Mindy, I was pretty busy up through the early days of December with fall cleanup and dormant pruning. And then I just sort of got wrapped up with the holidays and visiting relatives. I was really missing GW though. I will send your information on to her - Janet and Steven are really great about adding folks to their newsletter. I think sometime in the future they will be introducing a website as well. For your area, I think she makes twice a year pilgrimages to Massachusetts for very low cost work shops and does demonstration pruning on site at a client she visits twice a year up there. I do like Susan Harris - she is the only one of the quartet though. The other three I'm not keen on though. Susan kindly posted a picture of my front garden one year on her blog and on GR.

UPS delivered 6 Tightwads to my front porch today. He called out "Live Plants!...Like you need some more!" :) They had a wonderful bonus. Their fall color is stunning: purple to bronze to bright red. I ordered them from Sooner Plant Farm. This was my first order from them. They give a twenty percent discount if you order more than 3 of the same kind of something. Their service was excellent. I actually got an E-mail THIS MORNING to expect delivery TODAY. And, it was some of the best packaging I have seen for mail order plants. I will order from them again for sure. Thanks to you all for your help in making the selection. I am looking forward to next summer already. And yes, Ken, I did squeak a bit....:)

It's true that where I am in So. CA, the roses can get really really big in a hurry. Many times I had to find another spot for a rose because it got much bigger than any description in the book or catalog. Some tolerated the pruning and some wanted to be left alone. I think you just have to try and see what works best. I was trying to keep my Heritage at 4 feet like I saw at the LA Arboretum, then I saw a big poofy one in someone's yard and was smitten by that look. I have an old no name climber going up an apple tree that I ignore. It has a few ancient canes and all the young growth is sky high. I never see any new growth from lower down and I wonder if I should have cut it back years ago. Whatever happens, I'll just enjoy the plant as long as it's there. I think it's too late now to try removing the old canes. When the HTs are left alone, they get so tall. Lagerfeld/Starlight and Honor will go way over my head and the flowers are up in the sky where no one can see or smell them. Then too, when you cut the flowers, a wierd kind of pruning happens and the canes get shortened by taking the flowers off. I suppose just snapping off the hips is best, but I can't resist a bouquet. Around August, I get some strange tallish looking HTs and everyone is talking about plans for a nice fall flush and how they are going to trim the plants and when. I usually cave in at that point and shorten them down because they look untidy from the street and I have fall flush visions in my head. Besides, the flowers look terrible in the summer heat and I am longing for some really pretty ones in the cooler weather. Some years it's better than others. Last year, I had a great big crop of fall flowers on the DA roses after a light pruning, but the year before was not spectacular even though I thought I pruned them the same. This last year, I left a few alone, thinking they did not like the 2007 fall-flush pruning and they did nothing in the fall of 2008 but are now really dense with wood so I am hoping for a big spring bloom this year. Regarding my modern HTs, I notice that if I just snap off hips, they have intermittent flowers up to the hottest times in summer. Then when it cools off a little,there are intermittent flowers until January. I can't seem to get a big bloom in fall unless I deliberately prune them. By January they are really tall again and it's hard to enjoy the flowers on the HTs when they are up that high. I like it when people can see them and smell them. If they are out of reach, no one pays any attention. The first roses of the year are like celebrities with the fresh mulch and new shiny leaves. If I let them alone and they flower off and on through the winter, I wonder if they would have the big spring bloom I always look forward to.

agree this should be set up in your email client. I help set up some for the church so that they can send out their senior friends newsletters. I did it all in yahoo email. just set up a group and put all the addresses in that group. There are several font and color options in yahoo mail and most email clients do offer those options. Once the letter is set up and ready just select the group to send it to from the contacts list and that is it.