I bought 3 YL bare root from DA spring 2012. The good-large fragrant blooms; lasted well when cut (about as long as Golden celebration for me, which is not as good as William Shakespeare 2000, but not as bad as something like Jude the Obscure. Incidentally, i think GC would be a great companion to YL.) The bad-big spring flush, but no real repeat bloom (like my experience with young Gertrude Jekyll) and despite being in good sun(west exposure) with good air circulation the foliage didn't look healthy and had problems with powdery mildew and black spot (I don't spray and we have a lot of disease pressures here.) I'm giving it another two years hoping things will improve because I was impressed by the size of those first blooms and I can still picture the bouquet I cut from that first big flush... Also agree on receiving roses from DA with RMV-so frustrating-bought another trio of gertrude jekyll-now that is the best fragrance!-and planted together. All flushed nicely-then one shows a terrible case of thick yellow RMV striping on the leaves. Tossed it, but have to assume the other two are infected as well and will show those tell tale markings in future seasons...

I have had Therese Bugnet for several years, and she has always been in partial shade (maybe 4 hours of sun per day). She has a wonderful spring flush, and is finally, since last year, repeating a little here and there. The only problem is she is more prone to mildew there, and some leaf spotting (antracnose/cercospora?) in late summer/early fall. I love her though....she is the first to bloom in the spring, and her fragrance, after a long, cold winter does wonders for the soul. Judith

Yeah, good question. I think you can judge it by how they behave in other situations. Can they sit through a whole movie at home without getting restless; How long can they sit in church; what does their teacher say about their school-day behavior; can they sit quietly through a meal at a restaurant? Etc. Of course, you could think it's the right time and be wrong cuz kids are kids! I agree that a short kids' movie during the day is the best time/place to begin. And be ready to make a quick escape if it gets out of hand. I've heard of the special matinees for parents with young kids. I don't know if they do it anymore, I wonder how necessary it really is with dvds & the like. Honestly, I haven't gone to a theatre to see a movie in years. The last few times I went, I really felt the experience was not worth it. People talking through the movie, cell phones ringing, etc. And these are adults. I used to sign up through our local newspaper for free movie nights. They'd pick names at random and send free tickets to a new movie preview night. We used to go about once every couple of months. Free! But I got tired of all the commercials before the movie and disturbances I mentioned above. The last movie we went to see, the sound wasn't working properly and it was too low. After all the previews and about 20 minutes into the movie, they finally decided to fix it. Well, after about a 15 minute wait, instead of just picking up where they left off, they started the whole sequence over again, including previews! I swore that was the last time I'd go to the movies. I have a large screen and surround sound at home, cheap popcorn, clean bathrooms, and if anyone talks through the film, I can rewind!

Ladyvixen, we were in our 30's in 1985 when we bought our 1898 house. Looking back, we were very young. Neither my husband nor I had any skills or knowledge at all about how to work on houses. All we knew was that our house was nearly intact, was very inexpensive, and that we loved it. I had always wanted an old house, and had been buying things such as light fixtures, hardware, etc., for years before we bought the house. We bought the house "as is". Fortunately we were both employed and had no children. We had to hire almost everything done, and it needed a lot of work. We did not take a vacation for years. Then came a time of around a year or two that my husband was either unemployed or underemployed. During that time, the house just didn't get worked on. We didn't care that we lived in an unfinished house; in fact, I thought it was beautiful from day one. We have a corner in the dining room where all the little balls the cats play with end up, but you don't notice the slope otherwise. It has taken us over 25 years, and we are almost finished, but still have some work to do. We should have it finished by now, but are in our 60's now and do like to take a vacation now and then. Also we sometimes didn't have work done even when we had the money, because we were tired of the mess of having things torn up. We lived with a practically non-existent kitchen until about 2004. I said all along that this house was my dream house. People would look at me funny, but it was and still is my dream house. Don't let others talk you out of your dream. Make the decision based on what you want and what you think you can handle. If you think you can live with an unfinished house for years, go for it. If you have to have everything finished and perfect, you shouldn't buy an old house. I have the ablility to not even see the unfinished stuff until we get ready to do something about it. I meant this to be an encouragement to you, but reading back on it, maybe this will scare you because it has taken us so long. Don't let that scare you--you can do it faster than we did! I will try to attach some pictures if I can.