Hi everyone! What a very pleasant thing to read about such a lovely flower. I just got my first Evelyn bloom on a plant I bought mid-summer this year. The plants arrived right before a heat wave that almost fried them. The nursery I bought them from instructed me to pull off all the leaves so that the plants can focus on the roots and to give it a bit of shade when the temperature went above 90 degrees. I did as instructed and the plants came back very well. I was going to pull off all the new leaves again, but my husband wanted me to keep the second batch on. They continued to sprout new leaves...then buds...and then my one bloom appeared. Both plants are less than a foot tall and the flower is about 2 inches wide. Question 1 - I'm new to growing roses, so any advice would be helpful. At the moment I'm wondering if I should nip off the rest of the buds and try to get the plants to focus on their roots? We get snow here and I'm worried that these plants are too young to survive if I let the buds bloom. Question 2 - On a mature plant, how big do the blooms actually get? I can only find online sources that give the plant size, not the bloom size. Thank you and sorry for the long post.

Hi Kines, Mine seems to have somewhat blacker scapes: What do you think? ~Angie

I bought a hanging lamp for dd's bedroom that had what I thought were going to be wonderful and perfect blue lamp shades, it was sort of a tri-pendant if you will. Well, it was so lugubrious and horrible I actually sent it back. It takes a lot for me to do that. Then (getting to the point here), I noticed the same lamp shades hanging all over the place in Chase branch banks - they've been re-doing them around here and they all seem to have these bright blue shades. They look pretty from afar. And perhaps in a commercial setting, daytime hours only, they'll work. But I know better!

"Spirit in The Sky" --- on my top ten. great song! what about "I'm a joker, I'm a smoker, I'm a midnight toker....get my lovin on the run............" Do any of you remeber "Red Rubber Ball"? And "Brandy" and "Me and you and a dog named Boo.." and "Sugar.....ah honey , honey, you are my......." This is a classic. Who sang it? And "Daydream Believer" I feel so lucky to have grown up with these songs. And I'm so lucky that we didn't have computers growing up. I grew up in The Bronx. If we had computers, I don't think we would have watched "The Three Stooges" when we got home from school. I don't think we would have jumped rope. It took us about a week to learn "double dutch" -- we were very good. Of course, we had to have the right girls from the "block" to do this. lol I don't think we would have played hopscotch, or played "red rover, red rover, let ?? come over". We roller skated, we played handball, we had the "Klick Klacks" (someone here has to remember the klick klacks). And hula hoop. And hopscotch. . I'll never forget the fort we built. It was the best fort in the "hood". Then we had to fight off all the kids on the block from destroying our fort. It was an awesome chilhood.