Eric, that for sure looks like a promising upcoming spring flush! Congratulations! All your photo are great, but I especially love the photo of the Botzaris buds, which I feel it has an almost magical atmosphere! Another favorite of mine is the picture of Yolande d'Aragon. I got this rose this year as a band and it has produced one incredible flower for me already, which was much lighter in the color than yours! Yours looks great! I also like how you are growing many roses on supporting (climbing) structures. The white bird house in the photo with Louise Odier is very pretty! Thanks for sharing your roses, and please, post more photos when the roses are open!

I think there are a few weeks to go before it freezes here! I, on the other hand, have been disappointed with how hot it has been for September in Colorado, because I just divided a bunch of perennials hoping cool weather was imminent so they'd have an easier time establishing. 80-degree weather is not great for plants stuck into the ground with hardly any roots. I think I lost some of the oriental poppies I took root cuttings from and some of the other plants are looking pretty sorry. Anyway, I'm in Colorado also, growing brugs indoors and out. Are yours in pots? If so, and if the "big freeze" comes and they are still blooming or have not yet bloomed, they will be perfectly happy to continue blooming in the warm house for a couple more weeks until finished. If you can set one in front of a sliding glass door, that's great. But even if you don't have the best light, they will continue blooming until the current crop runs its course, then they will return to a more vegetative growth or start going dormant. A full crop of brugmansia flowers in the house has a very intense scent that penetrate absolutely everything at night; its pretty intoxicating. I've put them in the garage before and they kept putting out new flowers in total pitch-black darkness for about 3 weeks. First, the leaves dropped. Then the newly-opening flowers became smaller and paler, until finally the remaining small buds dropped and the plants went dormant. It didn't seem to hurt them at all and they happily came out of dormancy in the spring.

I don't think I have ever been to a nursery where they know much at all about them or their care, except some do know that there are are hoyas and are aware of a couple of varieties. LOL There is one nursery near here that actually used to get in several different species at times, but they were only labeled Hoya plant and a few generic suggestions on care. They had compacta, lacunosa, kerrii, both kinds of variegated carnosas, pubicalyx Pink Silver, and carnosa Krinkle 8. When I would ask the ordering lady if & when they were getting them in, I would ask for a certain one and she didn't have a clue, so when I would see one, I went to her with the name and told her she should start labeling it that way. About a year later I was in there and sure enough she had them all labeled with the names I gave her. I was so happy I had done something to help hoyas and the people who like them. Then when I went back this year, the lady was gone, the only hoya I saw was one lowly looking carnosa Krimson Queen, and the label said, "Hoya Plant". LOL...it's hopeless. I do also find it puzzeling that such a lovely species that is easy to propagate and raise is not showing up in amongst all the pothos and other common plants all over the stores. Heck, you even see ORCHIDS everywhere now. But finding a variety of hoya hanging in any store or nursery is still as rare as finding gold while hiking the hills.

Flowers are always awesome and so arethe resulting fruits but Ill be "that guy". As cool as it is now you will really be better rewarded if you remove those fruit and let the tree focus on getting bigger. Its very very hard to do, trust me I know, but also trust me that if you let the tree only grow bigger for awhile it will reward you ten fold.