Hi everyone! I wanted to tell all of you THANK YOU for reading my post and letting me know that you enjoyed it. My passion and appreciation of roses is enhanced by sharing it with others. It always brings me great pleasure to hear all of your thoughts as well. I always love your feedback and even though it would take too long to respond individually to each of you, I read each & every one and enjoyed your input. I am going to post more of the other roses I love & miss, since I felt bad leaving some of the others out...and Eric kind of encouraged me...lol. I hope you all enjoy that post as well. To answer a few questions posed to me: jumbojimmy....Reports of Charles de Mills fragrance vary. I have read that it has no fragrance, mild fragrance, and lots of fragrance....I have no fewer than 50 rose books and none of them can agree on whether Charles is fragrant or not! When I visited the Montreal Botanical Garden I could not detect fragrance on their Charles de Mills. However, my Charles is VERY fragrant. I guess all noses pick up scents differently and maybe it even varies according to soil, temps., etc... I guess you will have to find out for yourself if he is or isn't! organicgardendreams....I can't vouch for whether Yolande would do well in CA....hopefully the many posters from there will help you out w/ your question. She certainly doesn't need the cold to bloom, like the Albas & Gallicas so I would think she would do splendid in warmer climates unless certain diseases might be an issue. Jean....Felicite will get fairly big, but not usually as huge as her Alba sisters. Albas do need space; they are not small bushes. But you can prune her a little to keep her in bounds. Somewhere in the 4-5 foot tall range. Some Albas can top 7 feet and my Belle Amours have shot up to over 8 feet! Here in zone 4 there really aren't any roses that are as impressive in size as the Albas. Next to our puny hybrid teas that die back every year, the Albas look like Jolly Green Giants! Thats another reason why I love them. She really IS worth it to have in your garden even if she is your only once-bloomer. She will be done blooming by the time the Japanese Beetles start up and she stays quite healthy the rest of the summer so you won't have to fuss with her. And that fragrance will win you over. She is such a beautiful, feminine rose that I couldn't imagine not enjoying the pleasure of her, even if only once a year. Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter.... only come once a year, but we still look forward to them, right? Thanks again, rose friends! Celeste Charles de Mills, my blooming machine....

I am an infrequent poster here but do occasionally. This is meant to be helpful to you and possibly to others, not in a spirit of criticism. You can't edit a post, but if you delete the superfluous photos from photobucket (or rename them), they won't load although it still might drag the load time down due to "hunting" for them, not sure about that but might try it sometime. You can always post a separate text-only message explaining what you did so people won't come back to see photos that are never going to load for them. You get a box with a red x, at least I do. If you copied photobucket's html code for posting, it shouldn't make any difference because, no, you can't edit that part. I've posted a couple photos that were too wide, it annoyed me to have to scroll horizontally on my 17" monitor, others probably still have those, too, so I assumed it must have annoyed others and can spoil a whole thread especially if there are numerous sharing by others of photos and responses. To correct that, I just deleted the oversized one, sized another one smaller, named it the same as before and presto! The new photo loaded fine and all was well for me and I hope others, too. I didn't have to empty my browser cache (IE7) but don't know about all browsers. In addition, your photo is 205.82 KB which is a little too big for here, slows down load time. Your 800 X 600 dimensions are fine. I usually compress my photos in a photo editor, PS CS2 in my case, trying to hit 100 KB or lower. At 72 dpi density, I haven't noticed a particular degradation in quality between high quality and low quality. I think some graphics editors also automatically size what is optimal for web viewing if you choose that option. I don't because I have better control doing it myself and don't lose the exif data in my photo. That could be over some peoples' heads, and all this I learned the hard way or from reading others' comments, not just to my photos. Your post didn't bother me because I have high speed, and I don't know how to thumbnail here (I do know how to do it for my webpages), could figure that out. If I have more than one or two photos, I try to post the number in the header or make up a quick webpage and post a link to it. That way people can choose whether they want to wait for that many photos to load. Oh, and good luck with your vine. I'm fighting other things like that and need to paint or spray with roundup. That wouldn't have been a good choice when it was wound into your butterfly bush and be hard to get all of it that way. Volunteer morning glory does the same to my plants if I let it get out of control, roundup wouldn't work with that either.

My portable green houses are on a screened in back porch and they get alot of afternoon sun.Lots of humidity/condensation builds up in them so they sprout things pretty well.You can get them at Walmart.com for $34 and if you have them shipped to your local walmart,shipping is free.Another wser showed hers a while back for $39 and when I checked they had been marked down,smile..so I got 2.I mist them ever so often to keep them happy.I am starting to plant out this week.I have alot of huge sprouts-didn't show all of them.The ones I posted was castor bean.Love the roots on wsd sprouts,then they take off.Most of mine have designated spots but for the ones I am unfimiliar with,will go into a holding bed.When I see how they look they will get moved or composted. I feel so sorry for those of you that live up north and are still having snow and cold weather.We have snow maybe one day a year and that is plenty for us.I can not tolerate cold weather so am happy as a lark down here in warm Ga.It is in 70s,one day of 80 and nights in 50-60s.We will get rain later this week but it will stay warm,so thats wonderful.I want to see photos of all your babies when they pop up and can't wait for summer-June-July photos of all the blooms.This is my 3rd yr. to ws and it gets better each year. moonphase

Laurie, I love that rose! I'm putting 'Scentsational' on my list as a definite "must have". DH liked it, too. We don't have any roses yet. I just want a couple, maybe 3 and I love the "swirl" effect on that one. I, also, am a sucker for stripes and varigations in flowers. All of you are totally convincing me that I have to plant some other lilies. I love my orientals but they don't seem to have as many to choose from as some of the other species. I planted 'Casablanca' and 'Stargazer' this spring and the tops froze. However, I accidently dug a bulb up the other day and it was very healthy with a great set of roots. Maybe there is hope for them for next year. Lots of mulch this winter. Gillian, your photos are terrific. Did you notice the pollen that is showing, with great clarity, on the gazania? Now that's MACRO! Shauna