Linda, I recommend that you give up looking for Archiduchesse Elisabeth d'Autriche. In time, you will have her. At least one cane on your Vick's Caprice will eventually revert back to the Archiduchesse. At that time, simply take a cutting. In fact, my entire Vick's Caprice reverted back to the beautiful Archiduchesse, which was fine. One is as beautiful and as mouthwateringly fragrant as the other. I am so happy you have one on order ... you will LOVE it so much you will be tempted to eat the blooms. Randy Archiduchesse Elisabeth d'Autriche

I live smack dab in the middle of a small town and we have developed quite the deerherd that comes down from the woods and roams the streets (when, I don't know, probably early early morning since I have never seen a deer, only the nibbled plants that they left behind) and dines at their leisure. Since fencing my yard was not a practical option I tried a number of folk remedies including moth balls, hot pepper, "Not Tonight Deer", etc. As far as I could tell, none had any long term effect and the munching continued. The day before I ordered my Ouzi and camos, I attended a Spring plant day organized by my local Cooperative Extension and picked up a couple of newsletters. One had a very simple remedy for a deer repellent in it. Damage was beginning to escalate since I apparently had the tastiest selection in the neighborhood. I decided to try the repellent recipe. I bought one and one half dozen eggs and cracked them into a bowl. I beat them enough to break the yolks and mixed the white and the yolk thoroughly. I stretched a piece of cheesecloth over the mouth of a jumbo size mayonnaise jar and held it in place with a large rubber band (final container has to hold a little more than two quarts of liquid). I poured the eggs through the cheese cloth. The cheese cloth caught the big slimy bits and I threw it away. I added two quarts of water to the beaten eggs in the jar and mixed them together. I used a funnel to pour the egg mixture into a cleaned out Windex sprayer (any sprayer that can be adjusted to spray a mist can be used) and sprayed every plant in my yard, leaves and all. I didn't drench the plant, I just tried to leave a light coating on most of it up to the height of a tall deer. I refilled the bottle and kept spraying until I used all the egg mixture up. I swear I had no more deer damage at all the whole summer. This stuff lasted through rain just fine and I have not reapplied it. Why did this work? Well, the guy who submitted the recipe said he thinks it's because deer have a very keen sense of smell and rotting eggs don't smell very good. The smell to humans is very faint to begin with and non existent after several days. I did not have to reapply for the same reason you have to scrub so hard to get eggs out of pans . . . egg really sticks and it's hard to wash off! I also applied it on a clear day and the egg had a good few days to dry and get adheared before it rained. I should point out that dried eggs are the basis of "Not Tonight Deer" but I found it very expensive and hard to mix and apply. The man who submitted the recipe has a commercial Christmas tree grove and suffered costly and unsightly damage to his trees every year until he tried this. He sprayed only the surrounding outside row of trees and claims that three years later deer still avoid his trees to the point that they won't walk past the smelly outside trees to get to the untreated inside trees. Sorry to write such a long answer but I wanted to be clear on how to try this. I owe a huge debt of gratitude to this guy as he really saved my whole yard and garden. I wanted to pass it on. Its such a wonderful solution . . . it's organic, it's earth friendly, it's long lasting, it's cheap and it does not involve hurting or injuring the deer.

Thank you @Janet for the input, that makes sense about the dark vs light. Your kitchen turned out lovely, so clean and refined yet comfortable and cozy. Mine will be more modern but I hope it can feel as comfortable as yours when it's built! What I mean is just the dimension of the edge profile. Standard is 1 1/5" which is what I am guessing yours is? I've been calling out 1" because I want it a bit thinner, the material itself is .5" like at your sink, I am even considering no edge, just the material thickness. But your's look good and balanced which may talk me into going 1.5" if that is what yours is, it's nice to get a feel from a built kitchen and I have a hard time figuring it out from photos. :) Has your edge chipped? I have quartz right now and it's one of the main reasons I want to stay away from it because my square edge is all chipped up. So do you think I would need something under my coffee pot too? For my simple, modern aesthetic I don't really want to set my coffee pot on anything, but I can certainly use a wood board for the crock and instapot. I have a jura capresso expresso maker, not sure how hot it really gets. I also have a toaster oven. But I guess I might have to have some extra custom trivets made from the stone slab. I am using stone on my island. I'm adding to the list of things to remember! Even tho I would rather not use anything if I could get away with it. Just to clarify, there are times you go all around your counter with a 3m pad, I am sure it's a bit of work, but do you find it easy to get it even? I will be so scared to mess it up! Thank you again for chatting with me about all this, very helpful!

I don't think the reverting has anything to do with your garden or the shipping distance. Maybe, if you're willing to try again, you could seek those roses as larger plants. If what you get includes new shoots coming from the roots, and they haven't reverted, you'd probably have a better shot of maintaining the sport. I think maybe the reversion is more likely to occur in the period between the original cutting feeding the roots and when the roots "reset" to start producing a new plant. But that's just my guess...... I know that High Country Roses has 'Rosa Mundi', and their plants are generally good-sized quarts that would match or surpass gallon-sized plants from some other nurseries. Roses Unlimited has good-sized plants, and maybe there's something within their inventory that interests you. The Antique Rose Emporium has even bigger plants, and if all else fails, get a bare-root budded plant from Palatine. Their plants are so big that I'm sure they've bloomed at least once in their fields before being dug up and shipped. If you'd prefer the roses to go own-root, I've read/heard that planting them at an angle in the ground, with the bud union a few inches below the surface, will encourage that. Oh, and see if you can stop by the park-garden again sometime soon. The roses are having their last flush of the year, and while I think the peak was a couple weeks ago, it's still rather pretty. And you can see the results of my harsh clean-up on some of the Hybrid Teas -- they're looking like they're at Spring-flush -- as well as the patches of red-leaf Oxalis that I've been slowly making my way through, meticulously digging out every little tap-root from each patch. And I can show you some of the new roses that went in already, and a few that I'm waiting to arrive. We also made a somewhat amusing little circle of scarecrows on the way to the perennial garden and shrub field. I made just one lady, but the other gardeners whose chores are winding down have done some more. :-) ~Christopher