Hi there Vic, Bear grass-Xerophyllum tenax is actually a lilly. http://www.nwplants.com/business/catalog/perennials.html Also if you check out a few of the native nurseries they may carry it depends on which part of Montana your in.I used to grow it in the nursery and do landscapes in fire prone areas with it. Its not always the easist to get growing however.It really needs to like the space you plant it in or it will just sit and slowly die off.

Windows on Washington, Thanks for your comments. I've had replacement window Reps in my home who offer Lifetime warranties on their windows, Reading through Angie's List in my area there seems to be many complaints from customers who can't get the company who sold them the windows to honor the warranty or they make the process so difficult customers give up. Nor can some customers get the manufacturing company to send a rep to access the problem. More attention is paid to the selling side than honoring the warranty side after they're installed. And the older the replacement window...the harder it seems to get some companies to come out to inspect it or they come out and find a reason to not replace the replacement. I've read quite a bit of that on Angie's List for my area and online even for companies like Marvin which surprised me. The replacement window companies would have fewer complaints if their Lifetime Warranty side of the business was just as eager to honor the warranties as the sales side is to sell the windows. In addition, the online complaints never disappear. So, even if/when a window company cleans up it's act and starts addressing their Lifetime Warranty promise new prospective customers will run into those negative reviews which cast a bad light on some companies. Marvin seems to have a lot of complaints. We love our house. Our goal is to age in place for as possible. We don't want to go through replacing the replacements! Experts say, vinyl does not last like wood and it will need to be replaced 7 to 10 yrs, or if you're very lucky you may get 15 yrs useage on some of them. I know people who've replaced vinyl windows after 10 yrs due to the clouding problem which they experienced on too many windows. Maybe the reputation of replacing the replacements for various reasons is why some vinyl companies offer the Lifetime Warranty. We have spent countless hours doing the pros and cons. Our biggest concern is our huge cottage picture window and 2 matching large companion windows on each side of the pic window in front of the house. The picture window takes up almost an entire wall in our livingroom. The light is wonderful especially in the winter, it's a southern exposure all day with no obstructions. We use to have trees but they're gone so, we can see why they built the these big windows across the front in '63, all 3 had shade from 2 trees. We also want to replace the small single pane wood grid windows on all with a no grid double pane large window that is designed for full sun on the picture and the 2 companion windows with a double hung double pane with grids only on the top window. All the local window companies are only as good as the sales team, installations team and fulfilling the warranties especially, in a timely manner. Failing to do so in any of those 3 areas means I'd be less likely to buy windows from them.

Patty - glad to help! It sounds like you have a great plan for these roses after the move, and I find that the color combination works for me. I'm impressed that you were able to find a pot big enough to wrangle Quadra into for the move, though if it were young it might be less aggressive. Now you can use your new thread for showing us pictures of the roses in their new homes next spring! Bella Rosa - you really think I'd FEED a monster like Quadra (smile)? That's kinda like putting out cookies for King Kong. Admittedly I do throw out some alfalfa and 10-10-10 fertilizer at his base when I feed the other roses once in the spring, but since I only get around to doing that every couple of years he basically fends on his own. World domination doesn't depend on mere human behavior - just plant him and get out of the way. He's easily my biggest and best reblooming climber. Yes, you need to replace yours (smile). Kristen & Bella Rosa - from what I understand it, every rose propagated has a decent chance of having mosaic virus lurking that may pop up now and again, but I really don't find that it has much effect on the rose in the long run. Supposedly it can reduce the vigor of the truly wimpy roses, but the Buck roses are bred for zone 5 and they can shake off the effects pretty easily. Mosaic virus (RMV) is not by any means the immediate death sentence of RRD, so I mostly ignore it if I see symptoms of RMV. By all means it's good to support companies that go through the work to virus index and attempt to clean the scions, but that's only available on a fraction of the roses out there. I don't let it stop me from a rose that I really want. Cynthia

Dirtdigger, I'm sorry to see such damage, but I'd bet that's gopher damage, not voles. We have both voles and gophers. Voles pick on smaller plants here and mostly grass, which they store in their tunnels. Vole tunnels run fairly close to the surface, while gophers go deep, tunnel a long ways and come up to larger roots which they demolish, leaving a rose or other plant with only its top growth. Our cats are really keeping the voles down this year, and in the past, badgers which are all over these desert hills, have decimated the gophers, really reducing their destruction in my garden. Entrances to gopher tunnels have a pile of dirt called frass next to the openings. If you see one of those, you've got gophers. But often the entrances are a long way off. Diane