Thanks Laurie. The white trees are "Pearl Meidland" high standard (tree)roses. They can remain in our front garden as the deer cannot quite reach them, so that is a good thing! :) I had a lot of roses in that front garden, but waste of time because of the deer. Though I did keep them at bay for a long time by egg spraying the roses, but it was a lot of work every 5/6 days and I finally gave up. We now have a deer fence around the back, so hopefully this next year, my roses will start to be healthy again. Pauline - Vancouver Island

Mia, You've already seen than your plastic panels offer virtually no heat retention and glass wouldn't give you any more than they do I don't think. If you go to a greenhouse supply store (one place to start online would be to google and find the greenhouse megastore) you can find the kind of bubble-wrap insulation manufactured for use as insulation in greenhouses, or go to the Greenhouse forum here at GW and you'll find many discussions there. Many of the folks there use a specific brand of swimming pool cover like John described, but I can't remember the brand they buy. So far this autumn, my greenhouse, which is only covered with 6 mm greenhouse plastic and Aluminet shadecloth, has stayed barely above freezing, but I consider that a victory because for the last 4 nights our overnight lows at our house have reached 28, 28, 26, and 36. Sadly, our forecast was for 33, 34, 36 and 44. lol With the forecasted temperatures, I didn't expect the greenhouse plants to freeze but with the actual temperatures I did. Last year, my greenhouse's overnight temperatures generally went exactly as low as the outdoor temperatures, but I didn't have the Aluminet shadecloth on the greenhouse at that point either. This year the greenhouse's overnight low temperatures are just a tiny bit higher than the outside air temps so far, and I give partial credit for that to the 18 molasses cattle feed tubs in the greenhouse that are filled with water. I put them in there hoping they would serve as solar heat collectors during the day and then would give the greenhouse a little warmer at night. So far, it seems like that is working. However, I am not fooled into thinking they will keep it warm for long. Right now, the daytime temperatures are high enough that if I close the greenhouse vents and doors around 4 p.m. on a warm, sunny day, then the heat inside can built up to about 85-90 degrees before the sun begins to set. If I closed the doors and vents earlier, it likely would get hotter, but I can't let the lettuce get too hot or it will bolt. Between the built-up heat, the warmish water in the molasses feed tubs, and the aluminet shade cloth, the greenhouse has stayed just warm enough to keep the plants in there from freezing at night. The plants mostly are tomato plants, peppers and herbs in containers and they are fine as long as the air inside the greenhouse stays above freezing. I don't have anything tropical in there that prefers warmer nighttime temperatures. I do have lettuce and cool-season greens that tolerate colder temperatures. If the tomatoes and peppers produce another week or two or three, I'll be happy. They would have frozen last week if they weren't in the greenhouse. My tropicals are either on the patio during the day and the garage at night, or in the house. I don't think it would be cost-effective to heat a greenhouse the size of mine throughout the winter. We built it as a season extender, expecting it would help us keep some things going a little later in fall and get some things growing a little earlier in spring. If I had intended to overwinter plants in it all winter, I would have used twinwall 6-mm or 8-mm poly panels. You can find them at most greenhouse supply stores or at Farm-Tek, and I still would have known I'd need a heater to overwinter plants in there. From the minute we finished building the greenhouse (in fact, before we even finished it), Tim and I both found ourselves describing things we'd do differently next time. One of the main purposes of this simple, hoophouse-style greenhouse was to learn from it so that when we build our "real" and larger greenhouse, we'll know more about what we want and how to achieve that objective. From that standpoint, I know that what I want in the next greenhouse is (a) good walls that hold heat in as well as possible, and (b) a heating system that is cost effective. Because we have a large woodland on our acreage, I think we'll likely go with a wood-burning greenhouse heater. Dawn

Brian my buddy!! If I was there I would give you a big ole Christmas hug! Did I ever tell you how much you mean to me, my mother and many others? You do and I appreciate all you do here, your friendship and your kindness...You are the perfect example of the reason I keep coming back and what makes coming here enjoyable..I am so glad you never left and continue to share your prize winning trees and fruit. Please give Sugar a hug for me and much love from us here at my household. By the way, what great bunch looking of fruit! Are they worth getting even for me who can not eat acidic fruits? Are they sweet without the acidic content? I can actually eat Kishu maderines without any problems at all. By the way, it's -3 today on my thermometer and it's only going to get colder. Thank GOD for my thermometer alert that lets me know once the temps drop down to a certain temp down there remotely on my cell phone. I got beeped this a.m so I had to turn the second space heater on. It dropped to 50 degrees this morning in there. Hugs buddy Mike

