The more, the merrier. Now, let's just pray for temperate weather for the weekend. :-) AND REMEMBER! The day before the ceremony -- Sun., May 17 -- is the Celebration Of Old Roses. This is not only a wonderful chance to see roses you might never otherwise see -- but a great social occasion. We'll have a GREAT selection of Silent Auction and Raffle roses and other things, to raise funds for the Heritage Roses Groups, but there will also be incredible things of all sorts for sale. DH and I will be there all day. I'll mostly be at the LOcal Groups table, with the Silent Auction roses, so please come say HEY. Place, El Cerrito Community Center, 7007 Moeser Lane El Cerrito, CA Doors open 11 a.m. Food available -- and you really won't want to leave early. If you want to bring roses to add to the tables, please arrive before 10 a.m. The waiting time between 10 and 11 is a great time to socialize with friends outside. I'm hoping to meet a lot of y'all. Jeri

Just in case anyone else was curious about the Caroline Marniesse, I asked Gregg at Vintage about it and he was super nice enough to give me some more information. Vintage's is the same one as the one at San Jose. Hopefully he won't mind me reposting the information here as it might be helpful to someone else interested. "Yes, this is the same as our Caroline Marniesse. It is an unusual plant for a Noisette, much more dwarf than most, although very similar in many ways to Aimee Vibert, which has the stature of a Polyantha. Caroline Marniesse is rather compact and low; but it does send out longish flower stems from the base. Those stems tend to grow somewhat sideways, making more spreading plant than you typically find in a Noisette. This old plant at San Jose is grafted and therefore has been more vigorous than an own-root plant, and it has grown in a fairly tight planting which has encouraged it to form an upper canopy, shading the lower stems and creating this sort of âÂÂtree-likeâ plant. I suppose this could be replicated with pruning over time, but would take some doing."

Michaela - all sorts of things! My usual bell peppers, eggplants and broccoli, plus petunias, snaps, nicotiana, annual lobelia and some of the zinnias I hybridized - those will all be started in early March. Later, I'll start tomatoes, marigolds, cosmos, cleome, some poppies and more. Will be winter sowing this year with some seed I picked up in a swap - some fancier echinaceas, alliums, gaillardia and others. Would be happy to swap, though I've already got some foxglove, so I don't need that right now. Hoping the ones I've put in will naturalize - I've got them in 3 different locations, hoping one will take. And I'll be direct sowing, among other things, a whole basket full of zinnia seeds, saved from my crosses this past summer - going to be interesting! Anything in particular you're looking for? - Alex

How nice. I bet it was fun to stroll through. Thank you for sharing!