Lilyfinch I'm west of Franklin so I don't think I'm very far from you. I'm somewhat new to this as well but I'm happy to share what I've figured out. Number one is that I avoid having roses in pots at all costs! Last year I bought bands in the spring and nursed them along all summer in pots, potting them up a couple times as they grew. I got the plants in the ground in Sept a little after the heat broke. With bitter, bitter cold hitting very early for us--early November--and returning multiple times over the winter I lost about half the roses that I got planted in the fall. I just don't think they were given enough time to establish themselves before the weather turned. This year when I got bands I potted them up to gallons and after about 6 weeks of growth put them in prepared beds. (Some in a permanent place and some in my vegetable garden for transfer later.) These planted roses are doing SO MUCH better than the bands from last year stuck in pots. More growth, less disease and tens time easier to keep watered and cared for! I've seen a real correlation between roses getting short changed on water from being in a pot (and depending on me to water daily and sometimes twice a day--a chore that I sometimes missed) and those same roses getting black spot. I have a climbing pinkie I don't spray. Just in the last couple of weeks for some reason the black spot pressure has seemed to spike a bit. It is normally clean. At the moment it has a few lower leaves that have spotted and turned yellow, but in general it doesn't seem to have a significant amount of defoliation. This plant was a gift from a friend who had it limping along in a pot for a couple years. When I put it in the ground and threw a shovel of horse manure on it and kept it reasonably well water it exploded in growth and made a 180 turn around in health. I also have a Mrs. Dudley. Last year's band was a casualty of winter and was replaced by a 3 gallon plant this spring. It is growing but slowly. I also pinch most (not all) buds hoping to focus energy on growth not blooming. In general my teas are clean of black spot with only a few old yellow leaves toward the bottom of the plant. The cleanest are Mrs. B R Cant, Madame Antoine Mari, Duchess du Brabant, Mons Tillier and Mrs. Dudley. I wouldn't tried to do pots here again without some sort of automatic watering set up because you miss a few waterings and the roses get diseased and start loosing their leaves in a heart beat.

I live in the South, long hot growing seasons, lots of humidity. My brugs are all planted in the ground. I have several that look like your first picture and several that look nothing like it. I have had cuttings from the SAME plant grow 10'tall in a couple of months and another cutting that began to grow horizontal and never get over 5' tall. Same mother plant, same planting time, same everything. Mine bloom best after it rains. In the middle of summer, like now, they often have very, very few leaves and no blooms. Then it rains. Hot and humid and covered with blooms. One, an unknown white, had about 300 blooms on it from about March to June. It now has about 3 leaves on it & nothing else. We have very alkaline soil and our water is very alkaline. My "soil" is really little more than sand to tell the truth. And I'm notoriously bad at fertilizing anything. And forget treating for bugs! I never prune anything unless it's in my way either. I've had at least 5 flushes of blooms this year, all equally beautiful & expect them to all bloom again once it cools off a bit. Our heat index was 115 yesterday & it was 99 at 0530 this morning. Tally HO!

The crayon ... leaves a colourful legacy! One of the best stress-relievers around ... ... is some humour (that isn't aimed at someone's ribs). When everyone's as busy as can be in an office ... ... and someone makes a funny comment, small joke, etc. ... ... everyone giggles a bit, or smiles ... ... and most everyone's blood pressure goes down a bit. Not only that ... I suspect that the work gets done more effectively ... and quickly. My opinion - disagree if you choose. ole joyful P.S. I sent it to my daughter ... who counsels people who've been laid off/downsized/made redundant ... and recruits other counsellors ... then trains themn ... then encourages, backstops, uplifts their flagging spirits, etc. ... for some 60 hours per week. o j

Claybabe, hope they made it safely! David123, I hear you and so sorry about your parents not being able to make it :-( We are supposed to have a family gathering this evening (Christmas Eve) with my grandparents and other extended family, but I don't think we'll be able to have it with all the snow. And, we are still missing one shipment from Amazon. They say it will be delivered today, but the mailman hasn't made it here the past two days. If it was all gifts from me to the kids not terrible, but a couple items are from Santa. Fingers crossed it actually arrives today!