What a mess the rain made this past week. Our nice coating of snow is gone and what are we left with but mud. Now many of you might be glad to see the snow go, but as I have mentioned many times before it makes a great insulator for your plant roots. With the warm-up and the rain now the surface roots, which are your feeder roots, that were frozen are now thawed again and soon they will be frozen again.

If this happens too many times in the fall or the spring these roots will die causing major damage to your plants if not killing them altogether. So remember this little warm-up when you wonder why your plants died over the course of the winter.

If you had previously wrapped your plants with burlap and put leaves or mulch around the base, your plants are protected from much of this cat and mouse game that the weather is playing right now. When it gets cold, your plants want it to stay cold until spring, unfortunately that rarely happens.

And now we have the mud as the ground wasn't frozen that deep because of our nice snow coat that we had, so now with the copious amounts of rain we had, everything has turned quite soggy.

My yard is like a swamp and even the dogs running across it leaves huge depressions, not to mention all the deer that run through every night. Construction sites, like Legoland, are battling mud as well. We have had a number of construction workers in for new waterproof boots this past week as everywhere you walk you sink into three to four inches of mud.

And it is not looking good for the next couple of weeks either. Daytime temperatures getting above freezing and nighttime temperatures going below. It is a heck of a time to try to mulch your plants now, but if you can do it, it will help them out. Until it gets cold for good there is not much else you can do. Hopefully we will get at least a little snow, so that we can have a White Christmas.

Without having the proper amount of snow on your roof, it makes it difficult for Santa's sleigh. The rough grit from the shingles wear on the runners of the sled and Santa will definitely need to make repairs on Christmas Day and Santa of all people should be afforded a Merry Christmas without having to work.

So let's get outside on December 21st, the winter solstice, and do a snow dance so that we can have a White Christmas and your plants can have a nice blanket for winter.