Melissa, you are a great addition to this forum. I like the perspective that you give, very glad you're here! Have an excellent birthday!

Randy

The Jefferson Rose for Melissa:{{gwi:307797}}

Melissa you are such an important person on this forum. I can't imagine it without you. I hope you have a great day.

Melissa, thank you so much for participating here. I hope you have a wonderful birthday. Annie

William R. Smith
{{gwi:232358}}

Hope it is a great Birthday, Melissa
{{gwi:307801}}

Melissa, I hope you have a wonderful birthday. Your postings are always interesting and also give the impression of an extremely nice person. My birthday wish for you is rain, lots of it, to make your life easier and give new life to your beautiful roses.

Warm regards,

Ingrid

Happy Birthday Melissa, I really enjoy your posts.
Hope your day is wonderful!

Blush Hip
{{gwi:298238}}
alida

Melissa, I have read some of the stuff you've posted before
and I love to hear about you living on a farm in Italy. You
are originally from Olympia Washington, right? Well, Happy
Birthday!!! And I'd love to hear more about your farm in
Italia some day. Ciao! Buona Giornata, Melissa.

{{gwi:307804}}

Melissa, HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!
I am at work right now, so can't post a picture, but please accept my best wishes. Many happy returns of this day, please be happy, helathy and always surrounded with roses.
Olga

Happy Birthday Melissa! I hope this is the prelude of a year full of the right amount of rain, gorgeous roses and every happy thing for you. You have encouraged me in my resolve to do all organic, and I am even looking into suppliers of alfalfa hay for next spring! ;-)

Jerome

Happy, Happy, Birthday Melissa! I love your posts about growing roses in Italy. I also wish you the perfect amount of rain, beautiful roses and many blessings in the coming year!

Rose du Roi

{{gwi:237263}}

Carol

Happy Birthday, Melissa. Hope it rains on your birthday!

It's neat having an international poster on the forum.

Kate

Happiest of Birthdays, Melissa! May the heavens spill showers of happiness into your beautiful corner of Italy. Here's Leonie's Apoline growing in Washington for you:
{{gwi:307806}}

Sue

Happy Birth Day. I love Italian wine (Barolo and Amarone) and Tuscan Italian Cuisine. Hope you will enjoy your day:

Tuscany:

{{gwi:307807}}

Happy Birthday,Melissa! I enjoy reading your posts. If I ever come back to Italy, I would love to visit. Buff
PS. Melva, I have that same salvia and I love it as much as the hummingbirds do! It is quite prolific here but easy to remove from unwanted areas. BH

Melissa, hope you have an absolutely wonderful birthday!
Judith

{{gwi:307808}}

Yes, Happiest of Birthdays to you, dear one! And many more!

Allison

To everybody,

You folks are all so kind, and I am very happy to receive your good wishes! Thank you! Carla, thanks for leading the charge. All the wishes for rain are highly appropriate and appreciated. This birthday was my fiftieth, and it wasn't as festive as I would have liked, because unfortunately my husband and I have totally different ideas about how one celebrates great occasions and they tend to cancel each other out, in spite of his very honest desire to make me happy. We ended up going out for pizza. The best part of the day was when, in the space of ten minutes, my four-days-overdue shipment of Sansevieria cuttings arrived, Ikea called me to let me know that they owed me a refund of five hundred euros (particularly welcome as the dollar is in terrible shape against the euro these days), and my cat came to visit. I haven't seen her for several days, and though I wasn't worried, as she's good at looking after herself, we're good friends and enjoy each other's company. The Ikea refund is going to go for a large, ambitious plant order, which I had been wondering where I was going to find the money for.

Buff, and others who would like to visit when you make it over to Italy: please do! We like visitors and we have room and time for guests. I hope that there will be more roses in bloom when you come than is currently the case (we need rain!)

I often hesitate to write, knowing that I have a lot of words in my head and ten-fingered typing skills: a dangerous combination. For better or worse, you all have encouraged me to continue putting in my comments, observations, and questions.

Carla, Randy, Mendocino Rose, Annie, Melva, Ingrid, Alida, Devon Gardener (buona giornata anche a te!), Olga, Jerome, Carol, Kate, Sue, Cupshaped Roses (Emilian cooking is also nothing to sneeze at), Buff, Judith--I hope I didn't leave anybody out--you have all helped make my day! Thanks for the good wishes, and the beautiful photos!

