Minrose- yes, such a beautiful today. will try to remember it in the coming months! Terrene- I thought maybe the last female generation would be more playful than the others since they didn't have to focus on egg laying, but the one female that eclosed around October 3 wanted nothing to do with the males, and nectared in seclusion on the other side of the yard before abruptly leaving. There is still ONE male in the yard nectaring. He has been around for the last two weeks. He is quite large and his wings appear "wrinkled". I'm sure he'll head south, but guessing he won't be making the magical migration to Mexico. The sky is dark and it's starting to rain. monarch season has come to an end in Minnesota...to have it until mid october has been a blessing! Tony

OK, this is kind of embarassing... Dh and his band buddies were planning a photo shoot and I picked up a few items of clothing with an 'edgier' look. One being a black tone-on-tone cut velvet shirt. The fabric looks kind of like this All went well with the shoot. A few months later he wore the shirt to work with a pair of gray pinstripe pants. He looked great and I told him that as he left in the morning. He comes home that evening and asks "Do you see a woman on my shirt?" I'm like Huh??? I look closely and to my surprise (horror!) see the scroll pattern in the shirt was created using this silhouette: One of the guys at work mentioned how much he liked the shirt and the girls in the shirt. Dh and I had no idea they were in there. When I think about it months later I still laugh.

I actually gave away three pots as holiday gifts... It was a struggle being generous like that but after I kept reminding myself how cheap they were it was a little easier. Right now I'm dealing with the bulbs all pushing themselves up out of the pot as the roots grow. I should put something on top to hold them down but it might already be too late. This might not be the amazing floral show I was hoping for lol

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p08lk4lg Here is a short video demonstrating 'notching' a shrub to disrupt apical dominance and encourage new basal breaks. There are always different ways to get a similar effect...nutrient additions, enzymes and hormones, bending to disrupt sap flow and diminish apical dominance, can all increase the likelihood of basal breaks...but when a rose is aged and gnarly, especially if it has been reduced to a single one cane wonder, physiologically affecting the rose by notching above a bud node can be very effective. With ramblers, the best way of stimulating basal growth is to sacrifice a couple of older canes, by cutting them back from the base - guaranteed to produce new shoots. Notching is a less dramatic way of altering plant behaviour and can be a useful addition to the gardener's toolbox. There is no shortage of basals coming from my vasty ramblers so I am definitely not deliberately increasing basal growth, Liz - if anything, I am trying to find a balance between removal of numerous old canes, without stimulating a huge burst of future growth. As my old horticultural teacher told me, on many occasions - 'Growth follows the knife' (although this little aphorism should be attributed to the late, great Fred Loads). For quite a few years, I practically gave up attempting to stay on top of pruning my old, enormous rambling roses. This year, with the help of a new chainsaw (and desperation) I have pruned most of the roses harder than I have ever before attempted. It is somewhat terrifying because I have no idea how the roses are going to respond. I had no choice but to make an attempt since my whole allotment was turning into a Sleeping Beauty impassable briar jungle. Children and animals were at risk of vanishing and blood was shed with every trip up and down the plot. I promise to post up the results - at present, I have been able to get to paths I have not used for over a decade...and plants I forgot I had (various herbaceous clematis, for example), have appeared from underneath vast thickets of thorny caneage.