Well, well - hello, Louise. A pleasant surprise to see you here .... ;o) By the length of what I wrote, you can tell I'm as snowbound as you. Louise (I'll let the cat out of the bag and tell you that's her middle name, so it sounds foreign to me) and I are good friends. We've traveled together to far parts of the country, mostly in search of knowledge, but for new experiences too. We've also attended dozens & dozens of educational events together. She is (next to the 'Fred' we both mention) probably the best person I've yet met at identifying plants by name and being able to tell you what their cultural wants/needs are. I wouldn't think of going on my spring pilgrimage to Detroit to buy all my plants for the dozens of containers I put together each year as garden display plantings without her. She's a skilled plantsman & is always very eager to learn. ;o) I really intended for the thread to address keeping up with what's new, and being open to new ideas, techniques, innovations - not being stuck in the rut of being insistent that there is only one way to do something and that change is bad, but it looks like the experience:knowledge thing is winning out, so we'll go there. Louise asked: "Als friend Fred, and mine, at 94, is still learning, and hes thoroughly enjoying every moment. To me, that is poignant proof that seeking knowledge has some interesting, and beneficial, side effects. What do you think, Al?" I thought Fred was 92 and here I find he is 94. I was at his 90th b-day party, but I guess the years are passing more quickly than I realize - and women are sooo much better than I, at keeping track of important things like birthdays, anniversaries, and other important dates. Why is that ......? I think that Fred has passion. He is passionate about people and he is passionate about his plants. He loves nothing more than to be among his plant friends, learning and teaching. He was the first person to actually give me any guidance in my bonsai endeavors, and the thing he told me, tried most to impress upon me, didn't sink in at first. I don't remember his exact words, some 15+ years ago, but what he told me was: if I want to be successful in growing bonsai, I MUST learn about plants. I must learn how they work and how soils work - otherwise my efforts will be, at best, only frustrating. I didn't have the sense to believe him then, so I jumped right into bonsai & soon learned he was right. It took only a few short months for experience to teach me just how much I didn't know. I could have plowed blindly ahead & depended on experience and trial & error to guide me, but I started studying, and I can say that (like Louise asked about) the side effects of what I learned have been so very beneficial. I NEVER could have come to where I am today as a plant person w/o my focus being primarily on knowledge. That doesn't mean I'm inexperienced, at all, and every day my experiences validate some piece of knowledge I already have. It's the same for you guys. You can read something in these forums that one of us has learned and all of a sudden, a light goes on, or you might retain it in your memory & a month from now, your experiences might cause you to recall what you read & you say "Oh Yeah! NOW, I get it." This is another case of experience validating knowledge. Louise & Mentha both mentioned cooking as an analogy, so let me paint a picture: Imagine two people who know nothing about cooking - no experience whatsoever. The first person (I'm going to make him a guy, because I'm the cook around here) ;o) is put in a huge kitchen with all the utensils & everything needed to create a 10 course gourmet meal including a fancy desert for Louise and Mentha. Not gonna happen - right? The second person is schooled in all the cooking techniques - knows how to make the sauces, studies presentation, knows exactly how baking powder makes the biscuits rise and how proteins in meat break down to make it tender - this person is essentially an educated idiot. So, if you put him in the same kitchen ...... It prolly STILL ain't gonna happen - right? Which will come closer to being able to present an edible meal ... The person with no experience or knowledge, or the educated idiot with no experience? Let's take it a step further. The person with no experience or knowledge is left to his own devices, but he doesn't seek knowledge beyond what he learns by his own experience. He plods through the kitchen day after day making mistake after mistake ruining meal after meal and having failure after failure, until after a lifetime of trying he might have figured out how to make a presentable gourmet meal. Back to the educated idiot now .... ;o) He keeps studying & studying - learning fresh, new things & techniques. His first meal was a dismal failure, but a week later, he makes a meal that's pretty good. A year later, he is still studying and making fancy dinners with wonderful presentations. 5 years later he's a chef at a fancy restaurant. 10 years later, he has his own cooking school and is teaching other chefs what he's learned so they can benefit from his knowledge and experience. Why is this? His meager, but growing experience is validating time after time what he already knows and he has eliminated 90% of the trial and error mistakes the other cook depends on almost exclusively for knowledge. Where is the cook who embraces nothing new & refuses to learn? Still stuck in a rut, plodding along and unable to even make proper sense of the results of his actions or what he observes in the kitchen. I could easily have made the analogy about greenhouse operators or hobby growers like us, but as a friend is fond of saying, "We work with what we have." and a cook is what I was given. ;o) Al

That would be a very interesting piece of information to find out about, Lynette. Remember, it was Hortico who "introduced" so many of his earlier roses in to North America, prior to obtaining any licensing from him and selling them to the US. That is why all those varieties were sold under their breeder's code names, such as AUSpat, AUStamora, etc. Once they've been introduced, there is a finite time in which to patent them and recoup any costs through royalties. Hortico jumped ahead of him by selling them so the only way he could benefit from their sales was to trademark their names so a retailer would have to pay to use those names. The roses could be sold under any other name you wanted, without paying any royalties, but if you used the trademarked names, you owed Austin royalties. I heard stories some years ago about a very "heated" face-to-face Mr. Austin reportedly had with the head of Hortico about that very subject. It would be QUITE interesting to know the back story whether Hortico's decision not to offer the newer types had anything to do with that issue, or if they simply chose not to offer the more expensive types as Pickering and others have. Kim

Jan- You know I love those pictures of Cranberry Baby. But I really have to pick Forever Redeemed as my very favorite of this batch. That yellow halo bleeding out onto the brickred petals is absolutely wonderful.

Thanks for the update. Commiserating with you about the cable, etc. DH and I have spent most of three days here on Maui, grappling with Computer, Cable, BluRay, Amazon Prime for streaming. The condo association switched to Oceanic for internet; had them for TV earlier. They've failed twice in three days; next time they will send someone with a new gizmo. (Modem/router/whatsis) Take it easy. No need to do everything immediately. You aren't used to the weather. Wishing you many happy years in your Florida home!