Yippeee! December. I can finally do my pruning. I've been ready to do this for at least a month and was holding off until December. Nothing's dormant here, of course, but some of my roses enjoy being lopped down to almost nothing in December. By March they'll be big again.

The thumbnail photo is Winter Sunset, a Buck shrub.

Beautiful rose Zuzu!

Half of the roses in my front garden have been pruned. The roses have already gone dormant here, thanks to the weeks of cold weather due to the polar vortex.

In the past, I would not trim the roses until late February. I find I like the late fall/winter pruning better. The plants take off the following spring, and seem to bloom sooner.

Pruning won't happen for me for about 4 more months. Everything's dead. But I did "prune" (chop down) my Ring of Fire because it was hampering my Christmas lights and my Vineyard Song was draping into the walkway, so chopped that one down too.

Just want to say hello, thinking of you and happy holidays.

Vicki - At least you're getting the snow!! We're down by 8" .. we should have gotten at least a foot by now and all we've gotten has been 4" this season...

What a peaceful and beautiful scene, Vicky.

Thanks Zuzu.

Our snow all melted and we've been getting some mild weather. At least mild for us....in the low 30's thru 40's for the next 10 days. I could be taking advantage of the nicer weather is I didn't have the gawd awful flu right now.

Sorry about your flu, Vicky.

Our weather is warmer than usual too. I still haven't had to bring my tropical plants inside. The temperatures have never dipped below 40, even at night. I have such high hopes for some of my plants that usually die down to the ground and have to start all over again in spring. It has been years since I've seen my Tibouchina and Podranea in bloom because the frost usually hits them just as they've recovered enough from the previous winter to start producing buds. I'm hoping for no frost at all this year.

Warm here too, and dry dry dry dry dry. By this time of year, we should have seen at least a foot of snow. We've gotten a palsy 4" and that's it. Hoping for a nice storm this weekend! They're predicting 5-8" on Sunday & about an inch on Monday.. I so hope so!!! We need it 'cuz if it doesn't snow, I'm gonna have to water and I'm tired of watering. Not to mention the snow would make my lights all purdy...

OMG, just looked at the weather.. Zuzu, looks like you & Sue & Mike & Lyn are gonna float away! Talk about one heck of a storm battering California right now!!! Bring on the rain!!

No problems here, other than falling branches. Sue's power has been out all day, but I haven't had that problem.

Thank you for your concern, Toni ...

I am good, but others may have major problems. My big project for the summer was to rearrange the boulders down in the street bed and haul in car loads of cobbles to line the dry creek bed I am making that drains down into the storm drain so that water would not back up and the storm drain would not be clogged by debris. It worked !

We have gotten almost a foot of rainfall in the last couple of months and three inches last night. Since my property is on a mini-watershed, all of the water peculated down to the deeper levels to the underground streams that eventually feed into the Trinity River. Even with all of the rain last night, there is not one puddle on my property.

They have had emergency crews out clearing roads of fallen limbs and moving boulders that may not stay put and sand bagging around homes down in the flood plain below me.

We lost power until about noon today and I didn't have internet connection until about 5pm.

There's more rain coming.

Smiles,
Lyn

My power has been out since 4:30 AM, 14 hrs now. Lots of local roads flooded. I am at my moms toasty home 5 min. away. I moved her up her last Friday, just in time!

Good for you, Sue !

Smiles,
Lyn

Finally, after almost 16 hrs, when I called my house, it rang! Went home at 8:30, my puppers were happy to see me!

The California rain finally reached us here in Kansas! It collided with warmth from the gulf, and we had quite a storm Sunday night. We were driving home from Arkansas and got caught up in a blinding downpour. One of my rain gauges says 2" of new rain, and the other one blew over in the storm, so I'm going to assume the 2" is correct. Our route home was through Missouri, so we missed the huge hail in Oklahoma.
Three of my new roses are still sitting outside in pots, and they all look like they survived the cold spell. The newer evergreens have suffered the most from the sudden extreme cold. The past week was so nice that we were able to paint the eves of the house! Usually it's too windy to climb a tall ladder here. I really wanted to hang some Christmas lights while I was up there, but we didn't get that far. We did build a giant fake tree out of an old antenna with a flower basket on the top and 24 strings of blue lights hanging off it. It looks beautiful even though it is made of junk!
Tomorrow we're installing a wood burning stove insert in the fireplace. This house has 4 fireplaces, and we don't use any of them. We decided to get an efficient woodburner because it's only a matter of time before we have an extended power outage. We've been lucky so far. We need a big whole-house generator as backup.
Friday I'm getting knee surgery so the pressure is on to finish all my tasks! I have bulbs to plant, a tile shower to finish, and I want to decorate this year. ALL the kids are coming home! Yay!!! With step and step-step and their 2 spouses, that's a total of 8 20-somethings. The California daughter just might be bringing wine and roses!
After spending 5 months alone this year, it's going to be quite a change. Also, my husband and I decided to base our business here so he's not gone for months at a time. That's a wonderful change for me. Happy dance.

Cindi - on the rain, wish we'd gotten that, but it pretty much just blew over us & pounded the eastern plains into KS/NE. But at least you got something!! And that's awesome that you're gonna go from a ghosttown to NYC! It's gonna feel like you're gonna need a hotel ballroom, it sounds like! And knee surgery on top of everything else.. wow!

Never thought I'd say this but I am getting a wee bit tired of all this rain, can't get anything done in the garden.

I don't mind it. All this time inside is letting me take care of other things I always ignore. My kitchen is actually spotless today, for instance, and that's a rare sight.

That's true, we do need that cleaning time.