Hi, I'm Judy ...I'm new to Gardenweb, found it researching plants a few weeks ago and on another thread saw a comment about GJ site.Came here and have been addicted since.My poor BF is afraid to hear me say the words "Honey come here & look" right now!! lol I've been a crafter most of my life.I've tried all kinds. I love to paint any & everything.If you sit still long enough I'll paint you too. Also have always loved making stuff out of stuff and I am in heaven around you folks.Your projects and ideas, so MUCH talent & creativity.I have a shed full of "stuff" & crafting supplies I need to get motivated to use and you guys sure do motivate me.BF will be so happy as he asks me all the time what am I gonna do w/all the stuff! I got into gardening about 25 years ago, took the MG class about 17 years ago so I could talk to people about plants w/o their eyes glazing over! I didn't know a whole lot when I took the class and am still learning every day.I'm lucky to live near Park Seed & Wayside Gardens here in Greenwood,S.C.During the Festival of Flowers week here they have a fabulous plant & bulb sale with incredible bargains and free seminars all the time. I live w/my BF of five years on his 1 acre near on Lake Greenwood.When we met he had one sad little bed in the front.The land is hard clay so we're building beds one at a time and do alot of containers.He's jumped right in with gardening and loves to be the one to dig the holes and planting when I show him where I want it.Hes built me raised beds and cedar fences & trellis'I had no Idea he was so talented when we met.We're a good match together, Im lucky to have him in my life. I was raised an AF brat and moved all over til my dad retired here in '72 when I was 17.My nickname Jitterbug came from him cos I used to try to dance when I was little like him & momma did.I've moved to boston & georgia & florida as an adult, but always came back here. I love the area, the people and the climate, except August when it gets so hot & muggy you cant breath sometimes lol. I worked at a local hospital for years in the records dept., moved to the Genetic Center to the fetal pathology Dept for a year and decided fetal autopsies were not my cup of tea. Opened a catering business and am now Service & Banquet Manager at a local hotel. We have a 9 month old kitty, Monkeygirl who showed up here and we adopted her.We lost her 14 year old brother Mok Mok a few months after she came to live with us. Until her, he never let another cat anywhere near us, but took right to her, We think he knew he didnt have long and knew we need another baby to spoil rotten. I have enjoyed reading about all of you and am looking forward to coming back and seeing all your wonderful projects. I have no idea how to start a site or upload pics to show off some of our stuff, but am going to see soom if i can find some help. Nice to meet all of you...... Judy

My mother had several plant collections, she collected rare alpine plants, most of which were 2 to six inches tall, and I never did appreciate them, but I loved her Primula collection, odd gilded Victorian primroses, hose in garter prims, Japanese primroses, drumsticks and species. My first love in my own garden was the Lily, I loved the trumpet and oriental lilies for their rich deep scent. I lived with more than 200 different modern rosebushes for five years and only one was fragrant Double Delight, and I could not stand the gawky bare limbed growth habit of those H.T.s and Florries. THEN LUanne changed my life with one suggestion "since your'e looking for fragrance why don't you try growing Old Garden Roses ? I did and never looked back. I was enchanted to know that I could and would grow the white 'Rose of York' and the Lancaster Red Rose, cloned from descendants from the same plants that bloomed in medieval Europe. The white Musk rose that Shakespeare wrote so sweetly of, is in my garden now about to bloom. The history and mystery of Old Roses endears me to them, I love knowing that I see roses blooming that I grow the white rose of York, known since the 1400's in England, and that white rose and the red rose of Lancaster was likely to have been seen by both Shakespeare and the Tudor family back when knights fought in tournaments, and some people truly believed that unicorns might exist, the wild eglantine one sees in Queen Elizabeth 1's portraits, painted in the 1500's, are a symbol of virginity and I have held the wild eglantine in my hand, so small and frail and perfect, and smelled the welcome scent of its leaves on a moist breeze. - the rare and only yellow garden rose, brought from the middle east, seen in the paintings of the dutch masters was so rare in the 17th century that one painter had to wait months for a yellow rose bloom to appear in the marketplace, so he could fulfill his patrons request for a yellow rose in a still life. The many Tea roses blooming in my California garden, and the Banksiae have ancestors in China, and I would love to see them all in their native habitat. I love roses best with companions, the photo posted recently with hollyhocks and red Valerian in profusion with one Le Vesuve in the center is my idea of high beauty; lush colorful companions with a queen in the middle. O, Splendor, O, Joy!!! The leaves,up to 15 leaflets upon one stem, fern shaped leaves of Scotch Burnets, pleated rugosa folaige, the scent of the Incense Rose leaves, more strongly scented than many a flower of a modern rose, the flagon shaped hips of Alba Semi Plena, and millions of R. moyessi hips, hips as large as cherry tomatos on Magnifica rugosa, tiny sprays of black hips an ornament many Spinosissima roses, the lush grow of de la Grifferaie' blue-green leaves of the Alba roses, pretty arching growth of a pegged Hybrid Perpetual Ulrich Brunner fils' , and many scents of the different rose classes, , classic Damask, to the sexy scent of Tea roses has opened a world to me that I could not dream to comprehend before I knew of any rose other than 'Peace'. -and best of all, the people I meet at Old Rose events, and here on gardenweb that share their love of roses with me. Thank you all for sharing your beautiful writing, Lux

Wow....what an amazing list of people.... too many of them no longer with us or active here. It is nice to remember some of their names and their struggles that we shared. Thanks for the memories.

I have just finished reading Larry McMurtry's "Dead Man's Walk", the first in his Lonesome Dove four-book western saga (I understand Lonesome Dove was written first, then he wrote two prequels, of which "Dead Man's Walk" is the first, then a sequel). I fell in love with the two lead characters Gus and Call and found the tales of, to simplify the story, trying to settle the West gripping. It seemed they got into one bind after another and would always manage to get into trouble right as my subway or bus stop was coming up. My only problem with the book was the violence/gore. Sometimes it was man's inhumanity to man; sometimes nature's inhumanity to man. I do not really think it was violence for violence's sake - having read my share of history books I know these things happened. In any event, my co-worker assures me that there is less of this as the saga progresses. Despite this, I am not going to jump right into the next in the series and have decided to start my library copy of Connie Willis' novel "The Doomsday Book" - the only book of hers the library had on hand. In this one a student is dropped back into the middle ages to study the black plague. According to some online reviews I have read, as it was written in 1992 it loses some of it's futuristic qualities as apparently in the characters' 'present' time of the 2040's they did not have cell phones. However, I understand that her depiction of the middle ages is very well researched so I am looking forward to that. Will let you all know how it goes!