LOL, I hear ya! I have nothing buy boys here so it would not matter if I tried not tracking dirt in. Maybe find some sort of large but not too tall plastic bin to keep outside the door on the days you are gardening a lot. Have a lawn chair and a towel near it and you can clean your feet before coming in. I however always find myself running in the house for something while gardening, normally I take my shoes off in a back room that has no a/c, but when I just want to grab something real quick, I dont bother so I end up make a mess.

vapor, I can understand that in your climate most of the old roses might be once-bloomers, whereas I'm also able to grow teas, noisettes and Chinas very well. However, polyanthas and hybrid musks are also considered to be in the category of old roses, although perhaps not of interest to you or well-known. I have no clear affinity with any one opinion because you all argue your positions so ably, and I'm afraid I fall in the camp of the wishy-washy. I know that I have an affinity for the old Austins and I thought that Austin's original mission had a touch of genius to it. Now the Austin firm is crossing one seedling with another seedling to achieve yet one more saleable rose, and that dilutes not only the original message but the ancestry of the Austin roses as well. I confess to loving and having Evelyn, but she at least is only a second-generation crossing. Bishop's Castle and other Austins I've had fall into a mid range in terms of ancestry and age, and that shows that I'm no purist. Some roses that purport to have something of an old rose look like the Kordes roses don't appeal to me because of the rather graceless form and thick, leathery leaves. I'm seeing this with my Plum Perfect roses which I would not choose again because of those qualities. None of this is very helpful in terms of what direction should be taken in the future, even assuming that Houzz would allow any deviation from what we now have. I tend to think that the best way to encourage as many people as possible to grow and cherish the old roses is to keep buying them from nurseries so that they can afford to stay in business, and to take pictures of their flowers and growth habits here and to extol their virtues and beauty here. How this is achieved in terms of formatting of the forums is perhaps of secondary importance, at least for me. My main and primary allegiance is and always will be the Antique Rose Forum because it is my spiritual home. However, I must admit that I'm promiscuous enough to admire and lust after any number of modern roses that satisfy my criteria for old rose charm. In this fraught time of climate change and ever-hotter gardens it may also come down to simply which roses will survive best in our gardens, and it will not matter whether they are old or were created yesterday. Charles Darwin may well have the last, final word with his theory of survival of the fittest, whether of roses or of man.

Melissa, I have a little -- very little actually -- patch of woods that I call my "Look Into" garden. I love to go and poke around to see what is happening there in the early spring. Like your woods, it is planted in native spring ephemerals, snowdrops, and assorted spring bulbs. I love that patch of ground!

Jackie, I participate on the plant ID forum as well as the rose forums. It's fun, and really tests my brain at times, lol. This one was fairly easy. Out of the hundreds, maybe thousands of different plants I've grown, I happen to have grown an almost identical form of sparaxis. I checked my records, and the one I grew is Sparaxis 'alba maxima'. But they do NOT like my climate and behave more as annuals unless mulched heavily....which then keeps the bulbs too damp through our wet winters. I could dig and replant every season, but I don't even dig my dahlias and glads. If they survive, they survive, lol (most do!). Lovely flowers, but I have to choose my battles, and roses and figs are where I put most of my energy! Here are some more, and better photos when I googled for Sparaxis 'alba maxima'