Another thing about climbers that I've found is... Climbing sports of bush roses generally do not repeat bloom as well as the bush form. They apparently spend more time trying to climb, taking energy away from blooming. That's why I only use climbers that are just climbers. And Campanula, it's funny you mentioned the thing about the passion flower vines. I used to have one, and everybody at my work wanted cuttings. I always remember one of the girls telling me how when she took it home, she had the cutting in a little plastic container of water on her dashboard. It was a fairly long piece of stem I gave her, and one of the tendrils had reached up and grabbed her passenger-side visor and was happily hanging on til she got home. I always thought that was so funny.

OMG this is bittersweet. It occurred to me to google the address, and google brought up a map with a street view for there. It is not at all the same. Some would think it is nicer. The front door used to face the Court which is now named Kandace Court. There was a teenage girl named Kandi across the street, can't remember their last name shouldn't post it if I did. I wonder if her parents perhaps bought more property and had the Court renamed? Her mother grew beautiful roses. At least there's a house still there, but I can't tell if they added the front on or what looks like a 1/2 story dormer on top at the back (nothing like that then). I don't remember the roof being pitched that steeply or any crawl space beneath the roof, no basement, they don't have them in CA. They could have used the basic frame which is about the same. It was white painted clapboard wood siding. The front left window looks like it might be the same. There was a carport to the back. And our friends lived next door to the left, that house is pretty much the same except for new steps and rails. I do remember all their names mom, dad, 4 girls. They could have razed it and put up a mfr'ed home or a prefab. Such memories! I'm moved to tears for some reason. I have photos of it then but they're slides and not scanned, several of my oldest daughter when she was little on that very sidewalk. I'm going to send this to my kids. I'm just flooded with emotions seeing this. That was my second child's first home, my daughter Rachel, and we left for Iowa when she was 2 months old in January 1966. Oh my. So I guess there will be no need for you to photograph it. I'll see if they have more street views of the neighborhood. The lawn looks neglected, and it's hard to imagine the people who might live there now. At least something is still there, but from the house, I would not have recognized it.

How odd. I had a similar thing happen here. I bought a new rose and didn't have time to re-pot it, so I stuck it along with the ugly black pot it came in into an attractive ceramic container. Along comes the Big storm, monster winds (40-60 mph) with over 5 inches of rain. I figured that with that much water the rose should hold for at least 3 days or more given our mild 70's weather. Nope, 2 days after the storm it's wilted. Took the rose out of the ceramic pot, watered it, left it sitting in a saucer with drained out water and sure enough it perked right back up. To me the two obvious problems could be the growing medium that the rose is in is too well drained; And/Or, the roots have been so chopped off to fit the plastic pot that despite the downpour, the moisture was taken out of the leaves faster then the roots could absorb it. There is a 3rd extremely remote possibility, but I won't know the answer until I find the time to repot the rose...What's the root/soil situation with your roses?

It's important to note that a mixture of lighting options allows us to select which ones we're going to use at any time, which in turn helps cut the BTUs and the bill. It's a mistake to wire a room to be very bright in all corners at all times when all that's necessary sometimes is one or two bulbs for reading the paper at the island. One of DH and my goals was to make selectable lighting. Our house tends to be quite dark in the interior even when the exterior walls are lighted by windows, so we tried to work this out. A couple new or improved doorway openings will help. We have planned a lot of new lighting--perhaps too much. But we will be able to leave much of the room dark-ish if we want it so. We like the term "task lighting" and have employed it. We spent a lot of time asking ourselves "what lighting will we want when we ____" and we tried out a lot of scenarios: walking through the space and returning again quickly; working for hours at the peninsula; eating at peninsula; eating at table; washing dishes; etc. We tried to avoid overkill by choosing a range of lighting types and sites. Example: a single 2-bulb ceiling light over the main corridor section alongside the kitchen, the "walk through and leave" light, which will also serve for "go get the salt in the kitchen" trips. But our decisions also required a lot of wall switches, esp. because we can enter the space through 5 different doorways. My wallet is glad DH was the electrician.