off till fall. I may have to buy some and stick them in in October!) I love the displays that have something like a hay bale on the ground, with some old corn stalks standing next to it, planted nearby with mums/asters, with a pumpkin or two or some gourds thrown in the mix. Sometimes a scarecrow looks nice - a real, home-made one, not one of the cutesy ones you buy at craft stores. Nothing necessarily wrong with those, I just prefer the real ones. Again, being in a different zone, these suggestions may be a bit off, but here are some ideas: mums, asters, pansies, fall-blooming crocus and colchiums, kale, japanese anemones, monkshood, montauk daisy, tricyrtis, and ornamental grasses. Being a bit warmer than I am, perhaps solidago, helenium, and helianthus will last a bit longer for you. I find that many websites will give ideas for fall flowers, but to me, those always seem to be late summer bloomers, and not for fall. Even of the ones I listed above, the only ones that will really last well into fall here are the mums, asters, pansies, kale, crocus and of course, grasses. Donna, I can't believe you can't grow the Blue Knoll down south! Are you sure? I wonder if you were to keep it in some shade until fall....? Such a pretty flower, it seems too sad that you can't grow it! The fall-blooming crocus look pretty much like the spring bloomers. I've never had a problem with dying foliage, but then again I have almost 50 oak trees, so I have a LOT of leaves, which probably hides it, lol. To be honest, I don't remember it hanging around at all - most likely the cold weather does it in quickly and it gets raked up with the leaves. Perhaps farther south it is an issue, but I would think really no worse than spring bulb foliage, no? I will say that one slight problem I have with the fall crocus is the color. I tend to prefer the oranges, reds/burgundies, and yellows in fall, with perhaps some purples thrown in. So I usually buy the purple crocus. I always have a stand of cosmos in my garden, and they always, without fail, come into full spectacular glory in the fall - just when the pinks seem to clash (IMO) with the changing leaves. I have to go stand right in front of them to look at them and admire them, lol - from a distance I see too many orange leaves in the background and it bothers me! :) Dee Here is a link that might be useful: fall crocus pictures

Moss phlox, creeping phlox, Phlox Subulata... Take your husband's advice and let it regenerate on its own - it does. Sometimes winter damage just appears in spots. I've had it for years and never bother to trim out any "bad" spots and it comes back good as new. I don't like cutting mine back or cleaning it up in the summer months since I'll often get a second bloom (albeit sparse) in the fall.

I am in a warmer part of Z6 here in Winchester, VA. I am admittedly in a very windy place. Anyway, My Sequoiadendron, which has been in the ground for 3 years was seriously browned this last winter. I think it will survive--many small branchlets are dead, but the rest of the tree still looks sick. Time will tell. Anyway, the coldest it got here was about plus 5 f. But I have noticed a number of other kinds of plants/trees were badly affected. I am wondering if it was because it was so warm through mid-January, and then after that just a tad colder than normal with some bad winds. Among other trees affected are the loblolly pines. Some medium and larger sized trees really look bad, and some will die. This is the northern extreme limit for these trees here (a bit north of their natural range), but I am surprized they got hit so hard. --Spruce

I'm watching TWC and it is almost painful to watch when you think about the people and animals in the path of these horrific storms. This storm that has run from Edmond to Arcadia to Luther to Fallis just won't stop---it is producing either one long-track tornado or many sort-track ones.I am watching the TV and Chris is watching it on his laptop on TVN where two chasers are live streaming from opposite sides of the storm. Now, peas.... When I soak, I just soak a couple of hours or maybe overnight if I am absent-minded and leave them in the water too long. Then, I roll them around in innoculant, wrap them in paper towels (some years) and wait for them to sprout OR I take them from the innoculant and plant them in 3 oz. bathroom sized cups filled with soil-less mix. I keep the cups inside in average room temperatures and the peas sprout in just a few days. I plant the cups in the ground as soon as a leaf or two appears. If I am going from sprouted peas to the ground, as soon as the little sprout appears coming out of the pea, I put them in the ground. If the ground is wet, I dust them with sulphur as I put them in the ground, although I have wondered if that counteracts the innoculant. So, if you held them inside for days, particularly in the friedge, I suspect that the problem. If you left them in the water to sprout, they likely absorbed too much water and rotted. It only takes 2 or 3 hours for them to absorb enough water to induce sprouting. Putting them in the fridge might not have hurt them had they not been in the water for a while. The reason we sprout indoors is that when the ground is cold and wet in mid-winter and early spring, they rot. If your climate is similar enough to Farmerdill's that you think a December planting would work for you, then why not try it? Is he the same zone as you? Since he is in Georgia,I guess I always have assumed he is zone 8. I have planted flowering sweet peas in late fall or early winter for spring bloom here in zone 7b.. I think that it would be harder here with sugar snaps because we tend to drop into the single digits every winter (sometimes as low as 0 or 1, but this winter I think only to 8 or 9 degrees), and temperatures that low might kill the plants. I might try it anyway just to see what happens. Very small plants will tolerate more cold than taller ones. Even when peas freeze back to the ground, they often resprout, but if they freeze repeatedly it can sap their strength. You have nothing to lose by trying it. If they freeze back, you can just plant a spring crop as always. We go from too cold to too hot here for peas in the blink of an eye. I just pulled my sugar snap pea plants but we had harvested for 3 or 4 weeks and, while I didn't weigh and keep track of the harvest, I know I harvested at least 15-17 gallons of sugar snaps. I'm still working on processing the excess since the last picking a couple of days ago was a smidgen under 10 gallons. I actually have about 15 plants I left in the ground because they had a lot of half-mature ones and I wanted to let them grow a couple more days. At this point, I am pretty sick of sugar snap peas and have begun the harvest of cauliflower.