Keeping carpet clean is tough. I have found guests subtly protest against taking their shoes off.. New guests or clients are happy to take their shoes off (I'm a photographer so clients come to my home for meetings) but friends can be rude 'oh what? are you serious? you want my shoes off?' that annoys me I have 2 cats. Ugh! Pet stains = Ugh! I am a germofobe.. Well I'll kiss my kitties.. otherwise if I was THAT much a germafobe I wouldn't have cats.. but one of them has a thyroid disorder and sometimes the poor little guy vomits. My mistake has been spending a lot of money testing different carpet cleaning products, and a lot of the time sponging the carpet clean with such products would create a bigger mess or spread the stain! Ikea sell $15 metre square colorful rugs. I bought 6.. black, red, pink, yellow, green, blue when they are laid next to eachother it looks like one big rug, and this has helped a lot. Its so easy to wash one rug when a cat pukes, than it is to wash the actual carpet I have discovered that Vinegar is a bit of a miracle washer! If I clean the cat vomit with vinegar I get better results than ANY product from the shelves. I recently didn't realise that a lemon fell from my shopping bag behind a polyester ikea crate full of clothes, and the lemon had developed that dusty black mould and the mould dropped to the carpet It vaccumed up easily but I washed that part of the carpet by hand with cloudy ammonia. I read online that ammonia kills germs like mould. I seem to have made a big water stain though which I'm annoyed about I paid a local carpet cleaner guy $100 which was a bargain for a 2 room clean of a 1 bedroom apartment. The people I hired last year charged me $140 as they wanted extra money to come up one flight of stairs. This man was lovely. Even though I vac twice a week and mop almost daily, his industrial machine got up 2 large handfuls of cat hair!!! He said the minute I told him I had pets over the phone, he brought his special equipment. Unfortunately I messed up the carpet where I used the cloudy ammonia. There's just some darker markings like water staining, so I'm trying the watered down laundry soap routine this time

Periodontal disease is not contagious at least as far as anyone knows. That must have been an old wives tale at the time. They don't really know what causes it entirely though excellent oral hygiene (including flossing daily) and thorough dental cleanings supposedly prevent it. However I think there are hereditary factors and perhaps others too that are unknown. I've had excellent oral hygiene since I was a teenager and thorough cleanings and I still have recession and bone loss. Both my parents and my brother had advanced perio at a pretty young age so I think there's a hereditary factor. There is a condition known as "trench mouth" named such because soldiers in the trenches got it. It's a very acute form of gum disease and some thought that it can spread among people but you also need to have all the other factors including poor oral hygiene, stress, rundown, etc. It's also known as ANUG (acute necrotizing ulcerative gingivitis).

Another question for hc mcdole. Something strange is going on with one of my cuttings. The leaf died, but the cut end is still growing roots like crazy... And now small green things that definitely look like leaves are growing out of the cut end... UNDER WATER. I am so confused. On all the other cuttings, new growth sprouted from the petiole. Tried to get photos from a few different angles to show you. I'm not really sure what to do with it. Cut the original dead leaf off and bury the roots, leaves and all, in some soil? It seems odd to bury leaves but you can see from the way it's growing that I don't think its possible to bury the roots without burying the leaves. Or should I wait till a rhizome forms under water before touching it? Has this ever happened to you?

What are you fertilizing with? How moist is the soil staying? Are you using a thick mulch to keep the soil cool and moist? Tree roots in the area robbing water from the roses? I was asking about the age of the plants because young roses don't produce as much as established ones. 5-10 years is plenty long for establishing. If moist enough, try small amounts of quick pure high N (bloodmeal, urea, Miracle-Gro Lawn Food) when the foliage starts looking bleh. Adjust the amount to get the result if needed. High N will stimulate new foliage rather quickly. If it doesn't, you might think about digging up the worst performer and checking for crown/root gall, tree roots, the condition of the root system, the condition/odor of the soil that was around the root system, etc, etc.