Bartlett is an amazing pear, the only problem is the quality in the stores. Packham's is a very good pear but Bartlett has the potential to be much better. I agree Magness beats all others, but it is hard to get a crop. Supposedly it is hard to pollinate properly. Fondante des Moulins-Lille has been the most reliable for me and is also easy to ripen and tastes excellent. Some pears can be really hard to ripen properly, you need to pick them in a certain window which is hard to recognize because the fruits are still green and hard. Too early and they never ripen, too late and they rot from the inside out. FdML has a very wide picking window so I always get lots of good fruit from it. The nursery descriptions never seem to touch on this topic. One reason why Seckel is such a common pear in the US is it is very easy to ripen. Scott

Mme de Tartas, also sold as General Tartas, is a terrific rose. Get it. Bloom vary from very double to just semi-double, depending on weather. G. Nabonnand is a very floriferous rose, but just semi-double, which might blow quickly in your climate. Mme Charles is a terrific apricot-fading to cream rose, probably sold under other names as well, including Safrano. (There is also a different rose sold as Safrano). Mme Wagram has not been healthy here. It will be composted. Souv. de Victor Hugo is a small grower for me, very similar to MmeMlle Jeanne Phillipe. Gen. Gallieni is famous in hot Australian climates. Almost single, in the color of a blood orange, coppered. Mine is not a great clone. I have a found plant of Rainbow. Another small grower, very floriferous. We have no blackspot on Teas here, so I can't speak to that.

It's still early in the season here. Pruning, otherwise known as Me vs. The Garden is still progressing. Sort of. At this point, I've done all the 'easy' roses. The ones that go snip, snip, snip. What's left are things like Queen of the Prairies and Clair Matin, the ones that need saws to cut out old canes that should have been cut out years ago, except that I never bothered to get the saw out of the garage. The early roses have started blooming. R. hugonis, R. primula and Glory of Edsel. The lilacs are in full bloom, the doublefile viburnum is turning white, and the first of the tree peonies are opening. The early iris are fading, so it's time to anxiously await the opening of the first TBs. The bloom stalks are there, the flowers are starting to show color, but are at least a couple of days away. Having drastically redone irisdom a couple of years ago, I'm refusing to mess with the bed until it starts crowding. The result is a bigger and better show every year. This is the way it's supposed to work, but doesn't always. People are starting to drop hints about garden visits. That means it's time to start taking the quarry work seriously again. Most of the beds are dug to about a foot, then amended. Since we start with heavy, rocky soil, the result is quite good rose soil and a pile of rock. The exception has always been a relatively small area with bedrock near the surface. It started off garden life as an iris bed. The small, early iris species that were placed there didn't mind the almost total lack of soil. It was close enough to their native habitat. But over time, as the garden vision changed, it was thought desirable to have a deeper bed as a more normal extension of the rest of the garden. So the rock had to go. The rock is still going, and the excavated topsoil still sits on a tarp in the middle of a garden path. I refuse to even think about how many years this has been true. Last summer, I got the hole to a point where there is deep enough soil for most things. However, the hole produces about the best paving stone I've dug here. Paving stone has uses, and if I don't dig it out of that hole, I'll have to *horrors* BUY it.

Carol, happy rose hunting with your daughter and husband. It must be fun! Virginia, the statistics you mention got me curious and just now got the article from my library. Here we go: p. 53, ARA 1930. From the author (S. Hamblin): "The total of listed varieties is fairly correct, compiled from the list of Simon et Cochet (1905) and the Annuals of the American and British Rose Societies since that date. For list of those in cultivation today I have tabulated carefully from catalogues since 1900 of American dealers." Edited: I posted the table but then removed it just in case that any copyrights might be infringed (I don't think so, but to be on the safe side). Please message me if you'd like me to email the article with the full table. Here are only some classes - first number indicates "In cultivation in America today" and in parentheses are "total listed": Alba 1 (200) Gallica 20 (2,000) Hybrid Perpetual 50 (3,000) Moss 20 (440) Pernetiana 50 (100) Hybrid Pernetiana 200 (200) Tea 50 (1,500) Hybrid Tea 1,200 (2,000) Very interesting...