Melissa

Allison,

Thanks for the good wishes; hope your garden is thriving! You posted while I was writing my response. I bet it's pretty where you are now: have you been getting rain? My north Florida correspondents tell me it's been raining there. Love those tropical storms--always assuming that they don't get too big and too mean!

Have a good fall!

Melissa

Melissa,

Happy Birthday to our Italian ExPat. As Pamela said, you thoughts and observations are invaluable.

And, because you have such good taste and love cl Etoile d'Holland (one of my favs, blooms even in the dead of winter here),

{{gwi:289214}}

Can never quite catch the right color, the dark velvet petals emitting an absolutely perfect fragance.

Carol

This is what happens when I only check in once a week. Darn, another latecomer to your birthday.

The big 50, congrats, it gets easier. LOL

Happy Belated Birthday, hope your refund gets you tons of great roses.

Valerie

Melissa,
Sorry I'm late to the party -- I hope you had a great birthday even if it wasn't as festive as you hoped. I so enjoy your posts.
Lori

Oh, Melissa, I am so sorry I am late. I have enjoyed your being here at GW and I hope all subsequent birthdays will be more wonderful than you can imagine.

Melissa,

So sorry to be late wishing you a most happy birthday. Your beautiful garden has blessed my soul on so many occasions. Not only do you share so much written information, but you post such awesome pictures of your heavenly gardens.

Please continue to share those pics with us when you can. I also have a wonderful,caring husband who isn't into special birthday celebrations. Oh well, we just have to love all the other special parts of them don't we?

I hope we all get some much needed rain. Have a great new year. Hey, the 50s ain't bad!!

Betty

I apologize for being late but I wish you a very happy birthday and I wish for myself the impossible - to be a neighbor somewhere close to where you are. Or any area in Northern Italy. Enjoy it!!!

Wow...an extended birthday! Thanks to you all!

Carol, I reserve the warmest spot in my heart for roses that are aristocratic AND goodhumored, and to my mind Cl. Etoile de Hollande falls in that category: such an easy rose to please, and such amazing color and scent. Glad to know you're a fan too.

Betty, perhaps it's just the word pictures I paint, but I don't post photos, because our line is just too slow. Either my descriptions are creating beautiful pictures in your head, or you're admiring someone else's garden. I gladly accept that part of the compliment that's mine, and, thanks for the good wishes!

One the matter of turning fifty, I'm fortunate to be in good health and to have generally healthy habits, and I'm either doing what I want or am in a position to be able to do what I want when I decide to; in other words, I am my own chief limitation, and so have room to act. I am fortunate. I like being fifty; my chief worry at this point is that I haven't accomplished that much with my first half century, and I want to become more productive. My garden is important; learning about plants and gardening is important. The next step is sharing that knowledge, and also figuring out how to earn a living doing so. Before my daughter was born I learned, rather late, how to earn a living, but I've never in my life had a paying job doing something I loved: and I would like to do so before I die.

Of course I'm getting gray in my hair, my skin is coarsening, I'm getting a bit of middle-aged spread: nothing that will make me happier when I look in the mirror, but then I don't look much in the mirror: that's for the young. Now is my time of life to look outward rather than at myself. Middle age is for doing rather than being. I can do just fine. I have a lot to do. I'm looking forward to it.

Valerie, thanks for the good wishes. The big plant order actually isn't roses this time, although I intend to order them too later this year. I plan on FINALLY installing the main section of our garden, and so am ordering (planning on ordering, depending on availability at the nurseries)the following: box, both common and varieties; lilac, species and varieties of S. vulgaris; rosemary and other aromatics and gray-foliaged plants; laburnums, viburnums, whitebeams perhaps, Italian pines, a golden bay laurel for a shady corner of the garden; two or three pittisporum; and a great many other odds and ends. Many of the these will go into hedges, either formal (box) or informal, and pretty much all of them are drought tolerant based on my experience here. Almost all are liners, as I have much more patience than money. I still to do some basic planning with stakes and flagging tape, and I don't think I'll have the nerve to make an order until it rains, which it's supposed to do starting today: the forecast is for an inch! Ha ha!

Carol, Valerie, Lori, Patricia, Betty: Thank you all for writing and offering your good wishes. ...