Good timing. I was just thinking of reviving this thread. Sabra did win. I knew she should, but it still surprised the heck out of me. I thought for sure all the teenage girls would vote their fingers raw for one of their little heartthrobs. I was very sad to see this end, although the season finale was wonderful. Glad I taped it. They brought back the clogger and the odd, little guy with scoliosis. Both brought down the house of course. Mia was probably my fav too, but Wade Robson also did some pretty amazing stuff. There were only a couple of choreographers that didn't seem quite up to the task. I bet they won't be back next year. I agree about the audience voting thing. They have to do something about that. On a few occasions some of the better dancers had choreography that just didn't quite make it. People were voting for dance numbers and not dancers IMO. It still amazes me that people who adore Dancing with the Stars won't even check this program out. Don't understand it. Is it all about watching celebrities making fools out of themselves? K

I think Elemire is correct we must look at expert advice and determine whether or not it is suitable for our garden in our location. Most of the people who give expert advice have grown many roses in a one or a few climates/locations, therefore, their advice is colored by their experience in those climates and cannot be viewed as universal. I don't think anyone can possibly know everything about how to care for roses in every climate. I think it is necessary to filter the advice using our own experience in our gardens. I have now got the experience of growing roses in two very different climates. In Socal, my gardening experience was totally different than in my Nocal mountain garden. Pruning practices that worked down south do not work well in my northern garden. I have had to change how I go about the work in order to have healthier plants. I was told long ago to let the rose be your teacher and that there were a lot of right ways to grow roses. With those two concepts in mind, I have found that I don't remove as much of the twiggy growth as recommended by most experts because that growth produces leaves which shade the canes and protects them from sunburn. I don't prune as hard up here as I did down south because I have a shorter growing season. Some of the roses that thrived down south struggle in this garden. Jackie is right about growing the roses that like your climate. It takes a lot less work. If we have a long wet spring, (every year is different), I have found that it really does help to remove pruning debris that has shown disease because I have found I do have more disease when I haven't done that kind of cleanup in this garden. There were a couple of years in a row due to illness and injury that I could not do this work and found that disease was more of a problem in the garden. Here, it is observation that dictates the how I deal with pruning waste. Ingrid... we don't have any garbage pick-up and have to haul our own garbage, recyclables, green waste to the dump. YUK. I just throw my pruning debis over the cliff across the street. It's far too much effort to haul it to the dump. Susan... since you are local to Gregg, it makes sense to follow his advice. Also, I don't prune every rose in the garden every year. I always start at a different point and over the seasons, they all get their "clean prune". I just can't seem to get it all done in one year, since I garden on four levels and one project always leads to three more. I garden and grow roses because I love to be outside working in the garden. Yes, I'd like to make it easier, but weeds grow, seasons are different and each year I learn something new that makes things work better. I've made plenty of mistakes and spend time moving plants to better locations, change how I fertilize, prune, etc as I watch how the plants perform. It's all a process and there is no one right answer. Smiles, Lyn

Jeri - you know, I've had very mixed experiences with Hybrid Musks, sometimes it seems that one nursery simply has a healthier version than another. My first hybrid musk was purchased from the old Rose of Yesterday & Today: Lavendar Lassie, grafted, and may have had mosaic virus, but it was a monster of a rose: 12 ' x 15' and a wall of flowers. I've been trying to get one to grow where I now live for over 9 yrs and it's still just a scrawny 5 footer that squeezes out a few flowers twice a year. This LL is ownroot, so perhaps grafted is better for this particular rose. I really should just shovelprune it already and try again. My microclimate shifted from where I grew that first LL, just a block from the beach to a couple miles inland where it's a bit warmer -- but whatever the reason is, LL's not happy here.

Wow Brenda! Your tax return must have really been a difficult one to do this year! LOL! Or should I assume you DO taxes for other people? We sent ours out again this year. Too hard and too much time. Let the Pros do it, I say!