The climate in New Zealand…would it be like Zone 8-10 or do you get ’cold’ weather in your Winters? I live in southern California and as you know, we dont get much ’rain’ let alone temperatures below 50* almost all year long. i visited Campbell Town Scotland once and that temperture remained cool and damp most of the year…(I was informed)…and though i always wanted to ’see’ Australia and New Zealand, i never got an invite so i don’t know the climate. a great encouragement to guys like us is to watch videos on Youtube about growing Food Forests!!!!…and those guys amazing success about all types of ideas!!!!!

Honestly, a Cornelian cherry pie is the best cherry pie in the world. With vanilla ice cream, it's out of this world. I think of this fruit as the rhubarb of the "cherry" world. The taste is quite distinct and definitely not cranberry. Once you add sugar, the fruit is transformed. To make pie filling, I add sugar, red wine, a bit of lemon juice, touch of salt, ground black pepper, and some ground cloves. I use a bit of flour for thickener. People are skeptical when I extol the virtues of this pie, but once they've tried it, they're believers. Cornus mas is a huge seller in the Caucasus and Turkey, where it's routinely turned into jam (pits left in the fruit) and used to sweeten tea, especially when you have a cold or flu. It's a pain to pit it; a cherry pitter really doesn't do the job. I was in Tbilisi when I discovered the cherries years ago and pitted them while I watched the Clinton impeachment proceedings on television. I used a paperclip (and still do) to preserve as much of the whole, soft, very ripe fruit as I could. A friend in the Caucasus gently rolls the cherries over a grater to get the fruit off (she don't make pies with it; mine was the first she tried). Occasionally, for pie, I have a "pitting party": invite seven friends over, and in one hour, you will have the amount of pitted cherries it would have taken you eight hours to pit by yourself. As a reward, all pitters get a piece of pie. I boil the leftover pits to remove the clinging bits of fruit, which results in a strong Cornelian cherry juice that I turn into sorbet, using the same ingredients (sans flour) I use for the pie filling. A friend from New York told me I could make a fortune selling the sorbet there. (Sure, if someone invents a pitter.) The fruit also makes a wonderful sauce--delicious on chicken or ice cream or on anything else you would flavor with cherry. This cherry would make an excellent liqueur, I think.

bmorepanic- I've know you're a frequent poster so I was pretty sure you were okay, but I just wanted to be sure! Getting the right tone can be so difficult online. I really like that 1/2 round table, BTW. Is that Scherrs or DIY? Angie- Skytrain, US Navy retired! Went on to fly GIII, but the handle is stuck. Mixed hardwood drawer boxes are one of the Scherrs options that's less expensive than the solid cherry. Here's one of the coolest things about working with Scherrs: I wanted that micro/convection combo wall oven lower than standard because I didn't want to be reaching up and over a hot oven door to pull out a heavy pan, like at my SIL's house. So I talked to Leon and told him about how high I wanted it, and then said, I want the cabinet above to be able to hold full-sized sheet pans (it's got those dividers for sheet pans and pizza trays and a pizza peel and cutting boards), and then make the cabinet above the size of whatever is left over. Then, however high that top cabinet above the wall oven turns out, the ones on top all along the left side have to match that height, whatever it is. Dang, I just remembered that I still need to get glass for those glass-front doors. Obviously I never use anything in there. Also, FYI, if you couldn't tell, the cabinets are all 30" deep with 27" pullouts, uppers 15" deep and set higher off the countertop than normal, 22", so that stuff would fit under them, such as mixer and coffee maker. The customization you can do with Scherrs is wonderful!

Mine started off looking light just like yours. I am amazed at how the recent blooms got darker the longer they bloomed. They must have changed colors about 10 times. I am also amazed at how long the blooms last (close to 3 weeks, then brought inside in a vase and it stilled looked great after a week). This is one rose I am highly impressed with!