I have cyber friends that have become dear real friends. There is something very special in this. I am so very thankful.

Me too!

Jon

I agree, some of my very best friends are people I have met on this forum! I'm glad you had a good afternoon and found a new friend.

Carol

I don't know my cyber friends in person yet, but I treasure them anyway. Robert, good for you and Catsrose; how wonderful to know yet another person whose passion for roses and gardening is like yours.

Robert I think that's great for you and Catsrose. One can't have too many friends after all. I have met one really great lady in person via the Rose Forum and had a chance to exchange posts and emails with a lot of outstanding people here also. I've been impressed with the generosity and kindness of rose growers (and gardeners) in a major way.

Thanks for sharing your experience with us.

Kate

Robert,

I agree 100%. I feel very fortunate to have spent time in your garden and that you have visited mine. Our O'dark-thirty cyber chats are also very special to me. You are a very real friend.

I cherish ALL of the cyber friends and especially those I have met in person. I look forward to meeting more of you face to face.

Kathy

It's my hope that some time in the near future I can meet some of you very special people, especially if I'm fortunate enough to have a rose garden that I wouldn't be ashamed to show off by that time. I'm so grateful that I've gotten to know so many wonderful people through the forum but there's nothing like meeting in person. I don't seem to live in prime old rose territory and know of no one near here who shares that interest, which makes the people on the forum all the more precious to me.

Ingrid

Robert and I went to catsrose's house together this weekend. It is a long, long drive from here to there, and we had a wonderful day getting acquainted with a new friend ... and her cats.

There is never a better time than NOW to invite a forum friend to share your garden in person -- no matter what you feel your garden looks like. We all have challenges that make us feel as if our roses just won't measure up if we have people over to see them. The object of this is to visit with like-minded people and share their company ... it's that simple.

Anyone who was here last year for the first annual "garden" social was warned well ahead of time that the garden existed only in my imagination. I had a couple of hundred roses in pots of varying sizes, lined up in rows along the fence in my front yard. Most of our conversations began with, "you have to imagine . . ." We had real roses in the ground to share at this year's social, but they are mostly very, very small. Again, people had to use their imagination to picture what the garden would grow up to be.

Because of this forum, I feel as if I could contact most anyone here and drop in for a visit if I'm in the neighborhood -- maybe I'm just that sort of person. I hope in my travels, especially when I get to California again, that I will get to meet more of you. Turning cyber-friends into real life friends IS wonderful.

Connie

P.S. Let me know if you're going to be anywhere near Hartwood -- I love company!!

Connie said it very well. Don't wait for perfection or you'll miss years of garden visits.

Sometimes at mass events it was easier "in the olde days" because we had Gardenweb T-shirts.
Keeping up with folks when their lives change and they drift away from posting is worth the effort. The internet has been very, very good to this rose grower.

Ann

Anybody who makes it to Sacramento knows, I'm sure, that I'd be delighted to show you around the cemetery. I rarely mention my home garden, since it pales in comparison, but I do accept visitors there, too!

It's lovely to meet internet friends in person, and I feel very fortunate to have met many of the West Coast folks (and a few from other areas, too). However, I love making cyber acquaintances, too, whether or not we'll ever meet. When I was a kid, I tried various pen pals, and was always disappointed that we really didn't have much in common. Roses are a great unifier - people who share interest in them do so without regard to political or geographical divides. I got much pleasure from my GW birthday greeting a couple of months ago. Who needs pen pals, when cyber rose friends are so much better?
Anita

Everyone

Cyber friends are great and yes they do become real friends. My garden may be small and young but if anyone is in the Va Beach area please shoot me an email and stop by for a visit.

Connie, I may take you up on that offer and do a long detour next time I have to do business in Dalhgren.

R/
Liz

After Connie&Robert's wonderful visit, I feel like I can travel anywhere and find [rose] friends to visit. And the best things about rose friends visiting are: 1) you don't have to explain why half your magnificient collection is still only 10 inches tall, 2) they don't even notice the muddy footprints across your kitchen floor, 3) they really do want to look at each and every rose, 4) they don't snicker at the odd little arrangements that evolved despite your best intentions, 5), they are so grateful someone else took off time to cook that you can feed them anything.

Catsrose...I genuinely did enjoy looking at each and every one of your roses....even those not much bigger than a band. Your hospitality knew no bounds. And, I will be trying to make that frito-chili ensemble. And, thanks for turning me on to your new composter in your guest house. It may be the solution I needed.

I invite you all to my place as well. I'll set up a time in the spring when the many spring bloomers will be doing their thing. (I'm only about 75 minutes from Connie's).

Robert

I think it's time to initiate The Gypsy Rose Tour. Come January, I'll figure how to post a sign-up sheet and people can put down a day/week-end for an open house and we can all just wander the country visiting each other.

