What an interesting thread! Emma, your pictures are lovely. We are no-spray here in the Piedmont of NC. We had some good no-spray luck with General Schablikine and Mrs. Dudley Cross. We just got started with General Gallieni in a band this spring, and had to take out one cane to Rose Rosette Disease, but thus far the remaining part of the rose hasn't had a bit of blackspot. We also had really good luck no-spray with Gruss An Aachen, but perhaps are the only ones who can say that. I'm really sure about Mortimer Sackler for no spray, though it might not have have as many petals as you are looking for. Depending on the season/temperature, it can be nicely fragrant and its blooms always have a lovely delicate look. (The picture on the David Austin website is very accurate.) Of those that we've had on a short-term basis sitting around in pots no-spray and that look something like what you might want/would likely be hardy there, Madame Plantier and Ghislaine De Feligonde kept looking wonderful, whether or not the rose in a nearby pot had blackspot or not. One thing from our experience here, for sure Brilliant Pink Iceberg is a plant to avoid if you'd like to have many leaves during the heat of the summer, at least when growing in partial shade. Ours are coming back now, but it was a shock to see how much they defoliated without spraying. We lost a regular Iceberg and a climbing Iceberg, still in the delivery pots, to Rose Rosette Disease this summer, but I don't think we'll ever try another Iceberg here after seeing what happened to the Brilliant Pink Icebergs. There's a North Carolina website, Amy Padgett's, that might have some suggestions you'd be interested in, since her conditions might be somewhat like yours, only a bit warmer. I'll link it below. All the comments there are interesting, but if you just want her list of roses, click inside the box near the top of the page at the fourth link where it says Roses. Every once in a long while I mention this website to someone, and enroute to pulling up the address, I revisit the site and enjoy her comments again for myself. I was thinking this time about the dog comments... and whether if you are having racoon digging problems, the "Do" solution for her dog's digging might work with a racoon too. Of course, that idea won't help if you don't have a dog. Emma, I'm looking forward to hearing what you plant and maybe seeing how everything looks as the roses continue to grow to beautify your yard and neighborhood. Good luck! Best wishes, Mary Here is a link that might be useful: Amy Padgett's gardening website

that in Graham Stuart Thomas' book on antique roses he specifically mentioned that RDV was in his mind the bluest rose he had ever seen, and that it was notably more "blue" than many of the modern so-called "blue" roses. Obviously since RDV's coloring varies a lot that "blue" only shows up when it's growing in the right soils, however Thomas must have seen it because he wrote that he often wore RDV as a lapel flower to rose functions to remind people that the rose existed and that it could be an unusually "blue" rose.

Okay, we have one, and I end-arounded Miele Corporate and bought mine on eBay, saving around $350 IIRC. The unit I bought was perfect, in the crate, impeccably shipped and arrived in perfectly inoperable condition because the Miele Factory (the coffee machines are built in Switzerland) had failed to secure a plug-jack properly. The floating connection caused repeating faults in my unit, which led me to discover that I had no warranty at all on the machine. Meanwhile the dealer who sold it to me vanished from ebay, only to return with a new seller ID. I sent REPEATED inquiries to the seller asking about warranty and was COMPLETELY ignored. Lesson learned: If you buy from ebay, 1. Contact the seller first and find out who they are actually doing business as. 2. Make sure that the underlying store is an authorized Miele dealer. You can check that through the Miele website or by calling Miele. Do not mention ebay to Miele, EVER. They hate ebay and will screw you out of your warranty if they find out you purchased there. 3. Tell the seller that as a condition of sale you expect to be shipped a store receipt with the authorized dealer's name plainly listed as seller and that the terms of your factory warranty are included on the receipt. That receipt must not mention ebay. Get everything in writing from the dealer. With my coffee machine, Miele got THEIR dough, the dealer got HIS dough, via backdoor sale to move his stock, and I got reamed. Don't walk into that trick. There are dealers who have those things sitting around that they want to move and they will have NO problem dropping you into a crack where no light comes a shinin'. I fixed my own machine by opening it up and tracing around the harness till I found the loose PJ. (It came apart in my hand!) I plugged it back in securely and the machine has run flawlessly ever since. As to the machine, while it is NOT something real coffeegeek reviewers will ever find adequate, for us it is a godsend. Seriously. When we are staying at our city apartment and have to get by using the Keurig fill-a-basket, a sense of loneliness haunts our existence. But when we get home to our house and our Miele, our hearts bloom with contentment. You can get a great cuppa any time of day, with fancy foamy milk if you want. I really recommend that you select the plumbed version of the machine. You run a 1/4" PEX water line to your cutout, put an inline water filter on the supply, and then the machine takes care of keeping itself full of water. As far as the quality of the machine goes, despite the loose plug-jack, which probably occurred during a sensor testing regimen prior to packaging, the rest of the thing is really very nice quality. Tremendous engineering went into the design of components from a serviceability aspect. Everything pulls out of the front of the machine and is easy to get to. You open the door and everything is right there, easy to get at. We could not be happier. We picked a Bluestar range, Miele Speed Oven, and Miele Coffee System when we updated our Reagan-Era kitchen and we simply could not be happier. If I had it to do over again I would buy the exact same stuff but I would be sure to get the right receipt to mollify the price-fixers at Miele. Couple more helpful tips: The unit comes with a couple plastic containers that one could almost confuse with shipping spacers or something. They are NOT shipping spacers, they are used to clean and descale the machine. Hang onto them, you need 'em. Be VERY careful removing and replacing the lid on the milk thermos. The plastic pipes that suck up the milk are easily broken. You can superglue them back together, but you have to replace the entire lid if you want them really fixed and its close to $200. Miele charges 44 bucks for a box of 30 milk cleaning packets, which is ridiculous. But if you SMELL the cleaning solution they make when dissolved in water, and then smell the cleaning solution you get when you dissolve a scant teaspoon of OXYCLEAN in the same amount of water you will find that they are eerily similar. While I haven't sent the substances off to the lab for chromatographic analysis, I am quite confident, after two years of steady use, that Oxyclean works great to clean the milk system and that you do not need to spend the outrageous amount of money Miele demands for their precious cleaning packets.

Thank you all so much for your replies! It's wonderful to see so many of you slogging through the Houzz changes in order to remain in touch, sharing your words and your photos. I hope others continue to chime in as they check in with the forum in between scheduled summer activities and in spite of current technological difficulties. Titian, thank you for the information about Florence's last posting. I may have missed it since it was located on a thread which began with another topic. I wish there were some way to reach her just to say how much it meant to share the exchanges that we did. We even shared family history and photos and artwork. Mary, I have no idea if Houzz ambushed the Furniture Forum with my post after the fact or whether I neglected to deselect the FF as a suggested cross posting site. I THOUGHT I deselected everything but Antique Roses. Since we will never know, and I prefer to maintain the fantasy that I can manage my own affairs, I'm going to cry "Houzz ambush" in order to save face. :-) Carol