Nancy, I expect it will take a while for the house to feel normal again. We had gotten used to the screeching of the tropical birds, the sounds of a lot more feet going up and down the staircase, etc. Yesterday I came into the living room and automatically turned the TV on to Nickelodeon just out of habit because I'm so used to having it on for the kids to watch the cartoons. It was on for a minute or two before I realized there were no children here and switched it to The Weather Channel to see what was going on weatherwise. lol. We had a lot of rain considering it rarely rained hard but was mostly just a steady light to moderate rain that came in waves as the storm rotated around the low pressure center. We're back to being a colossal mud pit again, but I have high hopes that maybe it will dry up fairly quickly in the drier, warmer weather we're expected to have for the next few days. I believe rain and the chance of severe weather return mid-week. Centaureas in general don't like our clay, especially when it is wet, so I don't grow them much. I think I've grown Sweet Sultan only once, and it was in a very wet and cold Spring and didn't do well here. Mullein does fine but tends to be invasive when happy so, believe it or not, I avoid it because I do not want for every single plant in my garden to be an invasive one, and I have too many of those types already. I have no issues with tropical milkweeds and think it mostly is just a pawn in some sort of power struggle between different factions in the gardening-for-monarchs segment of the gardening world. When I have grown it, the monarchs seem to ignore it for the most part---perhaps because we have fields and fields around us with wall-to-wall (or maybe I should say fence-to-fence) native milkweeds in season. The monarchs always seem to prefer the natives, so those are the ones I try to grow for them. I do love the colors of the tropical milkweeds as they seem to blend nicely with a lot of the hot-colored flowers we have in bloom in our garden in summer, including Pride of Barbados (Caesalpinia pulcherrima), Cape Honeysuckle (Tecoma capensis), Texas lantana (Lantana horrida, a name that always makes me laugh), miscellaneous other forms of lantana, and Yellow Bells (Tecoma stans). Because of our heat, our summer plants tend towards flowers in hot summer colors of yellow, orange, red, coral, etc. I might feel differently about tropical milkweed if I lived in a coastal area where it undoubtedly is overplanted and probably in bloom far too late in the season. I can understand why it probably should be cut back near the end of their migratory period so the monarchs will keep on heading towards their overwintering grounds in Mexico. If disease builds up on it, then obviously that is an issue we don't see as much with the native milkweeds that are not as long-lasting each season. Jennifer, Oh those cages and sheets sound like a mess! I would imagine the trees would have been fine uncovered. Our cats finally have calmed down and stopped nibbling plants so much, but to some extent, it always has been a problem. It is just as they get older, the prefer sleeping in the sunroom to devouring my plants. When they are outdoors it is not such a big deal, maybe because there's a large area to roam and they don't focus overly much on the garden, other than coming in there meowing to find me when they need to be petted or to have their tummy rubbed or whatever. After they get a little loving attention, they run off to play again. It might help that we grow catnip, catmint and catgrass in the garden for them. I don't know. One thing they've never outgrown is nipping the bean sprouts and eating them, so when beans are sprouting I try to keep the cats away from them until they've leafed out a bit more and no longer are so appealing as cat snacks. Our chickens lack the sense to come in out of the rain too. We combat that somewhat by only opening their door to go out into their chicken run instead of letting them free-range. They'll get bored if they aren't free-ranging and often decide to just go back into the coop after a while, thereby staying dry more of the time. Yesterday while we were covering up plants, the winds rose into the 40s and the trees were waving and the wind was sort of roaring and it scared the rooster. He started having a big fit...the sort of loud screaming he'll do when there's a coyote, a hawk or some other perceived danger. We couldn't find any reason for his distress, other than the loud wind, so Tim just herded the chickens into their coop and closed the door leading out to the chicken run so they would feel safe and sound. It was only a couple of hours earlier than they usually would put themselves up, and it probably was good for them to get inside out of the moisture. I think the most frustrating thing yesterday was that we are so used to being outdoors and being busy on the weekends. It was really hard to stay indoors. We rarely have days like that where it literally rains all day, and I'm glad. The weather news is just so dismal this morning. The Franklin TX tornado and the others that hit about 100 miles from Franklin killed several people and the one near Alto tore up the Caddoan Mounds museum there during some sort of festival. Then there were more tornadoes last night and this morning, all of them destructive and some of them deadly. I hate severe thunderstorm and tornado season. It doesn't even take a tornado to do massive damage---large hail stones and strong winds do a lot of damage too. The propensity for severe weather makes April and May less enjoyable, weather-wise, than they otherwise would be. Last night's weather was odd. We were down to 40 degrees by around 9 p.m. with an overnight forecast low of 39. Then, before midnight the temperatures begin rising again and didn't drop again, so the time we spent covering plants was in essence wasted time. Oh well, that probably was it for this year and I'm glad. We just as easily could have gone colder than forecast, so it probably always is better to be safe than sorry. Last night a cardinal was perched on a little ledge up underneath the roof of the back porch when the dogs went outdoors one last time before bedtime. Poor thing. I think it was just trying to stay warm and dry. I imagine all the songbirds would like for the cold to back off a bit too. It just seems so bizarre (yet it happens every Spring) to have highs in the upper 80s or lower 90s and lows in the 30s all in the same week. Maybe the new week's weather will be kinder, but I do see possible severe weather in our forecast for mid-week so maybe it won't be. Dawn