They might....I got anxious last year and started too early and lost a whole container and a few in several other zinnia containers. I won't be starting them this year until about April 30th. Vera

As a rule of thumb, roses are dormant when they have lost all their leaves. This rarely ever happens in the deep south, so we prune sometime during the winter, most commonly in February. I have pruned as early as mid December and as late as late February and it did no harm that I could ever see. Around here, the wisdom is to prune around Valentine's Day. It helps to understand how roses grow. If this is too elementary for you, please forgive me. I'm just trying to be thorough and clear. First, the branches, properly called canes, have joints (nodes) all along them. If you look carefully, you will see slightly swollen to quite prominent bumps (buds) emerging from those nodes. (They tend to be red colored on many of my bushes.) Notice that the bumps occur on all different sides of the branches. These buds are potential branches. They will grow straight out of that bump and keep growing in that same direction. You want to keep the center of your bush somewhat open and free of congested canes. This ensures good air circulation that minimizes disease, and allows sunlight to reach all parts of the plant for good flower production. So, you want to always prune a branch just above (about 1/4 inch) a bud that is facing away from the center of the plant. If there are buds below it that face into the center, you can rub them off with your finger. When you cut, it's a good idea to make an angled cut, so that rainwater will run away from the bud you are encouraging, rather than right onto it. The bottom of the angle should be about 1/4 inch above the bud. If your plant has disease (or even if you are suspicious), it's a good idea to wipe your pruning shears with alcohol or a disinfecting wipe after each and every cut. That way, you won't spread disease to healthy canes. When you cut a healthy rose cane, the cross section of the cut will have 3 layers: the large center is white and clean looking, then it's surrounded by a thin green layer, and then the outer skin ("bark" so to speak). If that center wood is black or brown, the wood is bad. Cut that branch back to healthy wood or remove it entirely. Big, fat healthy canes will produce more blooms and more canes of their kind. Skinny, wimpy canes will produce few, if any, blooms, and more of their kind too. Keep the fatties, remove the skinnies. (Roses, not people. :) So, with these things in mind, here's how to prune shrub roses: 1. Remove all dead branches. If the wood is grey and brittle, it's dead. Cut it off at its beginning point. If the beginning point is dead too, cut that branch back to its source, or to alive wood above an outward facing bud. 2. Remove all skinny, spindly wimpy branches. If they grow off big canes, remove the skinny, keep the fattie. 3. If you see branches that are crossing and rubbing against each other, remove the skinnier one, and keep the fatter one. 4. Clear out the center of the plant so there is plenty of room between the canes you are keeping.(I like to keep a ring of fat canes that are spaced evenly about 4 to 6 inches apart around the center of the plant.) 5. Now, shorten the big healthy canes that are left, again, cutting above an outward facing bud. Typically, you would remove from 1/3 to 1/2 the height of the canes. When I'm finished, I like all the remaining canes to be fairly close to the same height. I have found that alot of antique roses that have been lazy bloomers respond well to really hard pruning. In that case, you can count up from the base of the cane 3 to 5 buds and cut above that point. (Use this hard cutting back with caution on hybrid teas. You don't want to ever cut below the graft, or you'll lose the beautiful flowers you paid for. Leave these canes longer.) cottage girl is right. This is not a life or death thing. Roses are really just weeds that have really pretty flowers. If you cut too hard, or perhaps not perfectly, they will recover quickly and you'll have another chance in short order. You can even do some corrective pruning, following these guidelines, during the season. Just use a lighter hand.

I've done two loads of laundry in the new Cabrio HE top-loader. I don't think I have anything negative to say about how the clothes cleaned. I did use more detergent than this forum says one should. Using Tide HE, I filled to the "1" mark. It was late, I was tired and well, it kinda looked like a 1 tbls measure (g) It's not. It's at least 2x that if not more. The first load felt a little "thick" after drying. Towels weren't "crunchy" tho. I may not have even noticed it if I wasn't looking for a difference. The work clothes load (jeans and dark tees) felt ok. I'm going to reduce it to 1 tbls and hope that the over powering scent is less as well. Didn't add Oxy or vinegar to either load. Couldn't remember which dispenser the vinegar went in and had already loaded the clothes when I read that the oxy powder would have to go in the bottom of the washer BEFORE the clothes if using liquid soap. The vinegar goes in the fabric softener dispenser, right? 1/2 cup? I don't use liquid fs or the sheets. I don't care for the feeling of "limp" clothes and I know it creates a build up, not to mention towels aren't as absorbent. All my clothes washing life, I've washed towels, washcloths, underwear, socks together. I did it with this first load too, on the normal cycle, warm/cold, high spin. I saw no twisting issues. Can I/should I not combine these articles for washing in this washer? It would result in having to do more loads if I have to separate the towels. That's more time, water and energy. I washed the work clothes in hot/cold, heavy duty, high spin. I normally do NOT wash work clothes on heavy duty, just longer on the normal cycle and they come clean. What I do NOT like...I do NOT Like the locking lid! WHY in the world does a top loader HAVE to lock?? I know, I can pause it and look inside but I *need* to see it in action (lol) Really, I do! I remember seeing a YouTube video about how to disable the auto-lock feature on this machine....hummmmmmmm Can you REALLY see thru the clear lid? Seems like water and steam would prevent being able to clearly see the action. I have both water taps wide open. With the first load, I never felt warm water (I checked SEVERAL times). It was mildly cool. With the heavy duty load, the hot water didn't kick in till the "wash" cycle. The soak cycle was, again, mildly cool (what our cold water is here in Texas this time of year). The washer it's self is level (checked with a level) and doesn't move AT all when manually rocked back and forth, but, during the high speed spins, it vibrates pretty bad. It's not walking but it definitely jitters around and makes me worry about the integrity of the machine after so much of that kind of vibration. Yes, the clothes were distributed evenly. lulundave, can you "add" water to a cycle if you feel it needs more or just reset it to high, med, or low levels? You said it (Cabrio with agitator) has "just a few more bells and whistles". What does it have that the HE doesn't? Also, it doesn't appear to be an Energy Star machine :( Are HEs the only Energy Star rated washing machines? Thanks for ALL the comments and help. I truly appreciate the time everyone took to reply :) Monica

There's a degree of truth in what your husband says about turning it over and freezing the bugs, but he's got it a little convoluted. In turning things over, you're burying the plant debris. It's the plant debris the bugs, insect and pathogens, winter on and in/around, and turning it under creates an environment that the bugs don't find hospitable. He's got the idea, just missed on how it's effective. I'll let you decide how to tell him. When I was going through high school, locally no-till farming (on a large scale) was becoming popular. There was a period of time when we could buy large moldboard plows for less than the price of scrap iron...sometimes, you'd buy them just for the hydraulics and scrap the rest. Long way of saying, twenty years later, people started parking the no-till equipment and pulling the moldboards back out...especially those who in our area grew beans and beets. The reason? disease management, mostly. Nothing's so new it wasn't old some time ago, and ideas go in and out of favor. I grew up on a farm that used alfalfa as part of the rotation. When it was time to put the next crop in, we just plowed it. Granted, grasses are different than alfalfa, but all you're looking for is enough of a head start to get to the end of the year without feeling like you'd be better off slinking off into the corner. Between some plowing when you feel it's needed, and some extra thick mulching, you should be able to get things to where you feel you can manage them. How do you that? everyone has a different answer, and everyone agrees that their answer is the best, who cares what others say.