Wow...I didn't realize my printing was that neat!! I get a lot of those comments over on the WS forum but it's just the way I've always printed, whether using a pencil, pen or marker. Thanks heaps echman, deanna & marquest!! After I got an "F" in 5th grade penmanship, I must have sub-consciously become more careful & precise whenever I picked up something to write with. When I first moved here, the neighbors all laughed at my plant labels. When spring rolled around, they weren't laughing...they were asking me to come tell them what plants were in their flowerbeds. Once I started winter sowing, they brought me seeds to grow for them. So far I've grown apple & pear trees for one neighbor and blackberry lily for another. Cracks me up to get home from work and find an envelope or ziplock baggie of seeds stuffed inside the door with a note that reads, "Please grow these for me." Winter sowing & seed trading has opened up a whole new world of perennial plant opportunities for me, at a price that's affordable for experimenting to see how the plants & I like each other. Not everyone has the space or opportunity to WS hundreds of milk jugs so the colorful, glossy catalogs of lush plants (photoshopped or not) will still rake in lots of inexperienced new gardeners. Thanks to the GardenWeb forums, we may collectively save some of them from repeating a few of our own mi$take$.

Tessiess's post is interesting to me because I live in a Mediterranean climate too (hot dry summers, good annual rainfall, good winter chill) and you'd think the same roses would do well for us, but they don't. In my garden, unpampered plants of the following varieties have done fine: 'Napoleon', 'Archduke Charles', 'Francis Dubreuil'/'Barcelona', 'Camellia Rose'. On the other hand California Melissa lists Rugosas as doing well for her, and I can't grow them at all. Tessiess's garden sounds wonderful to me; she sounds like she really knows what she's doing. But I wanted to say that her "not so nice" roses shouldn't be automatically written off for gardens in a Mediterranean climate. Melissa in Italy

For this work I used a lot of bi-color roses. The roses I used are Dream Come True, Climbing Eglantyne, Signature, Cajun Sunrise,Arizona Sunset, Tabitha, La Belle Sultane, Minuette, Electron, Golden Unicorn (Bloom and Bud) and last a bud of Hannah Gordon.ÂEnjoy--Ron

Cawfeegirl!!! You selected and installed your backsplash!!! Love it!! You have a beautiful kitchen....one I could enjoy a cup of cawfee in....or a glass of wine.;)