Yes. That's the easy way to remember. It's always the Sunday after Mother's Day. The location is the El Cerrito Community Center, 7007 Moeser Ln., El Cerrito, CA 94530 For more information, visit the Gold Coast Heritage Roses Group website (see link) and click on: Two Great Spring Events. (Then, wander around the site, some. We love to have visitors.) Jeri Here is a link that might be useful: Gold Coast Heritage Roses Group

Wow - thanks for reviving this, Sara Ann. You've been so good at posting to give us all chances to show off our roses by colors this year that we got plenty of rose eye candy already this year. I appreciate your warm comments as always, everyone - Trish, Kate, Molly, Diane, Sara Ann, Ingrid, and it's both fun and discouraging to look back at how wonderful the roses were in 2013. Coincidentally, I'd also give a major body part (OK, maybe just a major amount of blood loss) to have any single rose bush whatsoever look that good in my yard this year. Not that this was such a bad year overall, but the rose stars were few and far between. Everything (virtually) got pruned to the ground after winter and it really strikes me how much difference it makes to have surviving cane vs. no surviving cane. The rose puts all its energy into regrowing cane, and forgets to bloom, except for spots of isolated blooms here and there on scattered bushes. For the most part, my better bloomers were the newly planted roses that didn't have to regrow anything and still had the flush of youth. They say it'll be a relatively milder winter in these parts with plenty of snow, so I'm hoping for another year like that one in 2016. Now for the questions - Diane, I still like Ascot and it tends to hover in the 4-5' range for me. It's a reliably healthy bush, but it seems to be one that appreciates some surviving cane, like most of my roses. Here is a closeup from 2013 of Ascot showing those luscious big fat reddish blooms: In contrast, here's the one solitary bloom cycle I caught for Ascot this year (and I went out faithfully every week all summer). Pretty meh - washed out hot pink with more like semi-double blooms. Still rock-solid healthy leaves, just in recovery mode like most of my roses. Nevertheless, it's still a keeper in my world for the sake of the photo above: Ingrid - sorry for being confusing in labeling the medium pink rose in the first picture. Petal Pushers has small mum-sized blooms in regular profusion (it was one of my more reliable bloomers this year) but it's toward the back near the grey shed, obscured by other roses. The prominent one falling over the fence is one I forgot to label - the Delbard rose Dames de Chenonceau. It's a totally reliable rose for me and not bad for blooms this year. I'm sure with your warmer climate it would do more blooming, though I'm not sure if the multiple petals would make it more vulnerable to drought or not. I dearly love this rose, as well as the Champagne Moment/Lions Fairy Tale to its left in that first photo in this thread. Here's a closeup from July this year of Dames de Chenonceau. I think Roses Unlimited carries it if you're tempted, Ingrid (smile) - this looks like your style of lovely subtle colors. It does tend to flop though - I had to lie on the ground to look up for this shot. For comparison, here's Petal Pushers from June of this year. This is what I usually see when I catch this rose, as it's a notorious droopy rose and doesn't climb very high. When I'm motivated to lie on the ground for a photo (not all that often, considering all the stray rose thorns also on the ground), this is what Petal Pushers looks like, also from this year. Yep, this one makes me dizzy and I can't exactly tell which way is up: Anyway, thanks for your comments on this blast from the past, and may our next rose years be good ones this time! Cynthia

Flo, that's the Nabi Jewel. I have a sample of it. Pink, I also have a sample of the blue macaubas and white marble in the basketweave. (Esplanade Winter Lake? ) diff color, but this is how the layout looks it's gorgeous. I have a sample in the black and white option, and the Linen one,,far left. you can see the Nabi Jewel 2nd from right they only give you two little bars for a sample. Order one full sheet if you really want to see how the tile will look. that's what I did w/their black/white , Cindersmoke, or the Black Beauty. the other blue/white is pretty. But they are both expensive, sign up for their trade program. you get a nice discount. they have this design too. this is no cheap date tho. that's why I mentioned the trade discount Nabi Argyle. comes in diff colors do you like this kind of tile layout pink, have you also looked at encore ceramics? they have some beautiful blue glazes, all sorts of shapes/sizes, and you can blend colors. look at Rain in the chevron. man it's pretty or imagine this, but in these diff blue crackles, or mixed w/the marble. they can do 3 or 4 colors Lapis and Azul wave ignore the shape, but look at the color blends. so pretty peacock and light azul in the flame wave or these color blends. (they literally have 100 diff shapes and sizes) larger chevron in Ocean gradient blend

We used to do real for years. Now we do fake. I have the lights, garland and unbreakable ornaments all wired on and stow it in the attic. Bring it downstairs, put on the breakable ornaments, plug it in, done. I actually have 2 trees that way...one is the larger one in the library, the other is a small one that sits on the bookcase in the FR. I started doing that with my in-laws who were in their 70s in a NYC apartment and the place was rather dismal without any xmas decor. (MIL was blind.) So I bought them the small tree and had it completely decorated and wired, so all they had to do was bring it out and plug it in...made a huge difference. After they passed, I adopted the tree and liked the ease of it. I think if we had children and grands, we would do live and make decorating a thing...like my mother's trim-a-tree party she had for us kids for many years. But as we don't, we don't. Seems I spend enough time putting up all the other decor in the house that I get my fill without trimming a tree.