Hello Beth, I saw you posted pictures of Pompom Flower Circus. For quite some time, I have been looking literally all over for that rose. I've called every local nursery and online nurseries as well. No one has it in stock anymore. And I just found out that the growers have discontinued it. I was wondering if you would be willing to part with a cutting? I would pay you for it of course. And shipping charges as well. I appreciate your help. Kindly, Roseann

Since they are acclimated to local conditions, I have a hard time seeing a downside to getting them out of the pots. None of the issues with late planting that I am aware of apply here. They should be perfectly hardy, so the advantage of keeping the pots in a warmer place doesn't apply. There isn't a worry about out-of-sync plants wasting energy breaking dormancy too early. They should have decent rootballs, so hopefully the whole mass doesn't collapse when you unpot them. Keeping them watered shouldn't be a big issue. Anything else will be a problem next winter also (voles, I am looking at you) Go for it.

Annabelle's sister Gabbie was inside the coop waiting to lay her egg, and I put the eggs that had fallen out of the bales in one of the nesting boxes and tried to get Annabelle to sit in there near her sister... Didn't work... she wanted up there on the bale-nest. So I went in and got my husband to come out and help me get the two bales tied together so the eggs wouldn't fall out anymore. Then we dug out a nest in the top of the new bale, so they could both lay there eggs there. At first Annabelle wasn't too happy about the idea, and Gertie did not want her trying to get on the original nest. She got down and I tried to put her in the coop again but she came back out and was running around all panicky. My husband picked her up to put her back up on the new nest... but she still wasn't happy and was really beginning to get stressed out and was panting like crazy. I finally had to put an egg in the new nest and then she finally settled down... She laid her egg before Gertie did... and the two of them were really weird. They both were picking up pieces of straw and "fluffing" the nests and tossing the straw up on their own backs. Annabelle was still pretty stressed and just stayed up there on the eggs for awhile. Then Lulu decided to try to go up there to lay her egg... but neither of the girls would get down. Lulu was still up there when we left to go back in the house. So, guess I'll have to go out and see what else transpired out there... Oh and when we were tying the bales together, my husband pulled out about 6 or 7 more eggs that had apparently fallen down there the last few days!! At least now the eggs are more secure... until the crazy girls decide they're going to yank out more straw and open up the sides of the nests...

Vaporvac, I got my EVS from Burlington. Do you have the one from Antiques Rose Emporium? I saw a thread somewhere on Houzz saying that ARE is selling Gartendirektor Otto Linne under the EVS name. However, the descriptions of each on HMF are almost identical and the flowers extremely similar too and HMF says both have thorns. Mine, so far, has zero thorns, just a few prickles on the backs of the leaves. http://www.helpmefind.com/gardening/l.php?l=2.2909&tab=1 http://www.helpmefind.com/gardening/l.php?l=2.1758&tab=36.