Most of the 36 roses in my DA garden are on their own roots ... now that I think of it, I'm pretty sure they all are. Anyway, as of yesterday, there are some pretty stellar performers that aren't talked about much. The star of the show is 'Sir Clough'. It reminds me of 'Carefree Beauty' somewhat, but the foliage is better, the habit is better, and the flowers are a warmer, more pleasing shade of hot pink. Visitors rarely fail to mention that "wonderful dark pink rose in your Austin Garden." 'Comte de Champagne' is beside 'Sir Clough'. It's a soft yellow (similar to Buff Beauty's color), low petal count, cupped flowers, very disease resistant. 'Bow Bells' was planted directly into the garden as a band in October 2011. It is now 5' tall, dense, and super vigorous and healthy. 'Marinette' was planted in 2012, also as a band without nursing it in a pot. Rooted it myself from a cutting. It is doing beautifully. Those are the ones that I can remember off the top of my head. Sometimes, the only way to know that a rose will work for you in your garden under your growing conditions is to just buy it and see what happens. This is how some of my most favorite lucky accidents have happened. Congratulations on your new home!

I was lucky to have been gifted some leaf fat from free-range heritage Berkshire pigs. This was how I did it. 1. Cut fat in small pieces. 2. Freeze fat. 3. Use food processor or grinder to chop fat into very tiny bits. 4. Use a tall pot with a 1/4 cup of water on the bottom and put the chopped up fat in the pot. 5. Use low temperature, (250F) to render. 6. When you are almost done with rendering all the fat out, set oven to 350 F. 7. Use a strainer to strain the fat out from the cracklins. 8. Put the cracklins in the oven to drain off more fat and crispy up. Fat flows better at higher temperature. Or: 9. If you can find a lard press to press out the remaining fat in the cracklins before crisping up at 350F. dcarch

Wayy cool!! I went to an Estate sale yesterday and there were some old 4 pane windows that I would loved to have, but she wanted $25 a piece for them. I'll wait and find them cheaper....great winter project!!!

I don't post very often but I have to stick in my 2 cents worth. I have a Samsung front loader and one time when we had to have a local repair service fix our fridge, I asked the man about front loaders. He said--remember Samsungs use only a couple quarts of water to wash a load. You can't put in near as much detergent as a 40 gallon top loader. Since then we have used only about a couple of tablespoons of Tide He powder per load and it works fine. If something is greasy I use more but still less than the bottom line on the Tide dispenser cup. I believe the sudsing problem in some cases may come from more detergent than the washer pump can handle. It can only pump water not suds.