Online AND offline registration forms are now available at the HRF website or the HRF FaceBook page (search "Heritage Rose Foundation". I hope to have the fall 2013 newsletter emailed to the membership in the next few days. If you're not a current member and would like a copy, please email me and I'll get you one. It will contain the full schedule, with speaker bios, conference logistics, etc. I'm not sure why, but that web page seems to be a bit 'sticky,' in that if you've been there before, you may get the old, non-updated page. If that seems to be the case (e.g., no downloadable registration form), try refreshing the page in your browser. Here is a link that might be useful: HRF website This post was edited by malcolm_manners on Sat, Aug 24, 13 at 9:56

Earth Day (I believe Saturday, April 24?) will be another planting event in upper Manhattan for their Historic Rose District. No conference associated with this event. November (exact dates to be decided) -- HRF conference in New Orleans. Details to come later. June 2011 (exact dates to be decided) conference in Lyon France. Sorry I don't have more details just now.

THE LIST. 14 Duchesse de Brabant (Tea) 2 Mary Washington (Noisette) 2 Mme La Comtesse de Leusse (Tea) 1 Mothersday (Polyantha) 6 Labatut Tea 5 "Gate Tayloe Musk" 2 Saluda Musk 2 Yellow Mutabilis Roses are in band-sized pots and they are very well rooted. Some are so large that I may have to trim them a bit to package and ship them. I will try to avoid this whenever I can. Speaking of shipping, my boxes are most efficient when I ship in quantities of 4. If you are interested in any of these, email me (connie@hartwoodroses.com). First come, first served ... but I will be away from the computer for most of the day today. Don't panic if you don't hear from me for a while. I will send a message to confirm your order and sit your roses aside. (I plan to update quantities on the above list to keep it current as roses are ordered.) With your address in hand, I can figure out the shipping charge via USPS Priority Mail and send a paypal invoice. All proceeds from the sale of these roses are passed along to Heritage Rose Foundation. I am only the volunteer who is making it happen. Here are a couple of photos to show how large these bands are:

