My roses are leafing out beautifully, in spite of many leaves on new shoots all dried up from frostburn, but the warm stable spring seems to be here. The roses sure loves temps between 60 and 70 degrees F and it rained all night and day and we are going to get more during the week. and then it is going to be warmer and sunnier again. I can litterally hear everything grow ... everything is getting greener every day. Of course I shop like crazy these days. I have almost run out of space, but I am potting all the new roses I buy. The new Meilland roses roses arrived from France in the usually very poor condition (all roots chopped off). I potted them in big pots with 3-5 roses in each and hope that they grow better roots during the season so I can plant them in the fall. Also some new Tantau roses are being potted I just want to see the flowers and smell them before I decide whether I like them or not. I have bought a lot more companian plants (Perennials and herbs) and have planted most of them this saturday. The Iris I planted this spring are shooting new leaves and I look forward getting more during the summer and again in the fall. I have also gotten some ornamental grasses I look forward seeing this year. I sowed more foxgloves, salvias and real opium poppies this weekend. I constantly need many foxglowes seedlings since they do not flower the first year. I have also gotten a few more clematis. Some of the climbers really surprises me by the impressive new growth they put out, they are going to look great in 5 or 6 weeks from now when they start blooming. Tomorrow I have to go buy a lot of plants for my clients gardens and plenty of containers. Off course I am buying lots of roses (for one big garden I need many white roses) and they also need to have the presummer pots arranged. I also got a new client today ... he has a neglected garden with bad weeds that needs spraying with herbicides. I hate that! But in this case it is called for, because of very obnoxius perenial weeds. His wife had a stroke and he has not had time to do any gardening since she needs so much care, so he has hired me to improve and replant, and maintain their garden. I can not take any more clients since I have all the work I can handle ... but I made an exception in his case. I will have to hire another gardener to help out if I am going to expand my business more. So I just have to fertilize the roses in 2 weeks from now and then wait and hope we are going to have very good first flush of roses with warm dry conditions for some weeks. Oh and Btw one of my roses have canker really bad ... I am not quite sure If I must cut the infected parts away or if I shall wait until the first flush. And one rose against a wall (Gruss an Teplitz) has the worst case of BS I have ever seen this early in the season. Strange since no other roses have it and I did spray it once already. Every season is so unique and have different challenges.

I can't see how adjusting the valves would be related to blowing a head gasket. IF the gasket was "slightly blown" AND the intake valve lash was so loose that the cylinder wasn't getting a full "charge" of air on the intake stroke, than possibly allowing the engine to develop more power than it had been, might have been enough to put the gasket "over the edge". That's getting to be quite a stretch though and still wouldn't be the root cause. Besides, you'd probably have trouble starting the engine for multiple reasons. (compression release not functioning amongst them) How would putting the piston @ BDC be useful? IF you are going to change the head gasket, you want the piston in a position where both push rods are loose. The fact you asked that question makes me wonder about the procedure you used to adjust the valves.

Heere another favorite Flower Girl this one I got from Amity's Roses back when they were an all own root nursery. I've it for 12 years or more. In all that time she has never had a spot or mildew also apparently immune to anthracnose. She is normally a bit more upright I gave her too much nitrogen last year. Also spent to much time growing rather than flowering as much as normal. Won't do that again. Next to her is one of several gladiolus that I have had nearly as long. This is it's third time moved. Moved it right before our first wretched polar vortex winter and it lived. These are summer glads that should not be even close to hardy, I never dig them up to store them. They always come back even when the ground freezes below the bulb. Trust me here as it turns out glads have an amazing survival skill. I dug a clump a few years ago as it wasn't performing like it should. Well it was a giant stack of bulbs. When the bulb froze it would grow a new one on top so there was always the top couple still producing green leaves. Maybe glads always grow this way I don't know. All I need to do is take off the top bulb and replant about 8 inches deep and its starts the whole again. It was a stack of ten bulbs. One for each year it was planted. Sorry that was so long especially if you don't like glads.

The fruitless under the can light Meiwa has finished its growth spurt with a total of 44 linear inches of new twigs with fresh leaves. It is now tied for the second biggest of seed grown Meiwa kumquat trees I picked the fruit off the other Meiwa tree at half ripe and the skin was sweet and the flesh was very juicy but not much flavor in sweet or sour. I was afraid a mouse would get it and it was the only fruit from a seed grown tree. I also picked all the much ripper fruit from my grafted meiwa and the fruit was sweet skinned with semi sweet tart flesh. very much worth eating. This will actually be the last entry for this thread from Me and I will continue this discussion in "4 seed grown 2 year old Meiwa kumquat tree for year 2019". I will leave a link to the new thread when I start it. forget what I said above. I did not expect this much change in one of the trees. Steve