Thank you, Jim and Cottagegarden for reviving this thread. I really appreciate the company of kind, and positive visitors to this forum. Like Cottagegarden, I bought 2 soil-test kits from local stores: Lowe and HomeDepot. They are totally useless and gave false result. Then I paid $20 for EarthCo. (professional soil-testing company) and my soil test came back high pH at 7.7, and deficient in everything, plus barely adequate in calcium ... I was so sure that my soil has plenty of calcium !! I'm next to a limestone quarry. For years I disagree with my neighbor on calcium. He insisted that his tomato in pots are lacking in calcium (blossom end-rot) ... He's right, after seeing how mixing gypsum (calcium sulfate) into the soil made 1st-year band-size La Reine went beserk with buds: due to winter-kill, it's only 8 inch. tall, but with 10 buds !! But the plant is stunt & brown leaves, and the blooms are small. I forgot to give it sulfate of potash (it should be twice more potassium than calcium). Yes to mixing gypsum into planting hole, but no more than 10% (I spent hours researching on the right % to mix in). I broke that rule many times, and end up with stunt plants & leaves showing potassium deficiency. Too much calcium drives down potassium. If you have a large garden, soil can vary: some part can be alkaline if watered frequently with high pH tap water. Most tap water are alkaline, I already tested a few with fish-tank litmus paper, even mineral bottled water has pH over 8. Some part of a garden can be acidic (if get rain water only, pH at 5.6). My soil test recommend mixing sulfur into clay. BAD ADVICE !! That was expensive and killed tons of earthworms. I like gypsum better, less caustic & cheaper ($4 for 25 lb. at Menards). Gypsum is great in breaking up compacted clay, provides calcium, plus de-salt soil. I moved 4 roses this spring: The ones that didn't get gypsum in the planting hole were slower to recuperate. The one that got gypsum in the planting hole, was VERY FAST in pumping out buds. See Duchess de Rohan below, 2 weeks after moving, with lots of buds. I moved that one since it was in too much shade, zero blooms. After moving to more sun, it exploded in buds. A note on moving roses. Roses which are grafted on Dr. Huey is less forgiving in moving. Dr. Huey is a long stick, and it's easy to break the tiny roots at the end. I moved knock-outs grafted on Dr. Huey twice before. Both time they lost all their leaves, and took at least 3 months to get back to normal. With own-root, it's so much easier to move: The roots are cluster: wide & shallow, rather than a long & deep stick like Dr. Huey. I moved at least 10 own-roots for the past 4 years: They recuperate quickly, lose zero leaves, IF THE ORIGINAL SOIL IS LOOSE & FLUFFY, then moving is zero stress. If the original soil is compact, digging them up caused many roots to be broken.

Oooh!! Lovely!! Does it have any scent? That's probably asking too much for such a beautiful rose!! Carol

Melissa, if you want to do the pherormonal traps next year (it's too late for this year, methinks,because the major season for the beetles is May/June;now there are just the stragglers) PLEASE LET ME KNOW!!! The traps themselves cost very little, but what rips the buyer from Italy off is the shipping and, since I don't have a partita IVA,the taxes ( the fact that Hungary does not have the euro has something to do with all this, making the cost for the inexpensive traps go way up-and the scientists who actually make the traps see none of this extra money! all for shipping,etc!) So we could order together ,thus cutting the cost for both of us ,and not cheating the actual scientists -totally non-profit,it seems to me- of a dime! My own store of traps is sadly diminished,since because of my health issues I was unable to collect them out of the lower garden after their period of use was over, and they are made of plastic so no doubt the're totally deteriorated by now. So if you are really interested, let me know-either here or in an e-mail, please. It would be a savings for both of us. .

I have all three of those, and I sheepishly have to report that I can't say Julia Child is much better than Doris Day. They're both knee-high wonders in my yard that put out 3-4 blooms every couple of weeks. My JC even into a third or fourth year isn't a very frequent bloomer, and the blooms fade to cream in the heat. Doris Day doesn't bloom quite as often as JC, but the blooms don't fade nearly as much. Both of them infinitely outperform Honey Bouquet who refuses to survive my winters after several tries. I may be at the limits of cold preferences for DD and JC. Can't help you at all on fragrance of course. Cynthia