Here's another pic. of vibrant color despite my tap water pH near 9 (very alkaline), that's through soluble-fertilizer with molasses in hot & dry summer:

Seaweed deepened her blooms in dry Southern California with fish-emulsion, plus diluted-soluble-chicken-manure. Seaweed wrote: Below are my roses cut today, June 19: clockwise, from bottom, Evelyn, Mister Lincoln, April in Paris, Prospero, Love Potion and Munstead Wood, center is Blue Girl.

this is fantastic info, I have a huge tub of organic Coconut oil....and from now on I'll be having more of that... how do you think it has to be taken Straw? mixed with food/on it's own?

the Golden Spread nr 1 is almost 'finito' and I'll be making more of that as well. better than chocolate... :-)

wow Straw, these roses are so magical... your Evelyn is the most vibrant color of any Evelyn I've ever seen...I love the colors you chose to have in your rose garden... I have to get some molasses... how much molasses do you think I should use? and should I wait for spring?

my tip on happiness is this...

let God decide what will be best for me...

my tip on roses:

grow Organic roses, have an organic garden.

Any other way hurts nature, kills God-given life. we can't control nature, we have to work with her and learn from her.

Jess: I love your tip of "Let God decide what will be best for me". I failed in that aspect and suffered .. with over $1,000 medical bills since I let flu-shot companies decide what's best for me. I didn't know until I researched that an international team decide what are the strains of virus to be put into the vaccine, but IT DOES NOT PROTECT one from common cold nor pneumonia .. and I got pneumonia & allergic reaction to my flu-shot.

We often decide what's best for us based on our insecurities & greed, addiction, and neurotic desires, rather than what's best for eternity (as in God's plan).

I notice that lack of sleep can produce more hunger-hormones (Ghrelin), which make us eat more salt (potato chips), and more sugar (sweets) which pack on pounds. Many studies backed that up. When I sleep well & take magnesium oxide, like during my flu-shot-reaction, I lost weight .. zero cravings for sweets nor salt, since I got plenty of sleep.

Google news have this article today, that proves what we eat have MORE EFFECT on the scale & weight than exercise, but exercise make us feel better. See excerpt from below:

https://www.ksl.com/?sid=39220804&nid=1010

" What would happen if you started exercising without changing your eating habits? One study published in the Annals of Family Medicine looked at walking programs conducted with no diet changes. For every 10.5 miles (17 km) walked, participants lost just over one-tenth of a pound (0.04 kg). In other words, you need to cover the distance of four marathons to lose just one pound, or (0.45 kg).

How much would it take to lose one pound solely through diet? If you cut out 500 calories per day (such as one bagel with cream cheese) then you will lose one pound in just one week, no marathons needed.

As physicist Alex Hutchinson explains in the book "The Diet Fix," if you burn 88 calories walking a mile on the treadmill, 36 of those calories account for your resting energy expenditure. In other words, you would have burned 36 calories even if you skipped the gym and stayed at home on the couch."

Some pictures of 500 calories food taken from the Internet, skip that indulgence daily, and one lose 1 pound in one week .. or eat 1 of these daily, and you'll gain 1 lb. per week:

Jess: I forget to answer your question "I have a huge tub of organic Coconut oil....and from now on I'll be having more of that... how do you think it has to be taken Straw? mixed with food/on it's own?"

Agree with you that the turmeric pills we made with coconut oil & turmeric & black pepper quenched my appetite. Yesterday I shopped for 2 hours, tiny breakfast .... came home really hungry, so I popped 2 turmeric pills ... but they were too big to swallow, so I chewed on them. YUM !! They tasted like INSTANT spicy-curry meal .. just a few bites of that stopped my hunger.

Decade ago I was 97 lbs, or 44 kg, that's when I made huge batch of banana bread with walnut, coconut oil & coconut meal. I put 10 ripe bananas for 2 cups of whole-wheat flour & 1 cup oatmeal & 2 teaspoon baking powder, zero sugar, 2 eggs, 2 Tablespoon coconut oil, 1/2 cup walnut, a bit of soy milk to thin out. That recipe can be made into pancakes.

I had that banana bread before bed-time and the coconut-fat kept me full through the night .. slept well. Statistics showed top reasons for not sleeping well: 1) hypoblycemia (blood-sugar dips during the night 2) back-pain 3) heartburn, or acidic stomach.

