Thought I had really jinxed us yesterday. It was 40°F when I checked in the morning. We got to the high 50s later. 30+ mph breezes made for an interesting day out there. 30°F this morning :) Pam, a neighbor told me I need to have a crew come in. Not a chance, Deb and I are the only ones that are allowed to work with our roses. The first thing I thought when I saw your post was you need a huge crew.... I imagine you wouldn't trust anyone else working around your roses either :) Hope you don't mind if I think "at least we don't have the task mendocino rose does" when I begin to feel overwhelmed. Kristin, I'll take our weather over yours any day :) Folks think I am joking when I say we have almost perfect rose growing conditions here. I'm not. Annececilia, we do get to see the sun a lot. Wind coming down off the 12 - 13,000 ft mountains just west of us eats the snow (compressional warming). That... or a chinook will blow through and wipe out the snow. Folks think I am crazy removing mounding this early. We will have cold weather before June. Our roses just do better when I get the mounding off early. Deb says she has plenty of jelly beans to share :) Kate, we have all kinds of flowers coming up too. That is another reason for getting the debris out of the beds. Glad we don't live close enough to Mr. Moore's place to visit. Didn't see a post listing what you brought home??? Debbie, Deb says hi and belated Happy Easter. Me too :) I'm having a great time playing out there. It looks like we could have the best year ever coming.... if Ma Nature cooperates. Oh no!! Knew I shouldn't have answered the phone! Gotta go do some digging. No playing out in the yard today *sigh*

Selling is contrary to the spirit of the GW exchange forums, and could get me banned if I were willing to do it. To help you get started on GW exchanges, it would be a good idea to read the special instructions for exchanges here: http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/excan/#exin Instruction #1 reads: "All requests must be in the context of arranging a trade. If you have nothing to offer at this time, please wait until you do." Good luck as you acquire seeds and plants to trade. If Heather in Calgary has a July newbie offer, that would be a good place to start. Since you're offering to buy my plants, I'm assuming that you're not on a super-tight budget. Why not go out and enjoy all the end-of-season sales that are on at your local garden centers? Next spring you could have a nice selection of plants (and maybe seeds) to trade on this forum.

Hello to all out there. Glad you liked the pic. (seem to have got my Karens/Karyns mixed up a bit!...and that's before a festive drink! (Am tee-total actually...honest!) We have some rellies who stay with us from time to time and they like to have the bedroom curtains open early in the morning to see the views like in the picture above. Oh well, not long to go now is it, so I suspect the forum will be really quiet for the next few days or so. The family are due to arrive today and tomorrow so we shall have all 3 offspring plus one girlfriend here the for the Christmas activities. Think we will have a foggy Christmas not a white one here in the UK as the fog is still thick. Hope you all have a lovely time, especially those of you with little ones, and enjoy yourselves as much as we do. Catch up with you all next year? Best wishes for Christmas and 2007 to you all, Greenclaws.

I love it when it looks frosty outside! Then the wind starts to blow and it all falls off! LOL Wonderful pictures Ron!