Hi Sheila! Yes, they are totally sweet. I'll post a picture soon... have to get my son to show me what to do. I've heard good things about Romans... they are certainly beautiful and are supposed to be good-natured. After a year with one Pilgrim and one Buff, I'd have to say it is a tie. You won't go wrong with either breed. Willow, my Pilgrim, has a lot of personality and is more interactive, but my Buff is gentle, dignified and beautiful. She has remarkably expressive eyes that are both wise and amused, as though she knows the secrets of the world. I tend to favour the Pilgrims for myself because it is easy to tell the males and females apart. Also, being a smallish breed, they can't do the damage that larger geese can if they become aggressive during breeding season. The Pilgrims have been so inbred here in Ontario that it has affected their fertility. Jason Cain of Performance Poultry (from whom I always buy my birds) has imported goslings from Oregon this year... my two included. Willow comes from Californian stock. So I am hoping with two bloodlines that mine will breed well. Several of the seven goslings hatched here look like Pilgrims. The rest are more golden, like Buff was a year ago. It will be interesting to see what they look like as they grow. The purebred Pilgrims are wearing green bands on their legs so I can be sure which are which. My shop will sell what I think of as "everyday antiques". I have stripped some of the walls back to the original 1890 hemlock planks and bought scads of old-fashioned square nails to hang things from. I am grouping by theme: household and kitchenware, agricultural, tools, a few nice pieces of furniture, antique and vintage toys and games, ancient skates, skis, snowshoes and the like. Lots of old cast iron, lots of enamelware, bedwarmers, bellows, candlesticks, kettles... you name it, I've got it. And teddy bears. I have quite an assortment of vintage bears and I also design and handcraft my own. It will be a visually interesting shop, I think, almost like a miniature living history museum. I bought a lot of these things in France on my visits to my sister during the 12 years she lived there. They are not "fine antiques" but rather the kinds of things our ancestors would have used and enjoyed. I hope it does well... I need to start bringing regular money in to keep this place afloat. We can live here very cheaply and well, but it does take SOME money.

Commercial growers worry about things like ease of harvest and uniformity of fruit size, and they tend to have much more intense disease pressures than hobby growers. People who cage generally just let the plant grow as it will. Pruning is reserved for dying or diseased leaves, aside from aggressive removal of leaves from the bottom of the plant to keep foliage away from the soil. Some people will prune off growing tips once the end of the season gets near in order to try to ripen up the fruits already on the plant before frost. Others don't bother and say it doesn't make much of a difference. Some will cut off the tops once the plant grows as tall as the cage, but others will let the vines flop over the top of the cage and continue to grow and hang down. Regardless, the leaves are where the plant produces the sugars and other nutrients that go into making the fruit, so there's some logic to the idea of keeping as much of the foliage as possible. Disease is what you have to weigh against that, so it's a balancing act. Length of growing season is also a consideration. Is there a point in letting a plant get huge and wild and produce a gazillion flowers and set a ton of fruit if you don't have the time for those fruit to mature before frost? Also, if you want to plant a lot of varieties but have insufficient space to let them all grow into huge, caged plants and are OK with a smaller harvest from each plant, you could prune enthusiastically and grow the plants closer together. It's really a matter of what your goals and needs are.

This is my fifth year gardening here in hot humid Florida. I have yet to really wow myself with a bumper crop of top notch tomatoes, but I do OK. Disclaimer out of the way... My experience with CRW cages: Cages will indeed last longer if kept above ground. Mine are flimsy at the bottom end from a few years of sinking them in the dirt. I use those green metal "t" fence posts to hold my cages up sometimes. If you are worried about hammering posts (or rebar for that matter) in near undergroud utilities, or just don't want to swing a 5 lb hammer, use a garden hose to jet down the foot or so you want to go, then just slide the posts in. Use the water to help back fill the mud around them. They end up in the ground real tight. I made my cages with 12 squares, it was my best guess at the time. The plants don't lean on the cages until they are about 2.5 feet tall, and then they tend to lean to one side, but by the time they spill over the top, they are using the full diameter all the way around. One advantage of a larger diameter is that the cages can be placed right next to one another. The cages can then be tied together for more stability. That maybe placing the plants a little close to each other for some folks. gonefishin's picture with the ends bent is exactly how I bend mine. I have to tell you, those bent ends have caused many a cursing session in my backyard. They hold the cage in a circle shape great, but I wrap my cages around each other to store when not in use, and separating them later, with all of their GI Joe kung-foo grips, is a nightmare. One other thing I have had minor problems with is the rough texture of the rusty metal. In a few instances it has damgaged stems that rub them too much. Usually after repositioning the vine for whatever reason. I found that a plastic straw cut in half and then slit up the side fits over sections of wire for those few trouble spots. The drinking straw covers can be moved as needed, so you don't end up with 800 straw bits on your cages. The tubes can also be opened up in U shape and layed on the ground on their side, forming a tunnel shape. I grew some cuke vines that way. Cukes hanging down inside the shady tunnel. I imagine tomatoes could be done similar. CRW is expensive, but nice.

As the years have gone by, I've become solidly in camp Abraham Darby. First of all, Abe reblooms for me. As time has gone on, Evelyn has stopped reblooming for me. In contrast, Abe's reblooming has gotten better. Then, as Brandon says, Abe's color is richer. This is not necessarily a better thing, but I like it better than Evelyn's hues in my garden. I've seen Evelyn in other gardens which have colors that I like more. It's true that Abe has big thorns, but they aren't particularly numerous, and they are actually attractive (to me) on the new growth when the sun shines through them. I like the bush form of Abe better than Evelyn. It's more sturdy, whereas Evelyn is more wispy. Both Evelyn and Abe have beautiful fragrances, although they are different. Neither has much fragrance on hot days especially in the afternoon. I call it a draw in that department. Abe responds quite well to water and fertilizer, by growing and blooming. Evelyn does not. Abe has bigger flowers for me. Evelyn has more of a romantic look to her flowers. Abe's flowers are more formal. So a draw in that department. Abe still catches my eye and makes me catch my breath. So it's Abe for me. But I still want both. Because I keep thinking that maybe I can figure out how to get Evelyn to perform better for me. I still consider Evelyn to be the quintessential English rose. I've posted these pictures before: