Up, up and not away!

You're welcome, Luxrosa. You might as well stack the deck in your favor as much as you possibly can! I saw a great tee shirt yesterday, "I'm not CHEATING...I'm playing by MY rules!" Practicing germinating things BEFORE you create the "perfect rose" is much like that. For years while in school, I worked camera counters in department stores. It used to make me cringe to the floor for people who hit the counter with, "I'm leaving for a month in Europe tomorrow and I NEED a good camera!" Same danged thing! Start something you know nothing about and which requires some acquired skill and practice and isn't easily repeatable. Both are too heavily doomed to fail. Yes, you can repeat the cross. It's been written that Kordes repeated the cross which created Iceberg MANY times and nothing approaching as good a plant as Iceberg ever resulted. How are you going to know if your dream will work if your best chance of success doesn't work because you didn't do it at least well enough for it to have a chance? It's probably going to take you many generations to produce the type of goal you have in your mind's eye. Very often, what you'll see will be small changes at first, so keep a keen eye out for them. It will be interesting seeing how the health of the offspring vary, too. Keep in mind Ralph Moore's admonition..."Create a good plant first, it's always easy to hang a pretty flower on it later." You might also consider creating parallel breeding lines containing what you want to use, plus perhaps some of the better miniatures to help bring the size of the plants, ease of propagation and heavy, continuous repeat flowering back into the equation earlier? First generation hybrid vigor can quickly create some real monsters! For example, if you take a look at what is behind Fairy Moss, you'll find the seminal cross of Pinocchio (3' floribunda) with William Lobb (6'-8' moss) resulted in a 20' moss shrub, from observation of the remaining original plants which grew at Sequoia until its demise. One cross with a miniature tamed the beast to a miniature. Perhaps, if you created some Tea/mini and Alba/mini hybrids, crossing them may result in combining the traits you desire in better plants, more quickly and efficiently? Mr. Moore had discovered minis act like bridges from one section of the family to another, very often increasing the health, vigor, ease of propagation, intensifying flowering and other benefits, along the way. Stripes and moss exist in modern roses today because he was able to bring them out of the Old Garden Roses through miniatures and back into larger moderns. Every striped modern rose traces its origin back to Little Darling and Ferdinand Pichard. His various permutations of this cross, further enhanced by running them through his miniatures, mostly bred from R. Wichurana to improve health, vigor and ease of rooting, resulted in cleaning up many of Ferdinand Pichard's health and vigor issues. You can create similar breeders easily. Select those which have a solid reputation for health and fertility and begin creating hybrids of them with your selected Teas and Albas. Select your hybrids and begin breeding your selections. Engineer in the traits you desire from the foundation so they are more homogenized from the ground up, instead of losing half of them somewhere down the line when you find the need to include other genes to tame the plant, or improve the health, or introduce repeat flowering, etc. Because of moving from a more arid, disease free climate to more of the fog belt last year, I've recently had to rethink and re engineer my own breeder list to improve health. Very healthy, good minis are out there and they are easily obtained. It was never an issue where diseases aren't issues. It IS where they are. Yes, Linda, it is POSSIBLE for foreign pollen to be involved in a self set cross. It just hasn't been shown to be that PROBABLE. Species, wild roses, all have tremendous variation possible within their genes. There are cases of hybridization where they overlap. Species are far more fertile generally than garden roses. Very often, it's because they are single flowers, only one row of petals. That is all that exists naturally without human beings practicing "unnatural selection". Every time you increase a row of petals, you reduce a row of stamen and anthers, reducing fertility. Nature stacks the deck in her favor by not promoting double flowers for very long. They occur, but very seldom last where the single permutation is the more desirable for perpetuation of the species. When those natural hybrids occur, it's also where hundreds, if not thousands, of blooms of the same type are present so the insect pollinator or the wind, is so saturated with the same pollen, it occurs. That would very seldom occur in the average garden where so few of the same rose is grown. If you were a commercial grower, producing hundreds to thousands of the same plant en masse, perhaps. It was common for "breeders" to plant multiple varieties in the hole together in hopes there would be some cross pollination. But, when you read the old rose books and virtually everything raised from those methods was condemned as inferior and nearly synonymous to the originals, it's obvious very little, if any cross pollination occurred. Particularly with the Hybrid Perpetual class, they were sorted by "Types", not just because they grew like the archetype for the section, but very often because they were virtually identical, so if you grew the best, you knew the rest. Grow a bunch of self set seed from any of your garden roses and see what I mean. Most will greatly resemble what they were raised from and many will be inferior. Not all, but the vast majority. You will find variations, and the wider/wilder the cross which created the rose being used for seed was, the wider and wilder the variations will be. If you raise seed from a Hybrid Tea which contains nearly the same ancestors on both sides of its cross, you don't have much with which to work and most are going to come out inferior versions of the original. But, if you look at something like Cardinal Hume, which has a very wide variety of types and classes on both sides of his family tree (yes, some over lap and repetition, but much other different material there to stir things up), you can see why self set seed from him has created such a wide range of results, from dwarf versions to greatly differing colors and plant sizes. It CAN be possible to find interesting things in self set seed, but your best potential comes from roses with such diverse backgrounds, just as they mostly do from deliberate crosses. Trade organizations such as the AARS were officially originally created to prevent the importation and distribution of inferior roses, those similar to but inferior to what was already being sold here to prevent the destruction of the industry. Ellwanger and Foster-Mellier among others, attempted to perform those similar functions, to alert the reader that there was a lot of junk on the market. It has been a continuous problem from the earliest days of rose commerce, both here and abroad, and will continue to be as long as people are willing to take chances on the unknown. As long as you can chalk up the failures and money wasted to "at least I tried", you'll probably have fun. Once you hit the regret that you wasted the time, effort and money, then it's a problem. Fostering the business of providing inferior products and service by monetarily supporting it, voting with our dollars, does hurt everyone and the industry on the whole.

My sibs and I delt with this last summer/fall. My Mom swore she wouldn't be like her mother and leave a full house for the kids to deal with -- but she kept finding reasons not to downsize from a 5 bedroom house to senior living until a health crisis! Her home was in relatively good condition and in a desirable area. But it needed some work to take it from "40 year old nice" to really ready to sell. We all have our quirks and Mom was no different. For example, she had a hard time understanding why we insisted that the dark, unvarnished doors and woodwork in the upstairs hall be painted. But what a difference that made. From dark hole to bright and clean looking (I know some of the painted over handprints were mine from 30 years ago!). Mom was proud of her home and how nicely she had decorated it. And it was nice ...but a "grandma house" and like all of our homes full of more stuff than is ideal for selling. We talked about some things and started on some small things while she was there but waited for the painting and major staging until she had moved out of state. That was much better for all of us. My sister in law could go into business as a home stager. She did a stupendous job moving things around and adding a few items borrowed from her home or bought cheaply at target to really make the house look more updated and spacious. Some of the things we did: Kitchen-Thoroughly degreased kitchen cabinets, replaced pulls with inexpensive ones off ebay, took valences down and decluttered. Family Room-Updated colors by Padding and arranged a nice throw cover on her 50's sofa, removed shabby recliner, took everything from built in bookshelves and put a select few books back with a few display items. Took down window coverings to enhance light and update. Wrapped fabric around window seat cushion to blend with updated colors.Removed endtable. Room looked more spacious and inviting. LR-Rearranged and packed away boxes and boxes of very lovely knicknacks, and art work. Took up rugs that were on carpet. Had sheers and drapes open for more light. Bedrooms- took up rugs to show hardwoods,painted dark slider closet doors, took out many small items of furniture including bookshelves, sewing machine, computer desk, etc. Moved some stuff into other rooms for better balance. A br papered with a small ruby pink print wass transformed by putting a dark tan spread on the bed and removing some dainty accessories and adding a small wood dresser from another room. It was amazing how the changes neutralized the pink and pulled out the neutral tan from the paper. In the mbr her worn out bedding was replaced by a nice comforter and plenty of pillows (on sale a target)all arranged like in a magazine. The family photo galleries were taken down and walls repainted as needed, many curtains taken down and replaced by inexpensive sheers. The carpets were professionally cleaned and , boy, did that ever spiff things up. All in all, it was a lot of work upfront but the result was that my Mom got a good price quickly as compared to some homes that have stayed unsold. The area in NJ had a slowing market but we felt that being in a desirable neighborhood, by a good school, and now in move in condition, that the house would sell w/o difficulty. We priced it fairly but not too low. The first looker made a low offer we rejected much to the realtors dismay. Within 10 days the a much better offer was made by a much more qualified buyer. They love their new home. Wish I'd known about the Mr Clean trick for her counters. Good luck with your Mom. If you can, get her moved, then get the condo spiffed up. In the long run it's easier on everyone and the only way to do some things w/o offending her. Keep stressing how you fix up a home to sell is not the same as how you live in it--that it needs to be a little bare.

I agree a little with all of you. Yes this hit a nerve about the baby thing within me - - and I do think he is very male and didn't see the deeper issue with how to a woman this is a special, intimate thing that an ex should not be involved with even if it's in good fun. Maybe I take it more serious. But I do think he is still too entangled with the ex, she still hasn't learned to let up on asking his opinion about things and he still hasn't learned to set boundaries. He's gotten better but there's still a way to go. I told him how I felt about it after venting on this board and he said that he agreed with me. I told him that this baby has a father and the last thing this baby would want to find out it that his mothers ex was involved with his name! This is a biracial baby (father is black) and the mother wants to give him her last name which is Irish and I find it odd that everyone is pushing for an Irish first name as well when this baby will have many ethnicities to celebrate within his family. That's just my opinion and I am keeping to myself (and to ya'll). I know - it's not my call but it's the way I would handle it. My concern is now that she has asked about names I could very well see her asking him opinions on schools, etc in the future. My husband is very intelligent and a "leader" type so people often look to him for guidance, but in my opinion he is no longer her "pack" leader and the perks of having his opinion and advice in her life was over when the marriage was over. I explained this very point to him in the past when we argued about something else to do with her and he agreed at the time. But he doesn't realize when he's doing it! So frustrating.