Amy, I guess I was in Texas shopping, but we had a long list of things to do at home, so we only went as far south as Denton in order to go to Sam's Club, and I guess we'll hit CostCo next weekend or the one after since it it a much greater distance to drive. We wanted to hurry back home to work on projects and to watch the OU-UT game. It was hot, hot, hot here yesterday so we were just barely hanging on and hoping for cooler weather, which finally rolled in sometime in the pre-dawn hours this morning....and not too long before our fire pagers went off (while it was still dark) for a multi-vehicle accident on the Red River bridge (because we never get to sleep in on weekends----it is like it is against the rules or something). Today was pretty mild, but tonight is supposed to be cold. We're looking forward to seeing what temperatures in the low to mid-40s feels like. It's been a long time since it has been so cool here. Tomorrow morning will finally be long-sleeve weather for sure. Amy, Pets in cones are the cutest and sometimes the funniest things. I bet that cats do smirk. I'm sorry about your mom. She's at such a sensitive age in terms of medical complications and it always seems like surgery sets off something or another in people who've reached a certain age. I hope she's better soon. Jennifer, Your chickens likely will eat the peppers and probably poop out seeds later that might (or might not) germinate. Pepper volunteers aren't a big problem. They're easy to pluck out if they do germinate. In a working (hot) compost pile, the seeds likely would be rendered sterile by the heat. If your compost pile stays cold and never achieves that sort of heat, then the seeds might remain viable. Nancy, It is my understanding that dogs should not be fed hot peppers because their stomachs cannot digest them well, and we've never tried feeding them to our dogs for that reason. I love cats and could have a billion of them were it not for the litter box issue. I remember about 20 years ago, I saw a house featured in BH&G magazine, and it was designed by the architect for himself/his family. It was in Florida and was very well-designed and with very practical features. I was entranced with one specific room he had added off another room (might have been the laundry room). It was a 7' x 7' cat room, and that was where they had the cat's bed, food and water dishes, litter boxes, toys, etc. It seemed like the cat could come and go through the rest of the house if if wanted, but all of its 'stuff' was in that room. I loved that idea of having a room just for the cat....though we have no such luxury as that here. When company was coming, or whatever, they just put the cat in its own room and closed the door and no one had to see it or smell the litter box or have a cat sitting in a guest's lap, shedding hair. It was such a practical solution that it made me wonder why every house doesn't come with a cat (or dog) room like that. I've been on quite a break from gardening for a while, except for occasionally harvesting, and I haven't regretted the break. I think the extra-long gardening season and all the heat/dryness got to me this year and just wore me out. We aren't expected to get cold enough for freeze/frost damage this week, so I should be able to coast along, just harvesting, for a while yet. I was looking at the surrounding countryside the last couple of days and noticing how much the pastures are drying out. That's not a good thing, but with low rainfall, low dewpoints and lots of wind, it is expected that the vegetation really dries out in autumn even before freezing weather arrives. Kim, I'm sorry dealing with your mom is so stressful. There was a period in time when my mom was like that (most of my life), and finally I just laid down the law and said she needed to change or we'd cut off all contact with her.---and I made it clear that I meant it and was not making an empty threat. She completely changed her way of interacting with us once she understood that being able to see her only (at that time) grandchild was at stake. I'd had enough of her crap, by then, and absolutely would have packed up and moved across town (as I threatened to do) and had nothing to do with her ever again if she hadn't straightened out. She was only in her 50s then, and it was such a relief to stand up to her and make it stick. I realize that technique wouldn't work with everyone, but in our case, it save my sanity and saved our mother-daughter relationship. Jennifer, It is hard to see our parents age and become less sharp than they once were, but that's part of the price we pay for having them around for so long in the first place. I remember when my mom was only in her 50s, I was sure she was losing her mind. My sister and brothers and I would laugh about it, but it wasn't really funny to see her mental sharpness decline. We always thought if Daddy went first (as he did, and as expected since he was 10 years older than she), she would lose what was left of her mind and health and would go quickly after him. We. were. wrong. He's been gone for 14 years now and she is still here....and still driving her children and grandchildren a little crazy at times. Luckily, her great-grandkids don't seem to notice how peculiar her behavior is at times. I think they are too young to notice. She's 88 now and I am just in awe of the fact that she has lived so long, because she never really has made any effort to live a healthy lifestyle. She lives on thanks to modern medicine, though. Good heavens. I wonder if Chris thinks I'm loopy now the way I thought my mom was when she was the age I am now. Hmmm. That is food for thought. (grin) I don't think he does, but maybe he really thinks I am a nut or half-senile and he's just too polite to say so. Now I'm laughing at myself. Bermuda grass just does that--and it is just one of the reasons we hate it so. My brother tried to smother it out by covering it with thick (6 mm) black plastic. He cut holes in the plastic, planted a few perennials in the holes, heaped up 2" of white marble rock on top of the plastic and 'gardened' that way. Eventually, after he'd had back surgeries and was not in good shape, I removed all the white marble rocks (it took forever) and lifted the black plastic for him, intending to add organic matter and give him more great soil to grow more plants, instead of plastic/rocks. Well, underneath that black plastic was long, white (from lack of sunlight) runners of bermuda grass running everywhere on the soil surface, somehow surviving beneath that thick plastic and 2" of rocks for over five years. Five years! I'm not sure anything on this earth ever has truly killed bermuda. Oh, I think it lets us think we've won the battle sometimes, but it always is lurking there, waiting to come back. Bermuda grass is evil. It reminds me of the running forms of bamboo. We had some neighbors when I was a kid who tried and tried to get rid of bamboo. After they thought they had gotten rid of it, they poured a concrete foundation and built a garage. Guess what? After a couple of years the bamboo came out from underneath the concrete, and surrounded their garage on 3 sides (not on the side where the concrete driveway was poured). That was in the 1960s. Finally, in the early 1990s, a guy who bought their house hired a guy with a backhoe to dig out all the bamboo but I think some still comes back sporadically. I have been able to get rid of bermuda grass by shading it out, but that only lasts as long as the heavy, dense shade lasts. If a tree or shrub dies and you lose the shade, the bermuda grass magically re-appears in the sunny spot---like it has been lurking there for years just waiting for sunshine. Okay, having more or less caught up on this one, I'm off to start the new page for Week 3. Dawn