Sara - glad you joined me in a joint order, and I know your garden will be lovely with all those Queen of Sweden bushes. This recent rain will definitely make them happy, and they're off to a great start in your hands. All of our gardens have evolved over time, so be patient and enjoy the growing time. I'm glad you got to catch the tail end of my spring garden, and I appreciate your kind comments. Ingrid, you're so sweet - I'm glad you enjoyed the pictures! In warmer zones like yours, you can't grow tulips and other spring bulbs, so I thought I'd share some of mine with you. You have an exquisite sense of taste and balance in your own gardens, so I appreciate so much your kind remarks about the harmony and flow in my gardens. I am woefully unartistic in any other sense of my life (can't draw worth beans), so I love your label of "garden artist'. Truthfully, I'm just the hands and it's up to the Maker of the garden for the actual artistry in action. Still, it's fun to be a part of the process and sit back in wonder at the surprises waiting in the garden at every season. My first roses bloomed this weekend - Quadra actually beat out Felix Leclerc (who is usually first), and in a cold part of the yard to boot. Time to move into summer mode! Cynthia

Caldwell Pink -- 3 x 3 seems like a safe bet. Carefree Beauty -- mine is new this year. It shot up a new cane that's already 4' long. Hopefully, I gave this one enough room. Gruss an Aachen -- I have pink Gruss. 3 x 3 should be good. Mme Isaac Pereire definitely wants to get long. I let her peg herself ... she grows up and arches over on her own. Verdun is one of my oldest roses. It will easily stay at about 3' high, if you deadhead the whole cluster of flowers once they're finished blooming. It grows mostly vertically, with little spread. This one must be sprayed in order to have any leaves in summer. Shailer's Provence -- my original Shailer's grows in the front border by the cherry tree, so it gets less sun than it probably should. It wants to be about 5 - 6' tall. My second Shailer's is in the rose field, in full sun, and it's the same height. The difference between the two is that the one in more sun is suckering like crazy. Plan for this. Mableton Rouletii should stay about 2 x 2. It grows very densely. When it starts blooming in spring, the whole plant is a mass of tiny pink flowers. Wonderful! St. Thomas China is a bit looser than Mableton Rouletii, but still a compact grower. There was no winter damage on it this year at all, while Single Pink China and Comtesse du Cayla on either side of it were killed to the ground. 3 x 3, maybe if it grows for a couple of years. Little Buckaroo will fit very nicely with the other mini chinas. The size should be somewhere between Mableton Rouletii and St. Thomas China. Beauty of Rosemawr ... I'm beginning to doubt the ID on this one. It was sold to me as BoR, but I haven't seen a photo of it online or anywhere else that looks like the one I have. The flowers are stunning, but it's definitely not what BoR looks like on HMF. Thanks for the endorsement. I have tried really hard to make this a welcoming place, with quality roses and good information. It's nice to see that it's working. Too many other old garden rose nurseries have left us ... I have to hang in there to make sure these roses have a home, and to provide a source for people who want to grow them in their own garden. Connie

Kathi you sound like my one friend. When I told her in an email that I was having tea and pie, she said "Having tea are you? Well I just got home from Home Depot and have all these flowers and shrubs to plant!". lol So I hurried and snapped a pic of the tea tray with the pie to send to her just to be mischievious, came in to insert the camera card into the computer to transfer the photo but - here I'd forgotten to put the media card back in the camera in the first place! So no photo to post for you either :( ha. Yes, the pie was good but not enough rhubarb in it like Mom used to make. At least it wasn't Ruhbarb Custard pie, I don't care for that at all.

This is a fun conversation. My two bits on various things people have said: Titian, if your EdL grows anything like mine, four feet is way too close. Mine is probably eight feet wide. I understand WRS is also a hefty plant. I drink in the garden too, naturally. Lately I've been eating breakfast in bed and of course drinking my coffee there. "Dinking" is a somewhat unusual word; I don't know if the British use it. More common would be "fooling around in the garden". Ingrid, it certainly felt like your drought moved right over here, which I hope to goodness isn't true: I know how you all suffered in California. I'm glad it's raining there at last. As for us, what will come, will come. If I lose a lot of plants it won't be fun, but then, you just start planting again, taking advantage of what you've learned from the disaster. I think you know all this. Nik, we can and do grow mock orange; it's a staple flowering shrub here. I recently figured out that the mysterious tree-shrub growing by the edge of the drainage ditch, that I had planted years ago and whose name I had forgotten, is Rhamnus alaternus. I do admire this plant, not commonly grown here, and was intending to procure myself plants this fall. The danger here would be drainage: thanks for bringing it up. And I'm glad to hear it can take pruning, as I never have enough hedging plants. Bart, I've heard there are pheromone traps for box moth, but also that they're expensive, so I think I'll suffer through the spraying for a while at least. For now we're done, though I'll probably have to do another treatment later this spring, but that will be the last for the year. We've never had to spray in summer or fall. How are you doing these days? Box is native here and I love it, I think it's beautiful. It was well adapted until box moth arrived. I've been told there's testing going on to see whether its natural enemies from home could be introduced here with damage only to the moth and not to the rest of the environment. fduk and Marlorena, for some reason I have a prejudice against Ribes and have never seriously considered it for the garden, but what you say gives me an idea I need to take a second look. Thanks for the suggestion. Ann, this may be foolish, but I think I'll go with Mom Nature. Our clay is already highly water retentive for what that's worth. Suggestions are always welcome, even if I'm one of those people whose head you need to crack open with a hammer and chisel to get a new idea in.