I have a landline, caller ID and answering machine. It shows CID on the computer. I blocked myself. Why would I want to talk to myself anyway? Lots of local numbers coming in and they are registered to people so they're using a new theory to scam. But I give them a call or two to leave a message. No message = block. Caller Id is one of the best investments I made. As far as how you're getting calls on unlisted line, there's a LOT of ways it happens. One is war dialers, another is if you call a toll-free number or call a business that sells it's caller databases, if you ever give your number on signing up for something, buying something on the internet and more.

Hi vesfl, reports of La France's parentage remain speculation, from "seedling found in seed bed", to "suspected seedling of Mme Falcot" and "possible seedling of Mme. Victor Verdier X Mme Bravy". This opens that old Pandora's Box of how a rose should be classified. Should it be by breeding or how it appears or performs, what someone should realistically expect from it? Where do those lines begin? Using Weigand's Symphony as an example, from breeding (HP X HT), it should be a Hybrid Tea as they were generally accepted as Hybrid Perpetual X Tea or HT, but if you bought it, expecting a Hybrid Tea, you would be disappointed as it doesn't LOOK like nor perform/grow like one. How about Lady Hillingdon? It's generally accepted to be more cold hardy than the average "Tea" and it strongly resembles the "Tea look". 1910 is quite late for a Tea to be bred and released, but if you bought it expecting a Hybrid Tea, you would probably be disappointed because it LOOKS more Tea-like. Charlotte Armstrong and many of her descendants looked more Tea-like. Compare how Lemon Spice and Lady Hillingdon look and grow and you see strong similarities between them, as well as strong differences. Had Lemon Spice appeared half a century earlier, it may have been introduced as a Tea because it doesn't "look" like the post Peace HTs. Peace, for that matter, reintroduced more of the Hybrid Perpetual look into Hybrid Teas. I propose had it been introduced forty years earlier, it could well have been marketed as the long sought after yellow HP. How about Sally Holmes? It is a floribunda crossed with what we call a Hybrid Musk, but the Hybrid Musk (Ballerina) in question is by all appearances a Hybrid Multiflora, as the vast majority of them have been and are. We call Sally a shrub or climber, depending upon how she responds to where and how she is grown, but in strictly breeding lines, she should be a Hybrid Musk or Hybrid Multiflora. The same is true of Iceberg. Robin Hood (hybrid musk/shrub, but also from performance in many places, simply a polyantha) X Virgo (Hybrid Tea). Breeding should have it called a Hybrid Musk, but if you bought one expecting that type of rose, would you be satisfied? La France looked and performed differently from what came before it, therefore it was something "new". Many other HP X Tea or HT crosses had been raised and a number released before it, but nothing else LOOKED differently, looked like La France, therefore La France was the "first". Guillot reportedly considered it a "Hybrid Bourbon". There is always that bleed over when different lines of anything, from plants, through animals (including Humans) are inter bred. The accepted "breeding" traits of an organism may or may not express themselves in a generation under scrutiny and may not for a number of generations. That fouls up our practice of classifying or pigeon-holing what ever it is into groups so we can figure out what to expect from them. Pragmatically, La France "quacks like a duck"... so if you want a Hybrid Tea appearance and performance, you buy it as a Hybrid Tea. If you want something that looks and performs like a Hybrid Perpetual, you buy Symphony.

Lilyfinch - Thank you for the info! If Burling does not have it, I will order it from Heirloom. portlandmysteryrose - Here comes another story about how I acquired my Climbing MCT. I did not inherit it in our garden from my DH's ancestors, but when we moved in (30+ years ago) I could see some pink roses blooming in the trees of a house one house away from ours. That house had been empty for years, but every Spring and Summer, I could see the roses all over 2-3 trees. I peeked into the back yard, and it was full of rusting washers and dryers, and old refrigerators. I called the City, as the refrigerators were the old old kind which could have trapped children inside of them. The City put a tax (lien - another one - it already had several) on the house and got the long distance owners to get rid of the junk, and built fences & gates so that no one could get into the back of the property. Then, a few years later, I saw builders and painters fixing it up, and shortly it went on the market (I called the realtor, who told me that she had had ONE TON of debris removed from the house and basement!). Anyway, low and behold, shortly a moving van appeared one day. The first thing out of the moving van were 30+ roses in pots! I am not making this up! Of course I wandered over with some cookies and coffee to greet the new neighbors. They were very nice. I asked about the roses, and of course the lady was a rose collector, and we chatted. I told her about the pink roses in her back yard. She told me that there were NO roses growing in her back yard, but we agreed to get together there in a couple of weeks after they had finished moving in. I did go over, and she took me into the back yard. The pink rose was not blooming then, and when I looked for it where I thought it had to be rooted, all I saw was a giant old blackberry bush. I persisted, as I knew there was a rose in there somewhere! Sure enough, rose canes were growing through and up from the blackberry bush. So the new owner and I got our clippers, and after a couple of hours we had completely cleared the blackberries, and revealed not one, not two, but three draggely rose bushes which had been eaten by the blackberries. She took good care of them, and the next Spring they were back blooming in her trees again . I got some cuttings and rooted them, and the roses was Cl MCT (all three bushes). 30 years on, I can still see them in the tree tops behind that house. So, it was an old old cultivar I got the cutting from. It turned out, when I told my DH's parents about the rose, that the family who lived and gardened in that house in the 1920s was friends with my DH's grandparents who lived in our house then. So, I am hoping that the clone which I get of the bush form will be a nice old one too. Jackie

Smitten! Good job on separating them. This is one of my favourites with her blousy form and lovely fragrance. Not so much the killer thorns! 😄 How often does your climbing form bloom? Mine was sparse after the first flush, rebounding in the Fall, but I was never sure if it was poor sun placement or the variety itself. Its certainly a vigorous rose! Mine is now gracing my friends fence that receives full sun so Ill see if she does better on blooming and BSpot.