This is my second major garden, and I learned a lot of the basics with the first one. I didn't have the forum with my first garden, but I did have my horticulturalist sister, a keen gardener herself, who gave me lots of information, encouragement, and plants. I'm sorry I don't have any pictures of either of my gardens; words will have to do. Things I learned: My first garden was in the Pacific Northwest, and I learned to love the old once-flowering roses there. At first I wanted repeat-blooming roses, but the more once-bloomers I grew, the more of them I wanted. They don't work everywhere, but in the PNW they're fabulous. I have and love them here as well, but they come into flower right when it's getting really hot, and so aren't as well suited to local conditions as in Washington. So the other thing I've learned is to grow roses suited to your local conditions. I'm gradually allowing Bourbons into my garden here: they did poorly in my first garden because they didn't have summer heat, while here they're great. I learned to plan for succession of bloom, rather than roses that bloom all year long (this is still a characteristic of temperate climates): here this means, more or less, spring bulbs, lilacs, tall bearded iris, peonies and roses, clematis, lavender and buddleia, dahlias, roses again. I found out that roses are drought tolerant plants that can happily go weeks without water; in fact, I found out that a lot of plants are more drought tolerant than I had supposed. Western Washington and the Italian foothills are both dry in summer. A lot of my mistakes in my first garden involved not siting plants correctly: not exploiting walls for warmth; putting shade plants in shade, sun plants in sun. For some reason, right from the beginning I gardened organically and didn't use the various poisons available to help the gardener; and I also believed in mulch and soil improvement from the start. I've never seen any reason to change this approach. I started gardening as a non-pruner, and have slowly learned how to prune as I went along. I think this is the healthiest path of development. As Henry Mitchell said, often the best thing the gardener can do is nothing. My gardening philosophy is minimalist: I do only what I think is necessary, always working toward a garden that will be relatively self-sustaining (I still have an enormous amount of labor, don't worry!). My sister introduced me to the writings of Henry Mitchell, among other things, so I read about garden design and plant selection from the start. I think this helped me avoid a lot of mistakes I might otherwise have made. I've learned here in Italy to be very wary of doing anything that might provoke a landslide. About roses, I've learned to look at the whole plant rather than at the flowers, and to take size estimates with plenty of salt. It's really hard to get an idea of what a rose is like without seeing a well-grown specimen at first hand. This is also quite terribly true of flower colors: photographs are untrustworthy. Melissa

Found another online photo: The following two photos were in a family album. The first of my parents and my sister at Christmas. They are in front of the foyer fireplace (where the lady was giving her speech). See the wainscoting? OK, this one I don't understand, because it looks old, but it is clearly taken after my grandparents had moved out and the house was taken over by the college. Look at the handicapped railing near the sunroom and then the emergency exit door on the roof - off my bedroom. I gather that my grandparents went back to visit the area and took the photo.

Here are a few more............ Autumn Frost I think this is one of the best pictures I have taken in the past few days. The light coming through the limbs of the tree above makes it look surreal. Hosta May Blue Angel really filled out this week. Liberty coming along nicely Orange Marmalade Wide Brim And a Lanciflora

Marlorena, it has a fragrance like Damask, very strong and sweet. It's quite thorny, lots of blackspot. It has scattered repeat bloom. It's nice in a mixed border. The blooms are on the small side, and it's an interesting contrast with other larger flowered roses. The blooms are charming and whimsical looking, how the petals reflex back.