Magnesium oxide is VERY ALKALINE, so it reduces stomach acid .. I took lots of magnesium when I was sick with flu-shot, and wasn't hungry at all. Coconut oil is ALKALINE, so it helps to curb hunger. Other alkaline foods: sweet potato, pumpkin, vegetables. But sugar & meat are acidic, which increase hunger & stomach acid. Below is chart of alkaline foods taken from the internet .. they are all high in magnesium:

Some quotes for April:

"Love is a choice, it's giving to benefit the other person. Lust is a feeling, it's getting to benefit one's greed". Straw.

"Love is never lost. If not reciprocated, it will flow back and soften and purify the heart. Washington Irving.

"The opposite for courage is not cowardice, it is conformity. Even a dead fish can go with the flow. Jim Hightower.

" As your faith is strengthened you will find that there is no longer the need to have a sense of control, that things will flow as they will, and that you will flow with them, to your great delight and benefit. " Emmanuel Teney.

When you're surrounded by people who share a passionate commitment around a common purpose, anything is possible. Howard Schultz

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/flow.html

**** My favorite Catholic saint is St. Francis, he's the saint who was closest to nature. Here's the prayer of St. Francis: "

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace,
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy;

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life."

**** From Straw: The Catholic church declared St. Francis as the patron saint of nature. See excerpts from link below:

"In declaring St. Francis of Assisi the Patron saint of those who promote care for nature, the Church recommends Francis as a guide for animal and nature lovers, environmentalists and ecologists. Francis shows us how to live in a way that respects and honours nature as God's creation.

http://www.praying-nature.com/site_pages.php?section=Guide+for+Nature+Lovers

St. Francis was born at Assisi in 1182. After a care free youth, he turned his back on inherited wealth and committed himself to God. Like many early saints, he lived a very simple life of poverty, and in so doing, gained a reputation of being the friend of animals. He established the rule of St Francis, which exists today as the Order of St. Francis, or the Franciscans. He died in 1226, aged 44.

http://poemhunter.com/poem/the-prayer-of-st-francis-of-assisi/

how beautiful are your roses Straw.... they are so huge, deep colors....

thanks also for these beautiful quotes... St Francis of Assisi is so close to my heart...

and the great info on Coconut oil. It is yummy... I had a tablespoon in my bran cereal mixed with raisins and soy milk.

Lovely roses!!! So full and stuffed!! Your efforts really shine forth in the gorgeous blooms and colors!

I remember, Straw, that you said you had vertigo. I had a terrible bout of vertigo yesterday. My daughter called the ambulance, because I was dry heaving, sweating profusely, my arm was going numb (symptoms of heart attack in women) and I felt like I was falling out of my chair that she helped me get into to. It was terrible vertigo. I couldn't even walk, the whole house was spinning. I had vertigo about 30 years ago. Hopefully I'll never get it again. The paramedics gave me an I.V. of gravol.

Carol

Carol: That's terrible. All my prayers for your quick recovery and good health.

Straw: Fantastic colours.... all roses look stunning.

best regards

Carol: That's very serious .. Are you feeling better? Blood pressure medication can also cause vertigo. My case was middle-ear-inflammation from flu-shot. If my hard-well water gets into ears while showering .. I have very mild vertigo again, but solve it via rinsing my ears with hydrogen peroxide.

Sleeping on one's back worsen one's vertigo, but sleeping on the side (alternative left to right) helps to drain the water from both ears, thus less chance of vertigo. After my flu-shot-reaction, I sleep with a feather pillow and on my sides, and no problems with vertigo.

Yes, I'm feeling better. Thank goodness!! I don't ever want to go through that again. I'm a little afraid every time I get up from lying down. I'm glad you're feeling better too!

I have a question about Rose Tone. We have no such thing here -- but I've found something that is called Organic Rage Plus Plant Fertilizer. It's 0-0-6. Do you think it would be enough if I paired it with gypsum, worm compost and kelp? I'm thinking that the fertilizer I used last year was more like 20-20-20, so how could anything compare to that?

Carol

Carol: Hypodronics is growing in enclosed water-environment, a bit more retentive than plastic pots. In such environment, phosphorus of 20 was bad for roots. With roses, the ideal ratio is equal nitrogen to potassium, 1/2 calcium, and 1/10 phosphorus. You still want the 20 for nitrogen and potassium, so I would apply 20-20-20 only ONCE a month during heavy rain .. then don't use any phosphorus (there's plenty), but add more nitrogen & potassium via worm compost, kelp, plus your 0-0-6 fertilizer once a week.

Kelp is salty, thus use it less frequently, 3 times a year. Same with 20-20-20, the phosphorus is too high, thus best once a month, only during VERY HEAVY rain. Phosphorus mobility is a 1, it hardly move, won't be lost during heavy rain like potassium and nitrogen, which needs to be supplied weekly for pots.

