We tend to dwell on the problems and issues that come up with rose growing, but lately I've just been so happy to look at my garden, appreciate what I have and look forward to a hopefully wonderful spring. My sweet (nongardening) husband put in Appoline, Duchesse de Brabant, Second Street Tea, Alexander Gray Smith, Charles Darwin and Pink Pet in the ground over the past two days and the garden is already giving me more pleasure by their very presence and the opportunity to watch them grow and flourish. I have yet to find a place for SDLM but that's also a pleasurable conundrum. The weather has finally cooled so that I can be outside during the day to do some mulching and fertilizing. Five more roses are on their way (Queen Nefertiti, Duke of York, Mme. Dore, SDLM Rouge and Mme. Lambard) and I hope my garden will then have the sumptuous, Persian tapestry look I'm aiming for. Three roses that have sat there without a sign of growth are finally putting out some new little leaves. An iris has six blooms that are ready to open for the first time. My William R. Smith is manfully trying to put another inch of growth on his two-inch tall frame. These and other small victories and changes keep the garden a fascinating place where nothing is static and there is the ever-present hope that everything will be even more beautiful in the near and not-so-near future. There is so much happiness to be had in all this.

So many of you are eloquent about your gardens and it would be a privilege if you would share your personal feelings about the happiness that your garden gives you, and your plans about how to embellish it even more to make it the garden of your dreams.

Ingrid