If the Gypsy Rose Tour wants to wander a little further south, you would be welcome in my garden. Anyone who is in this area is welcome. I've found that rose lovers don't even see the weeds or blackspot. They just love to look at a bloom or two and talk about roses and other plants with like minded (obsessed) people.

Carol

I like the tour idea. I met a number of the group on Long Island in '07 and that experience was most enjoyable. DW and I went to NY last month and met up with Joe (labrea). He is definitely worth a trip!

Sounds good...

Robert you are so right. My best friends came from here. One lives just 10 minutes away and still we met on the forum. The ones I had to travel across country to see are no less dear. I remember shooting roses by starlight with Arkansas Rose as being one of the most special times in my life, getting lost at a pot ranch in northern CA with Cindi has to be one of the scariest, dinners at Pam and Michael Temple's, Carol and George's visit here along with the "Arkansas Travelers". And as Harry says that meeting in Long Island was so special and Joe is worth the trip. What a grand ride it has been. Don't worry about your garden, people are so forgiving. If you want a safe way to make your first encounter, one of the workshops at Ashdown's or the Vintage Dirt Days are great for opening the personal side of the friendship.
la

Glad people like the Gypsy Rose Tour idea. In January I will post sign-up sheets by region. That way, both locals and travelers will know where to look.

This may be the time to remind my fellow forum gardeners that we have a standing invitation to come visit should anyone make it over to Italy! We live about two hours south of Milan, can be reached by train (we pick you up at the station), and have room and time for guests. Like everyone else here I hugely appreciate my forum friends and am passionately in love with my garden. I've also gotten involved with the Italian gardening forum, mainly with its rose forum, and have made some precious Italian gardening friends. These things matter a lot. Like Ingrid, I don't know anyone locally who knows and cares about old roses, and if I didn't have the forums, I'd be a mighty lonely gardener.

Melissa

My cyber friends number among my dearest friends. While I know a number of people near me whom I like very much, none of them share my passions for growing heirloom roses, also open-pollinated vegetables and older varieties of fruit trees. Yes, some of them garden, but my interests are specialty interests. There is a special link between good people who share common interests.

Most people on this forum are ones I never, ever would have met without this link. Having met them here, it was just a short step further to meet them in the physical world. I am so very grateful for this means to widen my horizons.

Rosefolly

I'm halfway mid-country in Illinois, so if anyone ever needs a place to stay in between traveling between east/west coasts, you are more than welcome to visit and stay. I've met Karl and Dan and they've been more than helpful in giving me advice for our midwest rose-growing area.
-terry

I feel lucky that I have a good gardening buddy/buddies that I work with. But I was really lucky to have met the one and only Florence/Zeffy Rose. That was real treat and her hubby is also very nice. Hopefully I will meet up with more cyber rose people in the near future.

Whike I have only been on the forum for less than two years, it has been so helpful and interesting to "hear" and see what you folks do. I have been on another Forum due to importing a husband from another country, and that has evolved into a now six year daily attendance. I have been fortunate enough to make some special friends there. I have taken issue with one of the posters there who had said we're all just pixels. Not so, there are people behind the pixels and if you're lucky enough you get to meet each other.

I too have had the pleasure of meeting some dear friends here on the Web----I had the pleasure of visiting Carol--se-- pa's ---lovely garden down at the Jersey shore. Mrsflowers is a dear friend who has moved to NY but we still keep in touch---I visited with Viking Queen in N.H. she is a treasure. I would love to meet in person all my dear cyber friends. What a treat that would be !!!
We are all lucky to share the love of roses.

Florence

Connie, you mentioned visiting California and if that should include southern California I would love to invite you to our home. That of course includes anyone else who will be visiting this area. Wild Animal Park is nearby and San Diego is about 40 minutes away with the zoo and Sea World and of course the ocean. I'll try not to apologize for the rose garden which looks okay in the spring but not so great the rest of the year. Many of my roses are small but I think you're all understanding of that. We had plans to visit further north in California last year but then our dog injured her knee and by the time she was well it was already too hot and I can't tolerate heat any more. At any rate, would love to meet you all here.

Ingrid

Ingrid, I know about dogs and knees. Freya had TPLO surgery on her left rear knee this summer and made a full recovery. This week the right knee went. Sigh. surgery later this week and two more months of recovery. We won't be doing any travel during that time.

Rosefolly

I met my oldest cyber friend on rec.gardens.roses on usenet in 1993 when that was almost the only rose resource on the Internet. We've been e-mailing since then, almost daily at first. We meet in real life about once a year, visit each other's gardens or go to garden shows and plant fairs together. We live only 45 minutes drive from each other but our different lives don't make it possible for us to meet very often. I've had so many plants from this friend over the years that I've made a separate bed with them, called "Allan's corner".

I have delightful memories of meeting people I first met on the net, Jon in Wessex, Aila Korhonen and da Kernel.