Thank you, Kim, I'll debud her and move her to full-sun once the risk of frost is gone. I'll move my GRAFTED Pat Austin to that clay "swimming pool". I'll bury her 6" deep to ensure the death of Dr. Huey and the growth of own-root. I want to slow down her growth, so her thorns don't get larger. I already took pictures of Pat's thorns, to see if the future-own-root version would improve. Own-root chlorosis on alkaline clay doesn't inferfere with flowering. Christopher Marlowe will always be pale, but he has at least 20 buds compared to Grafted-Pat's 6 buds. He gets much less sun than Pat. Question: Once Pat is moved, I have a full sun, next to the house, southern exposure, sheltered from wind. Should I get own-root Yves Piaget this year for that spot, or should I wait until next year for a grafted Yves Piaget? I don't know how well Yves Piaget does as own-root in alkaline clay. He's low in thorns. Thank you for any info.

Scent from Above... I had it. Nice rose, healthy and very, very vigorous for me. Only a couple of drawbacks for me... One, it BS'd a lot (could have been my newbie faults though) and two, it started out a nice deep yellow, but it does fade quite a bit for me. I say I had it because I did shovel prune it the next year only because I wanted a more winter hardy rose up here in NE Ohio and one that wouldn't bs on me. So, I replaced with William Baffin. Got what I wanted! :) It is a very nice rose, just keep up with the BS though. I can't recall if it has any scent. Another good one that I had before replacing with Westerland is Social Climber from J & P. Very vigorous too, a deep pink that doesn't fade, and it doesn't bs half as much. Cathy

Scent varies a lot and some have no significant scent. Like a rose is as good a comparison as any, but the available range is all the way from very light, all through sweet, to heavy musks, and there is fruity, flowery, or spicy to choose from :)

A word about olfaction, the sense of smell: anosmas are blindnesses to certain odor types. We are all born with different levels of sensitivity, and exposure to chemicals and diseases and allergies all have an effect on sensitivities. We lose our sense of smell with age, of course. So some of us can't smell organic acids, or aldehydes, or amines or sulfurous compounds as well as others. One of the reasons some persons can't stand certain scents is because they may have reverse anosmas, which are hypersensitivites to particular classes of chemicals. If these compunds are nasty ones like putrescine or cadaverine, breakdown products of flesh, they will react to the slightest lack of freshness of fish or meat served to us while others might not notice the difference. The other phenomenon is a temporary anosma, caused by saturation of the receptors in our nose. That is why professional tasters limit their exposure to a wine, not swallowing it, then rinsing their mouth with water and eating a cracker to cleanse their receptors. Even then, they can only do so many samples before taking a break. The sense of smell is also tied to our deep unconscious and scents can arouse old memories suddenly. Associations of odors to events are hard to break. There are both strong objective and subjective aspects to reactions to odors, and they are not always easy to separate. A lot of people do not like aroids like skunk cabbage, because the perfume of the flowers contains amines like putrescine or cadaverine, which flies love. Guess what species pollinate aroid flowers. The scents in Salvias are either antifeedants or associated with non-volatile antifeedants, directed not just towards insects, but towards rabbits and deer. The other association is that the scents attract predators or parasites of Salvia pests.