Okay...I thought you guys were against fertilizer like 20-20-20 and only organics is best?? But I can do what you suggest. You've made it pretty simple. I get so confused when everyone talks about chemistry. LOL But I like it when you keep it simple for me. :)

1. 20-20-20 once/month only during heavy rains.

2. once week - worm compost, and 0-0-6.

3. Kelp once/month

Oh, and fish fertilizer with 2. (worm/0-0-6)??

Thanks so much Straw. From someone who finds chemistry beyond me. LOL

Carol

Carol: I would NEVER recommend 20-20-20 for someone with a dry & hot climate, but I get heavy rain here, 10 min. is enough to fill a HUGE garbage can (32 gallon or 121 liter) from my rain-barrel. Such heavy & all day & all night rain (24 hours) would leach out all the potassium & nitrogen from pots, plus a fraction of phosphorus & calcium.

If you have left-over 20-20-20, then use it, but I won't buy that stuff, with far better choice of blood meal and sulfate of potash (4 teas. blood meal to 1 teas. sulfate of potash).

I leave a bucket outside to measure the rain, if there's more than 4", or 10 cm .. it's time to use BIG dose of nitrogen & potassium for pots, but only once a month. Yes to fish fertilizer with worm/0-0-6 .. you need trace elements plus nitrogen from fish fertilizer for DEEP & VIBRANT colors in your blooms.

The reason why Seaweed's bouquet above has such DEEP and VIBRANT color is that she has only 12" of rain per year, compared to my 49" of rain like last wet-year (haven't count snow yet). Since Seaweed is in dry & warm California, the trace elements of fish fertilizer don't get leached out with heavy rain .. resulting in deep & vibrant color. In contrast, Chicago Botanical Garden's roses become faded & beige plus smaller blooms & less petals with our heavy spring rain (leaching of trace elements & potassium). One more bouquet from Seaweed (friend in CA) that she sent me: the lavender ones are passion-fruit flowers from her garden:

Yes, we get a LOT of rain in the spring. A lot of my blooms won't open because of the rain. And yes, that's when I use my 20-20-20. Thanks Straw!

Lovely bouquet!! And the passionflowers are so amazing!

Carol

Safety tips for the garden: NEVER USE GAS nearby a flame source, like a pilot light in a water-heater, or furnace, or a tiny ember.

One neighbor used gasoline to kill a big & thorny rose grafted on Dr. Huey: she poured on the rose, then put a trash-can-lid over it so it could not get rain. That surely destroyed the soil.

During my volunteer days in rehab (decades ago), I still remember a man, burnt badly from head to toe ... he was in utter misery. He told me how he did it: through using gasoline to kill a patch of poison ivy.

Another man did the same and became a human fireball, except he attempted to light some wood in a wrought iron outdoor fireplace, the $99 type at HomeDepot. He could not get fire started, so he grabbed the red-can of gasoline container (for mowing the lawn).. it has just a little of gas inside.

He thought he could splash just a tiny bit of gas onto the barely alive flicker on the log .. but that tiny flame ignited the fumes and shoot the flame into the gas can and caused a HUGE EXPLOSION .. and he became a fireball.

Luckily there's a pond 12 yards away, and he jumped into it .. alive, but in the hospital for months with 17 very painful skin-grafts. He wrote his near-death-experience and time in hell (after death) in the below Amazon book-on-line. Just click on the book and Amazon shows the first few pages of the book, where he landed in hell after death. He's an assistant principal at an elementary school.

http://www.amazon.com/Hell-Real-Too-Death-Experience-ebook/dp/B018UYNQCG/ref=sr_1_9?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1460265353&sr=1-9&keywords=hell#reader_B018UYNQCG

There's another sad & true story of a teenager boy was chopping wood with a chain-saw, he ran out of gas, and it's freezing cold outside, so he brought the gas can down the basement to re-fill his chain-saw, except there's a furnace down the basement (with flame inside) .. the entire basement exploded, killing the boy.

Another near-death experience involved a man came back to his old house on sale .. the water was turned off, so he could not wash his hands after spraying a wasp-nest with wasp-spray. He got some wasp-spray on his hands, was hungry so he ate his sandwich, noticed a strange taste .. he got ill, and was in a coma & had a near-death-experience (went to heaven) then hospitalized for 6 months before he could walk again.

Why would an apparently nice person go to hell??? I don't get that. Maybe that's too controversial for a rose forum discussion. :)

Carol