A long time ago, I used to live where it is warm. I was born in south Georgia and lived there until I was a teenager. Then my parents decided on a radically different lifestyle of living off the land, up in the woods of New Hampshire. What a lifechanging, eyeopening experience that was, to be at that critical age and having to bathe in the brook and use an outhouse because we had no plumbing. And 36 yrs. later I am still not acclimated to the cold winters! We cleared the land, put in gardens, berry bushes and fruit trees and raised livestock, and were quite self-sufficient. I was quite the lonely teen and spent most of my 'rebellious' years gardening. Plants and animals just naturally became my solace, and as I went off on my own and got married I set out to transform my little acre of woods here into my personal paradise. My yard is still where I seek solace and peace. It is tough growing roses up here in zone 4, and contending with the short summers, japanese beetles and soil that is thick with granite rocks, but I can grow gallicas, albas and all those favorites of mine that I once coveted in the pages of glossy books. I doubt I will ever move from here, even though its so cold. We have the mountains, the lakes, the purest crystal clear brooks, and fall foliage that dazzles. Besides, I could never leave here without my beloved roses....and who wants to dig up close to 400 rosebushes? Celeste

You're welcome Harmony. I've collected this type of rose related stuff since the early 80s. It got to be a bit overwhelming, so I thinned it in the early 90s, giving most of the catalogs to Bob Edberg of Limberlost Rose Books. A lot of it went away in a fire in 1996, but some survived. Friends have passed such things along to me over the years and I've begged for copies from others. I rediscovered a few things sifting through boxes of rose related stuff putting the books back into bookcases where I can get to them after a move two years ago. Fine tuning them to sort out duplicates I'll pass along to Jeri this afternoon at a rose gathering uncovered this and a couple of others. Finally learning how to massage the scanner has helped, too. I love that it is possible to adjust the size of the image shared through Flickr to here so they are shown larger, about legible size, making it easier for anyone who wishes to read them. There is so much to learn from these things! We've had an extremely rich rose history here, but who would know? This catalog is particularly enjoyable to me as it ties in with the period covered by Mabel Osgood Wright's "Barbara" series, 1900 through 1910. Look for The Garden of the Commuter's Wife; The Garden, You and I; The Sign of the Fox; The People of the Whirlpool. I'm glad you've enjoyed them! Thanks! Kim

As of October 2012, USDepartment of Agriculture, Animal and Plant Inspection Service, fact sheet for returning travellers: Meat, milk, egg, poultry, and their products, including products made with these materials, such as dried soup mix or bouillon, are either prohibited or restricted from entering the United States, depending on the types of animal diseases that occur in the country of origin. Fresh (chilled or frozen), dried, cured, and fully cooked meat is generally prohibited from most countries. Canned meat is allowed entry, except beef, veal, lamb, mutton, venison, elk, bison, etc., from countries affected by bovine spongiform encephalopathy. http://www.aphis.usda.gov/publications/plant_health/2011/faq_return_overseas_travel.pdf There's another whole section just about pork. France is on the list of moderate BSE risk so even though you're unlikely to be exposed to it while eating in France, you're not allowed to bring canned meat (or any food prepared with meat) from there. I'm not sure why a tin of meat eaten by you here is a greater threat than you eating meat there and coming home with the exposure. It may be more about politics than agricultural health. Or they're worried you'll feed affected meat to someone who didn't know it came from somewhere where they could have BSE. But you can't bring in canned ("tinned") meat.

Jeri, I've grown both a 'Rosette Delizy' and a Lady Hillingdon from suckers from two massive tree sized Tea rosebushes, both sucker grown plants are now nearly 5 feet tall. I waited until the rains started in late autumn and until both suckers were 14" to 16 inches tall so they would have well established roots. I was careful to dig far under each sucker to get every single root. They took off far more quickly than Tea rosebushes propagated by cuttings, have in my garden. Tea suckers are less common, than roses of other classes, such as Gallicas, but I do see Tea rose suckers occasionally growing beside massive Tea rosebushes. The one I took from Rosette Delizy came from a plant that had only two massive trunk like basal canes each was well over a foot thick. and the thinsucker grew out about a foot from one of those "trunks". Lux