I've been avoiding this post because I knew there was going to be a lot of happy Californians talking about stuff. Two feet of snow but starting to melt-sooo, it's ice city like one foot lumps on the sidewalk. The weather reports from Washington D.C. are wild, aren't they? Sorry for sending you our weather, though we rarely get five feet at once, either. I hope the Cherry trees are alright. I haven't forgotten that one I bought by mistake. Not even the rootstock made it. They were selling them at K-mart. As we drove home the latin name kept bothering me-I knew I had read it somewhere. The monsters who send those and bouganvillea and Lady Banks Rose to Montana ought to be sent to summer school at a logging camp. 36 degrees on the porch tonight. A front coming out of Seattle is pushing the warm air ahead of it. I was wishing for an old-fashioned chinook wind. Haven't had any in years. You'd wake up in the morning to a howling warm wind and the snow would be gone in a couple days.

Lawns are vastly overrated. They are a lot of work yet yield less satisfaction than flower beds. For example, my 70 year old mother can manage to weed and tend her flowers but I have to drive 3 hours to cut her grass for her because she has trouble with the mower. Sometimes simple is best. That is why I'm getting rid of ALL her grass and converting both the back and front yards into a colonial style cottage garden. Mom is thrilled. So put in a series of paths and turn everything else into raised beds. If you're still out of room (trust me I know the feeling) then consider the joys of shovel pruning. Do you have any disappointing roses that are 3 years old or older? Yes? Then execute their lazy butts! Put in some new blood. Shovel pruning is one of the great hidden pleasures of rose gardening. Lets face it: gardening is hard but with shovel pruning you can really work out a lot of that frustration. Heck, make a production out of it. Imagine you are the French during the revolution and the runty roses are the filthy rich, spoiled aristocracy. OFF WITH THEIR HEADS! La Madame de Shovel DEMANDS satisfaction! Now go buy some more roses. LOL! Patrick

Hi Dawn, I hope this is what you're looking for. HOW TO COUNT ROSES -- Kim_SC at Gradenweb 1. Mini roses donÂt count. 2. Floribundas  because they are not full-fledged hybrid teas  count as half. 3. Shrubs, Climbers, Ramblers, Old Garden Roses, etc. donÂt count because they can be considered "landscaping." 4. Roses not planted  or in pots  donÂt count. (See the "Territory" Clause). 5. Roses that were discounted count as half. 6. Roses received as gifts donÂt count. 7. Odd numbers must always be rounded offÂif youÂre out of room, round the number down. For every one-hundred, divide by two. This is known as a "stock split." 8. Roses whose names you donÂt know or can't remember obviously donÂt count. 9. Roses that are on Shovel Prune Watch donÂt count; the roses that replace them also donÂt count as they cancel each other out. Duplicate/multiples count as one as they are considered a set. Roses that are not planted in a bed donÂt count. (See the "Landscaping" Addendum). Bareroots donÂt count because they are dormant when they arrive; once you plant them and they start to bud outÂwell, youÂve already done your count, so you will just have to wait until next seasonÂby which time youÂll be sure you already counted them. Mislabeled roses donÂt count because you probably already have one of them somewhere, which has already been counted onceÂprobably. Anything less than Grade 1 counts only a fraction, and since fractions are not whole numbers they can be rounded off (remember the rounding off rule). Roses that you think you might give away can be excluded from the countÂmakes it easier to part with them; if, by some chance you wind up keeping them, wellÂoh well. HTs that get huge and wind up taking more than one space should be counted twice, but remember the duplicate rule. NowÂif, after counting, you have under a hundred roses, you must immediately place some ordersÂand they donÂt count because theyÂre in transit and therefore not in the ground. Roses ordered on a whim really donÂt count because they were never on a list. (This is known as the list rule: If itÂs not on a list, it doesnÂt existÂmost likely). If you cut many roses and give them away, this is considered Charity, and everyone knows that you get special allowances for CharityÂwhich brings us to Tax Deductions (see Claiming Roses as Dependants). See? You really didnÂt have as many as you thought you didÂtime to go order some more. K.

Buford, Buford, Buford . . . Are you NEVER going to figure out how this works? Ofcourse they don't count, silly! Not only do they not count, but those four will occupy space reserved for roses that you DO want, so when you (finally) get the four that you do want, those four don't count either because the stress of delayed gratification PLUS the hassle of fitting them in cancels them out TWICE, see? So you're getting a total of nine roses, only one of which you have to count -- PLUS you then have a bonus of four roses that you get to add to next year's order(s). So that's an even dozen new roses that actually don't figure into your total. Now do you understand?