My goldenrods are budding now. Kinda strange. I would hesitate before cutting buds back because the plant has already expended the energy necessary to prepare flowers and depending on the plant, it may not be able to generate enough energy to make another attempt by fall.

Do deer eat hibiscus plants? In: Flower Gardening Answer Yes deer eat everything. You might try rosemary, lantanna some sages. Deer typically do not like some of the stronger smelling plants. Herbs and traditional natural plants tend to make them move on to other people's tender plants. I hope this helps. Here's another reference on what deer like and don't like... http://boards.thenest.com/boards/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=31393957 Here is one more...a review of a book advising what to avoid for deer... http://www.amazon.com/review/R1EE7DLROK7959 The only thing I have heard that works from people who have deer problems, is Liquid Fence. Here is a Dave's Garden review of the product with pros and cons. http://davesgarden.com/products/gwd/c/3049/ Hope that helps...Ego :-) pm2 Here is a link that might be useful: Hort Society of NY Deer resistant shrubs for zone 5

I live far away from you, in a different climate, but I have experienced much the same as you. I have a rosebed made up of mostly peatmoss bought in bags, and the roses have been suffering from all kinds of anemia and deficiency symptoms. However two years ago I discovered that watering regulrly with a liquid type of fertilizer with all micronutrients made the plants healthy looking and growing well. Last year this was all I gave them. The type I used was very much the same as the non-organic version of Miracle-Gro. A few times I also watered in a weak solution of salpeter [Ca(NO3)2], alcaline nitrogen. This made the old plants grow and flower like never before, and I thought I had found a great solution for this bed. No other type of compost, or solid organic or non-organic fertilizer did much for this bed. This year however all the roses given this treatment are hardly alive, a couple of them completely dead. Non of the other roses were I only use solid organic fertilizer suffered any winterdamage to speak of, and I'm pretty shore this treatment made them very suseptable to frost damage. I though that giving a low nitrogen fertilizer from mid July through August would be enough to harden them off for the winter, but appearantly not. These roses as mentioned are this year either dead, and all very slow to start growing, and they hardly have any leaves or buds compared to healthy roses. Symptoms of iron or nitorgen deficiency and very small leaves. I swear, growing roses organically in real soil makes them more winter hardy. Even though you didn't use water soluble fertilzers like I did, your rose might have suffered similar winter damage to cane and roots. Major mistake on my part, but I suppose this can happen after an extra hard winter too.

"Well my son has become picky now..so it must be a boy thing." It totally could be a boy thing! I think for SS some of it is just getting used to eating a certain way w/BM and then having to switch over to our menu. After having been with BM for 10 of the last 14 days, he wasn't adjusted to our food yet. He's in camp this week and the lunch I packed for him was NOT a hit b/c he's used to BM or grandma's lunches. When he came home on Wed, his trash was all in his lunchbox, and some of the food was leftover---I was shocked to see the lunch. A ham sandwich, which is fine, and he had eaten most of it. Then a Hi-C drink, which isn't great since it's just pure sugar. A fruit roll-up wrapper. Half-eaten bag of king-sized M & Ms. And a pop-tart wrapper. ????? So the lunch I packed---and this is very typical what the kids eat at our house for lunch--I packed him a PB&J on whole wheat bread. Fresh blueberries. Small stack of low-fat Pringles. Apple & Eve 100% juice box. And two fig newtons. I just try to keep things balanced---I am totally fine w/the kids having "junk food" so long as it's in moderation. I don't mind them having a small serving of chips or cookies w/lunch, esp. when it's a packed lunch for camp, but I make sure that there is ALWAYS a fruit w/it, and that the treats I pack aren't *too* bad! Anyway, SS didn't eat a bite of the sandwich b/c he doesn't like wheat bread, he wanted white, which is what BM buys. But he DOES eat wheat over here all the time, we never buy white---I guess he had just grown accustomed to BM's food. He didn't eat the blueberries and didn't eat the fig newtons either. So I guess he had Pringles for lunch yesterday. oh well. He will re-adjust---haha, just in time to go back to BM's, and then we will start all over again when he gets back!