Sorry Lainie - all undeclared hitch-hikers get gassed in Customs. They won't let certain pests onto foreign shores - bad luck! :) Gonz - Andrew showed a range of photographic techniques. He was swayed by his artistic alter-ego, Penelope Boozer-Pitt, to steer clear of black backgrounds, as P.B-P. thought them boring. So he tried a light flat grey background (yuck!), and then a pukey green one (equally yuck), and showed us the "greenie" a la natural approach. General consensus was: black background looks best for the silvery tills, or even navy/prussian blue? What do you and others reckon? Mike - I will certainly be side-tracking to Florida after New Orleans, and California is looking tempting, with a Hawaiian stop-over on way home too. Yay! Cheers, Excited Kerry :)

Cheryl.... My DIL Cindy and I would love to come, but that day is the last Meeting of the summer for the Central Fla. Heritage Rose Society , in Lakeland, at Fla. Southern College... at 2:30 PM..... don't know how we could be two places at once ! drats....... thanks, sally

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Thanks for your interest, Jackie and nastarana. I don't know if the proceedings have been published. I googled but only came up with the prospectus - if that's the right word. That is worth a look as an overview, and also to see where we went on the pre and post conference tours. I will get in touch with Gail Yellowley, who was a tour de force organising us all, to see if the talks have been published. We saw some amazing and very varied gardens. From a suburban plot in a place called Bagdad!, with an extraordinary amount crammed into it, which was my friend's (Gillian Batchen, in case any of you know her) favourite, to acreage with grand old homes, like 'Strathmore' and 'Old Wesleydale', which were my favourites. I have since the age of 10, identified very strongly with Elizabeth Bennet, and fancy myself living somewhere where Darcy might stroll around a corner! We also visited the village of Chudleigh, whose main street has been planted with Rugosas, and some carpet roses. It made me wish I had planted Rugspin with it's rich glowing crimson blooms, rather than its pale by comparison cousin, Scabrosa. The Flower Carpet rose 'Amber, was also a knockout, especially as I've never been that keen on FC's in general. The gardens were English in style, with lupins and poppies in abundance, and lots of hedges: box to border, and other huge hedges. Also a lot of hedgerows (hawthorn I think). And a couple of the gardens had huge walls, one built to keep out marauding Aborigens and bushrangers. Just to explain why some of you may know Gillian, she has been active in the Heritage Rose society in Australia for decades, and been the President at one time, and organised a conference herself (allow 4 years, she tells me), and also been to overseas conferences. Other names that attended the conference, were Patricia Routley, Margaret Furness, (both of whom are active on HMF) Pat Toolan (who spoke about some of her favourite roses) and Billy West, from the Tea Roses book fame. It was great to put faces to names, and I much enjoyed a few chats with Billy, who has a delightful sense of humour. She tells me she lurks here at times. And of course, David Ruston, who did some amazing flower arrangements. The outstanding speaker was a New Zealander called Murray Radka, who had us all both laughing and sobbing, and I mean that literally. I still sob when I remember it. He has created a garden at his property 'Brandy Hill' in New Zealand. He talked about falling in love with it when he first saw it many decades ago, planting a woodland, and discovering old roses, which were to give him some solace after the tragic death of a son. in addition we visited the very interesting garden of a sculptor, Folko Cooper, some of whose sculpures line roads, telling the stories of the early settlers. And a peony farm (with plenty of other crops) run by Richard Weston, a man of such energy, enthusiasm and intelligence, that I think he'd make a very good job of running the world! Oh, and the blooms were often twice the size of the ones in my garden. Presumably a result of the cool climate, but as Hobart is dryer than Sydney, not rainfall. Though they do get a lot of drizzle and light rain, rather than our usual downpours, so perhaps they actually get more in the ground. The blooms of the hybrid teas were often so large I didn't care for them, but the old roses looked fabulous. I hope this is of some interest. Trish. This post was edited by titian1 on Mon, Dec 22, 14 at 22:03