Thanks for stirring memories. For anyone who loves roses, it's a wonderful place to visit. I came up on a "rose rustling" tour from the Huntington some years ago and had a love time. Another place well worth a side tour for anyone putting this on their list is the Empire Mine State Park, including its gardens. And then there are the old roses found in many of the old cemeteries in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, final resting places for people who long ago spent their new Gold Rush riches on roses brought in from around the Horn.

What a great list of roses you got! Getting in line early paid off! All of those roses grow in the cemetery, and Janelle's given a good description of them. The sales catalog has the location of each of the roses, if you ever make it back to Sacramento and want to look at them. Our Cemetery Musk Seedling is small, as Janelle described, perhaps more like four feet across. It grows in a fountain shape, and we believe it's something special for its fragrance, large crop of little hips and constant bloom. Ours gets some shade from other roses, and I wonder if it would get bigger in full sun. The plant is at least four years old, maybe five. Roseville Noisette is a bit of a puzzle. Jeri grows it and says her young plant is bigger than ours that has stayed very compact for many years. It's in full sun, and gets basically the same care as every other cemetery rose, so I'm not sure why it's so small. I'm a great advocate for snapping off hips, but I usually get out my clippers and cut off the spent clusters on this rose. Many roses put out new growth right under the abscission point, and teas and chinas often do it right within the flower cluster, but this rose does it at the first growth bud below the spent cluster. If you just snap off the flowers, you have dead little stems that you'll probably want to go back and remove.

Thank you, Anita. I honestly believe we're missing a chance with Yesterday's Garden. As you've experienced, it is clean, it flowers a lot and it remains tidy in its habit. It IS a Rugosa hybrid, so it has that interest, even for people who are more "educated" or selective in their rose selections. It definitely seems to be one which should be added to a garden, or even just a basic landscape for carefree color. It was very good in my old Newhall garden. My only negative about it was it wouldn't set seed nor was there any real pollen to work with. Otherwise, it did what it was supposed to do and was pretty doing it. Who wouldn't enjoy a rose you can deadhead with a hose or by shaking the plant with a stick? I'm glad you're going to propagate it. Thank you! Kim

I suppose there really is nothing more to do at this point but wait to see what transpires at the April 13 meeting, except for those who have not yet written a letter of protest to someone at the City. The more protests the better, needless to say. Keeping fingers crossed!