Rosa pendulina, always the first, opened a week ago, a close second was its relative and lookalike, a Finnish species cross called Kempeleen kaunotar, the third was Fredrik Hellstrand, a hybrid rugosa bred by a friend, the fourth was Double White. But I am loosing count these days, all the early roses are about to flower. Here is a link that might be useful: Fredrik Hellstrand

Tracy, your post had me snorting water through my nose! Thanks for making me LMAO...and welcome to the board. This is a very suportive environment and we're happy to have another friendly face. =) IMO, put the books down and start with MP first until you want to get more complicated. I originally wanted to do CP soap but like you, got a ton of conflicting information and psyched myself out of trying CP. Getting the chemicals and acids and fats calculation, etc, etc intimidated me and delayed my foray into soapmaking by 5 years. Take that FWIW, YMMV and it's all IMO...HTH! Andrea, who's in acronym hell right now =)

Rockybird, you had some childhood adventures didn't you?!? One of my sisters was always a wanderer as a child; back in the '60s parenting was definitely more free-range so she used to go all over our neighborhood unsupervised, which at the time was a relatively new development with lots of fields, woods etc. We lived in a military town which also meant lots of men around and I remember her at one point coming home to tell our mom that someone she met out in the woods was 'bothering' her. That turned out to be a guy who had been exposing himself to my 8-year old sister, repeatedly! OMG, I still recall how shocked and upset my mother was about that. She had no idea what had been happening and evidently my sister just wasn't fazed by the whole thing. Looking back as an adult myself she and my family are extremely fortunate nothing worse happened. Tish, nothing as serious as your story but here's another Bad Mother memory from my files: both my husband and I are/were not terribly interested in food and eating. We are both eat-to-live types and for a long time our dinners were relatively informal to say the least. Till one night when my daughter was ~7 YO she came to me just before bedtime insisting she was so, so hungry. I couldn't understand why until I asked my husband what he had fed her because I thought he'd taken care of that. He looked at me blankly, then asked what *I* had given her because he thought I'd done something for dinner! Talk about feeling awful...that was the start of my many year 5-night a week family dinner schedule (the other 2 nights were leftover and pizza nights). I never missed feeding the kids dinner again :). And while I'm here, one from parenting my son, teenage category. He, at my insistence, went to the senior prom. He wasn't dating anyone so took a girl who was a friend and he also told me the next day offhandedly that he had driven a group of kids home from the prom which was held on South Beach. A few days later I had gotten annoyed at something he hadn't done, homework I think, and was ripping him about being irresponsible, not doing what he should etc. He lost his temper and blurted out that 'driven a group' meant that all the kids he drove home were blind drunk and he was worried they would get hurt so volunteered to get them home safely which meant he had to drive literally to the south end of our county from the north end (SoBe) taking various people to their houses. Not only that, his 'date' ended up drunk-dialing her ex boyfriend to try to hook up with him while my son was taking her home then proceeded to vomit out the window of the car all the way to her house. I'll never forget my son saying to me 'mom, you have no idea what I had to do because I was the only one who wasn't blasted out of my mind!'. Talk about feeling like the world's worst mother!

Thanks everyone! Beth, YES their buds are ready to pop and I can't wait. Sara, I'm very excited about Midas Touch, it's striking vivid color grabs all of the attention.