Over the weekend I was reading how dogs are misbehaving because they have cabin fever. When is this crazy weather going to warm up to normal temperatures? I think 55 degrees is the new 65 degrees. I have this friend in Walterboro that always says, "Don't complain about the weather. There is nothing you can do about it."

I guess I need to take Troy's advice.

Well the cold weather has given us some extra time to put out our spring application of pre-emerge for summer annual weeds. So all procrastinators and people that have been too busy with work, etc. have been given some extra time to get this application of pre-emerge out on their lawn and beds. If your yard is not a pond, this application should save you a lot of weeding in the summer. Get it out as soon as possible.

It is amazing what well timed application of pre-emerge will do for your property. Many of the football fields I work with have a track that goes around the field. Some of the grounds keepers because of budgets and to keep product off the track, just treat the playing field itself and not the sidelines or the area behind the goalposts. The playing surface this time of year is a beautiful brown, dormant, weed free area. Around the edges are all the green winter annual weeds like henbit, annual bluegrass, chickweed and Carolina geranium.

It is amazing how there is a perfect line where the area was treated with a pre-emergent product and where it was not treated.

If you missed your pre-emergent application this fall and are seeing green weeds in your otherwise dormant grass, this is the time to control them. Identify the weed and choose the correct product that will terminate its life. Controlling winter weeds now while they are still in the vegetative stage of their life cycle is way easier and effective than waiting till April when they are seeding and are ready to die off in the heat. Kill them now before they produce thousands of more weed seeds for you to battle next year. A PHD weed doctor estimates one annual bluegrass plant produces 2,500 seeds.

I'm glad I was not his graduate student!

Although this is the time to kill weeds, it is a little early to use high nitrogen weed and feed type products.

Be careful. Many stores and manufactures are pushing weed and feed products now that could be detrimental to your lawn if we get a late cold snap. To get the most bang for your buck you should not use a high nitrogen fertilizer until your yard has turned green on its own.

(Bill Lamson-Scribner can be reached during the week at Possum's Landscape and Pest Control Supply. Possum's has three locations 481 Long Point Rd in Mt. Pleasant (971-9601), 3325 Business Circle in North Charleston (760-2600), or 606 Dupont Rd, in Charleston (766-1511). Bring your questions to a Possum's, fax your questions to 406-2700 or e-mail them to your newspaper's editors. You can also call in your questions to " The Garden Clinic", Saturdays from noon to 1:00, on 1250 WTMA (The Big Talker).