Hi Beacivil! Nice name :-) I'd be glad to share a few notes about rose care. Basically roses like a lot of food and water if they are to bloom well. Privately owned nurseries carry organic fertilizers such as 'Roseglo' which will have directions on the package. Roses don't care whether they are pruned or not, but we prune them to keep the size in bounds and in the case of hybrid tea roses so they'll have larger blooms. In this part of the country we prune around mid Feb.. If your roses are huge you can still prune them back a third or so just to shape them and keep them from hanging over sidewalks and such, but it may delay blooming a few weeks. If your roses are hybrid teas they may get a foliage disease called black spot. There isn't much you can do about it except spray anti fungal chemicals which many of us don't want to do we we've switched to growing shrub and old tea and China roses which are generally more resistant to leaf problems. So that's the basics. If you want some more info you can email me from 'My Page' and/or check out the Antique Rose Forum. Lots of information is there. Thanks for looking at the pictures and for your comments. Welcome to the Texas Forums and good luck with your garden!

Great photo!!!! Don't they have the most amazingly different colored and elegant flowers? How tall is yours? Most times a 6-7 foot tall bloom stalk shoots up from a small plant which is no less amazing. I guess the height keeps the deer from eating it.

Hi June! You're welcome to pop over from Florida anytime. Growing conditions in parts of Texas can be very similiar to those in Florida since both states have a diversity of climates. You're right about red plant. It's a shrimp. When we have a mild winter like this last one they bloom all the way through it and all the next summer and fall too. There are three different kinds of shrimp pictured on the link below so you can see what you have to look forward too. The feathery plant is a single fennel plant that is going on its third year. I've never had one so big and fluffy. I plant fennel for the black swallowtail catepillars and also use it in cooking. Here is a link that might be useful: Photos of shrimp plants in a previous post ..

I saw a large O. cochenellifera growing under a tree in Dripping Springs and one in down town Austin in parking lot. They lived fine till these last awful winters. The one in Dripping Springs, west of Austin in the Hill country made it to 14' tall and hugely thick and bushy before it was killed by two bad winters. I think these made it through 19 degrees fine but 12F and 14F was too much for it. I do have a baby of the Dripping Springs plant that I drug inside during the cold front. I think that this plant would do well in S. A. but it might need to be sited right and if we get a huge cold front, you might need to cut it back to the size that one can protect. I managed to keep a O. indica-fera alive by cutting it down to the second rank of pads and padding it with a blanket and a garbage bag.