Patricia, Glorie de Dijon - Died this winter. 3 years old. Was in too much shade, but I had read that this was a rose that could tolerate some shade. It never was a strong rose, but I wasn't expecting it to die. Beautiful blooms. I want another one of these. Love that fleshy color. Rev d Or - Lived for 2 years. Grew by leaps and bounds, then one spring it leafed out and then died before blooming. I look at my roses often and the death was very sudden. One day it looked bad, within a couple of days after that it was dead. I think this happened last spring. Bouquet d Or - Bought from ARE, so it was a 2 or 3 gallon rose. I think it was bought and planted in the early fall. It didn't grow much and was dead within a year (maybe a half a year). This was 2 or 3 years ago. I also lost Sombruil the climber. It lived for 3 years then started dying back this past winter. I kind of thought it would come back from the ground this year, but no such luck. I hope this helps. I've lost some HTs to the creeping die back crud, but some of these OGRs were kind of sudden. I've got other noisettes in the same area: Jaune Desprez, MAC, and others whose names I can't remember, but they are all very much alive. .... so far.

You might ask the folks at the Antique Rose Emporium, with their experience with roses in the south. They offer a lot of Hybrid Musks. This information probably isn't very directly useful to you, since a rose's performance depends so much on climate BUT I wish to put it on the record that a happy mature plant of 'Cornelia' is one of the most flawlessly beautiful sights in the entire rose kingdom. Like any work of art it's greater than the sum of its parts. About the habit of the Hybrid Musks, some have a shrubby self-supporting habit, for example 'Felicia', while others are like pocket ramblers, with flexible canes that are easy to trellis: 'Cornelia' falls into this class. You can grow it without support, but it will lounge, like 'Buff Beauty' in the photo above. Melissa

SB, That primula is pretty! By adverse I mean not only a lack of sun, there are also the big trunk like roots growing many feet deeply into my property along with thick feeder roots and they immediately suck the ground bone dry after watering or rain creating a difficult, if not impossible 120' x 15' area that is not good for any kind of desirable gardening and very difficult to dig. Thats a lot of square feet being affected by neighbor neglect and on a city lot when space is always at a premium its a bit hard to swallow at times. I found that Salvia greggi which will take the dry conditions do surprisingly well since the tree leaves are not dense during their best blooming time and they are defoliating when the salvias are back in bloom in fall. A really big surprise is how well Silver King Artemisia does. I have lots of this growing in groups in the area. It stands tall and thick and adds some much needed bright silver interest lightening up the otherwise dark area. I wouldn't have guessed it would do so well. Cool season grasses like stipa varieties that go dormant in summer are also choices and I am having luck with hardy Lantana too. Of course all these bloom better in full sun but they are still attractive and able to take the conditions I am dealing with. What I am trying to get are plants/shrubs that will provide some height as well as visual size presence since its a transition zone that jumps drastically from low growing plants to this sudden and abrupt line of unattractive mismatched volunteer trees and messy undergrowth. Currently the effect is very jarring, like a 30 ft wall of blackness that feels and looks visually oppressive. I am on the downhill side which adds to the problem because my yard is much lower than the neighbors so eye level is distorted from his ground level to mine making it even harder to achieve a graceful visual transition. I'm planting on his side (with permission) to get some height. So many plants I've tried just end up seriously leaning east looking like they are attempting escape and further emphasizing the lopsided problem so I have to go back to the drawing board but these I mentioned have worked. Actually, all of my backyard plantings, even those in full sun, lean east in varying degrees except for the O. grasses. This post was edited by GreatPlains1 on Wed, Jan 1, 14 at 21:51

My mother had purchased her interment site decades ago - in her hometown, where she hadn't lived for the decades since. She had also picked out a dress to be buried in, and had shown it to me several times in the years before her final illness. She was in a nursing home in my town, 115 miles away, with hospice. The nursing home (or hospice, I don't recall which) arranged for her remains to be picked up by a local mortuary after death was declared. I arranged the funeral with the funeral home in her hometown, that had been used by my family many times. They arranged to have the body transported to them, handled all of the paperwork (including obtaining the death certificate from my county), and placed the obit that I wrote in the local paper. 3 of my 4 siblings, my aunt and her best friend, and 2 of 5 my nieces came to the small service that we had in a parlor of the funeral home. There was no one else who knew or were friends with her (and I had no friends that I had remained in contact with) left in town. My niece's husband (they lived locally) arranged for the chaplain from his work to give a little homily and lead prayer; I found a musician to play 3-4 of her favorite hymns on guitar. Then all we went to the interment at the cemetery. One of my SILs arranged with someone she knew to prepare and serve a casual lunch in a facility at the cemetery for us. BTW, that was the only family member who did anything - the others never even offered - to arrange or help pay for it all. Mom didn't have any insurance benefit or funds left to help pay. ETA: I did all this really out of respect for my elderly aunt - that it pleased my sister and 2 of her daughters was nice but really not a consideration. My brothers wouldn't have minded either way, but I was glad that the oldest drove up from Tennessee - I hadn't seen him in many years, and probably never will again - I was 7 when he left home at the age of 18 and we were never close as adults. At the time it was rather a stretch for my finances. So, I did negotiate with the funeral home about the charges; in fact, I declined their caskets and found a company that sold and delivered lovely caskets in Cincinnati at a much lower cost.