Well my gardening adventures started when I was about 5, when my father did unimaginable and bought a piece of land without discussing it with my mother (what would have been a definite veto from my mother). The land was meant for summer houses, but the trouble was that basically it was a half swamp, left for the owners to sort out (that's why it was so cheap). Non the less, father was sure he wanted a garden, so after 3-4 years of getting rid of swamp plants, amending the soil and sorting out melioration, land turned to be quite lovely piece of property, surrounded by woods. My mother got over her initial shock of being turned into a gardener and was planting some flowers there and there, but majority of the plant business was handled by my dad. Then when I started to live on my own at age 19, I got my own income, which allowed me to buy some plants that my parents were skeptical about. So one way or the other, flower part of the garden eventually became mine - except for the roses. Trouble was that my mother liked roses a lot, but somehow she ended up buying wrong plants and wrong books about them - basically she was buying florist rose bands from the local market and you can guess how well that worked out in z5 climate. I planted a few on my own, mostly OGRs (which I did not know that they were OGRs at that time) but since my mother wanted typical big h.tea blooms, I sort of gave up on it and focused on the other plants. Then at age 27 I got married and moved about 1000 miles southwards to the Netherlands, leaving all of my plants behind. At first we lived in the city and had very tiny post stamp size garden, partly shaded by a huge platanus (not to mention that it was all overgrown with some kind of very invasive decorative grass). It was quite an adventure to plant something there, since I never gardened in clay before, so all the plants that would do well in my rather sandy old garden, wouldn't grow over here, not to mention climate differences. There I tried a few roses, since plant nursery nearby had a good selection of Austins and some OGRs. Most did not do that well in the shade, but Glory of Dijon and Iceberg did well enough to make me want more. Also, nearby to where we lived one house had a huge rambler covering a whole wall - it was a once bloomer, but 2 weeks spring flush show was breath taking. So, then in the early spring of 2008 we bought a house in the village. We wanted a house that does not require too much rebuilding, I wanted a decent garden and DH wanted a reasonable mortgage, so we ended up with a typical row house, but affordable and easy to maintain. We moved in the same spring and I took GdD, Iceberg and few surviving Austins along. Over here we also got pure heavy sea clay and the same spring-summer we also found out that parts of our garden get pretty much fried by the sun. Since the only plants I knew to like clay and sun were roses, I bought a few more. Among the climbers was Paul's Himalayan Musk - if I knew then how big it can get, I probably would have thought differently about purchasing it, but in any case, by the end of the summer, PHM put out 8' canes and climbed over the fence, which got him exiled to the side wall, but it gave me an idea that some roses can grow very well and if they don't, they probably are the wrong varieties. In the autumn of 2008 I also got pregnant, so not much gardening happened that autumn and in the spring of 2009. Also in the summer of 2009 local government decided to relay the street and parking lot near our house, together with the sewer system - that ended up in a horrible mess for a whole summer, road workers trying to dig holes in our garden and all kinds of other stupidly bizarre problems, which one can come across when the people who can't tell flower from weed are racing around with an excavator. In the summer of 2009 though my roses did very well, so I talked my hubby into getting a few more of them thorny things. We went to some local garden center in the village nearby - they also have a nice garden for the show. There they had part of the garden dedicated to OGRs. From what was blooming at that point I loved Raubritter and Eden the most. I bought Raubritter straight away there, but they did not have Eden, which I really really wanted. The same year we also went to the memorial of my DHs aunt and the idea was to plant a rose garden in her memory. There I saw a very interesting moss rose brought by somebody, but had no chance to figure what rose that was. So, somewhere in the end of 2009 I decided to google Eden and the mysterious mossy rose. There I figured that some English rose nurseries ship to NL and it is cheap compared to plants over here + much wider choice. That's how I ended up with more OGR than I've ever planed to have. x) It also is funny that my mother, after seeing some of my very fragrant roses managed to order 10 of their climate appropriate OGRs for herself and I am pretty sure that they will do much better in their garden than any other rose ever did.

Please use the new rose list, thanks. Ron. S

I'm a dork. For a moment I couldn't figure out what was so funny about Cox. Why did tishtoshnm get it and I didn't? Ooooohhhhhh. Got it :)! I had suggested the name Arwen and DH said no. He's a die-hard Lord of the Rings fan since childhood. Such a pretty name. Bronwyn (fair breast and dark hair) was a name that came up regularly as she was a character in a book that DH read as a kid. Just weren't sold on it though. We were literally still deciding up until I was wheeled in for my C-section. We said 'No - it's going to be Eleri - we've thought about it too long'. When she came out DH said 'Honey - she has fair skin and dark hair'. I wanted to strangle him. Anele - you got it! The kid is 5 and one of our friends still calls him Glocklin. 'He's not a gun' we keep teling her. He was on meds when he was a baby and CVS was HORRIBLE at getting his name right on the script. Our last name is Todd so guess where it always ended up? I finally gave up on them because I was tired of telling them over and over that Todd is his LAST name not his first and to fix it.

I have been guilty of the same thing I love pixel of ink. Plus I also have a ton of ebooks in epub format too. I have no idea how I will read them all. So many great free books I don't know why I would need to buy any.