Those are some good choices. Quietness gets to be about 6' tall here and 4' wide but is great. Carefree Beauty is another Buck rose that to me is the best blooming Buck of all, and is blackspot free. Country Dancer is an excellent Buck that for me has better bs resistance than Earth Song though Earth Song is great. I think you might look into some of the antique roses. If you have plenty of room you could make another bed out in your yard. You might try Clotilde Soupert. It is a wonderful bloomer, very disease resistant, very fragrant with romantic cup shaped blooms, and can take some shade. It does ball in the spring ( blooms fail to open in the cool damp), but later it is wonderful till cold weather. There is a world of roses you might check out on the antiques forum. Some of the old roses are tough things. A resource you might find helpful is www.helpmefind.com/roses. You can look up most any rose on that site, get pics and information and a list of nurseries that supply that rose. For your soil, I'd dig out any larger rocks. I'd loosen the soil in the whole area where you're planting and get out any grass or weeds. Adding organic stuff to your soil can help it retain water. For a small area you could buy bagged composted manure or mushroom compost. In my area the town has a leaf composting facility and they sell it by the truckload for ten dollars. Your town might have one. Before I had a truck I'd bag it up and they gave it to me free. It makes good mulch too. But otherwise, bark mulch is good to conserve moisture , insulate from too much heat, and to keep down weeds. Just don't pile it high on the stems of your young plants or it can cause rot. Kind of mulch the roots, and keep it off most of the stems. Be careful not to overfertilize, and don't feed at all when it's within 6 weeks of your expected first frost in fall. Some advise not to feed at all the first year but I think I'd try some 1/2 strength Miracle Grow after they're in the ground a month or so and settled in. Chamblees may have their own advice. I think it's a lovely present for your wife and your kids will love seeing them grow for her. Linda

Anchita, the rose you are seeking is likely the Autumn Damask (one of its many names, see the HMF link below. I've grown it here in Livermore and it would be an easy rose for a beginner to grow, I think, the main problem mostly being keeping it under control (a vigorous rose). Its main bloom is in the spring but it has scattered blooms later in the season and it does smell heavenly. Other roses along that line that do well here, blooming a bit more frequently due to added genetics in their backgrounds, are Rose du Rescht, Joasine Hanet (Portland from Glendora), Jacques Cartier, and other "damask perpetual" or "portland" types. You are not likely to find this rose, or any of these, at Regan Nursery, which mostly carries only newer roses. The tiny selection of old roses they have at the very beginning of the season are gone in a blink and I've never seen a damask of any type there. (In fact, I've only ever bought one rose from them, Valencia, for my mother -- not the kind of roses I grow, for the most part -- but they have the one of the best selections of fruit trees and shrubs of anyone in the Bay Area in early January). So, unless you can find them by chance at some other nursery (Annie's Annuals in Richmond frequently has Rose du Rescht), mail order is you best chance. HMF lists a number of nurseries offering Autumn Damask (click on the "Buy From" button on the upper right side of the HMF page). A rose in a pot can be planted any time of the year as long as it is kept supplied with water during dry times, though it is usually better to avoid planting during really hot periods (providing temporary shade really helps in that situation). If the plant you buy is "band" size (a rooted cutting, essentially, with maybe some further development), it is usually safer to repot it into a gallon-size pot and allow it to grow a better root system before planting it into the ground. Here is a link that might be useful: HMF Autumn Damask

Well you have some fun, haven't you ? Your posts are very refreshing. You don't take that too seriously and just put stuff in the soil and can't even remember whether you put manure or blood meal or phosphate or all three, which I think is blissful and the joy of being young and having an interesting life so full of events that you couldn't care less about past amendments. That is great and please keep asking and posting in this carefree style ;-) When one of my kids comes and gardens with me, little work is done whereas there are 2 instead of one working, but boy do we have fun and laugh ! Your parents are lucky to have you around ! So is your baker boss ! You might want to try and grow squash, they're real easy, although they need to be started in pots to be developped enough to resist snails and slugs. But they're really gratifying with high crops that keep for months on the counter and they'll grow in pure manure like mad. If you need some seeds, just ask, I'll send you some, I have a lot.

There's a certain amount of variation from one clone of 'Autumn Damask' to another, but they're sufficiently alike not to be thought of as sports. Some root more easily than others . . . There are many old plants found in NoCal -- The ONLY reservation I have with any of them is whether they're really old, or something that came from Roses of Yesterday and Today, in the past 50 years. But if it's growing next to a 19th-Century grave, that's a good clue that it might be really old. You might want to talk to Jill Perry about this one.