Ingrid you and your garden are such an inspiration to me. Though I rarely comment, I soak up all the wonderful advice and beautiful pictures you post.

Baronne Henriette de Snoy is stunning! But then, I love all of the pink roses. I have been on a quest to find Comtesse du Chaponney, a gigantic hybrid, but no luck. I may have to travel to France just to see her!

Beautiful pictures, as always.

Your garden looks scrumptious Ingrid! The Rosette Delizy and Baronne Henriette de Snoy are especially gorgeous. I am so hoping mine follow in yours' footsteps. Maybe I should show them your photos.

Lovely roses and shots, Ingrid, and though forty roses isn't hundreds of them--I understand the appeal of hundreds of roses--still you'll have quite a few blooms to admire. Your 'Baronne Henriette de Snoy' is beautiful! Your photography is excellent as always.

Ingrid, your garden is lovely, as ever. And forty roses, when many of them are Teas the size of your Rosette Delizy, is still quite a lot of 'rose real estate'.

I'm putting BHdS on my wishlist after seeing yours. It's so pretty.

If I had just 2 roses, being 'SdlM', and 'Rosette Delizy', that looked like yours, I probably wouldn't need the other 38...

I don't think you need to feel melancholic or pessimistic about your garden, and I'm sure the collective here would say as I do now - time to bung another one in, Ingrid, still plenty out there you've not yet tried...

Marlorena, you are not allowed to tempt me! I didn't mean to sound melancholy because I'm actually experiencing a sense of relief and contentment that I've arrived at a point where I feel I have the right number of roses. Four of them are still small and in their pots, but I think Snowbird, Florence Bowers Tea, Flamingo Dancer and La France will round out my collection very satisfactorily. As usual I'm thinking that next spring will be the one when everything will be dreamy and have achieved perfection, although I should know better by now.

titian, I've been happily surprised by the Baronne and I hope you'll add her to your garden sooner or later. It seems to be pretty disease-proof for me so far.

Thank you Melissa, and to be quite honest I'm relieved not to have hundreds of roses. I would rather grow a few well and not have a tremendous water bill than to have many that I can't afford or take care of properly.

Sheila, I'm quite sure yours will surpass mine judging by the pictures you've shown of your gorgeous tea rose bed. Your next spring flush should be awesome, and even your new tea bed should have blooming roses by then.

mari, thank you for your lovely comment. We all inspire each other here, which is one of the reasons this forum is such a wonderful place. The rose you mention seems very elusive and I wonder if it's even commercially available. I gather the identification of the rose at HelpMeFindRoses is not 100% certain. At any rate, it sounds very desirable. I wish you luck in your quest.

Your BHdS is an incredible beauty! I love it! Those folded layers are just lovely. They look like they might last a while. I’m also quite taken with Charles Darwin. He’s looking mighty fine for a three day old Austin bloom in our conditions. Fabulous weather today, isn’t it? I could really live with this! Lisa

Lisa, I can recommend BHdS, but Charles Darwin, not so much. When it's hot it goes from bud to an ugly beige wilting bloom in one day. I would not order it again. I've been watching Mme. Antoine Mari and the flowers that were pretty, closed buds yesterday are open and very unattractively flat blooms today. In good conscience I can't recommend this rose for you. When I cut the buds in the cool of the evening and put them in a vase inside where it was cool they looked no different than the pancakes that were blooming outside. It looks great in cooler climates, but here the bush grows like crazy and the flowers are underwhelming. You're welcome to it if you want it, but frankly I'm embarrassed to give you a rose that will get large but will disappoint you when it flowers, unless it acts very differently in your garden. I'm having to trim it constantly because it keeps pushing against Potter and Moore and BHdS.

I'm so happy - Blush Noisette, which I cut down to the nubbins because of a mealy bug infestation, has been transplanted. My husband had dug the hole a while ago but then it got really hot and dry, and this rose is being moved from a very shady spot to a very sunny one, so I postponed its trip. However, within days it had sprouted little nubbins and in a few more days it was leafing out so I decided it needed to be moved pronto before it shot up a foot or two. Does everyone feel this relieved when a job is completed? Even though I only watered BN, raked up mulch in the back and carried it to the front and spread it around the rose and watered it in so it wouldn't fly away, I could barely walk afterwards, but at the same time felt so great that this one task was done. Snowbird is next to go in the ground when it's shown some growth since it's in a one-gallon pot. The other three are bands and I'm going to wait quite a bit longer before I plant them.

I felt so relieved when I got the second Tea garden in because the potted roses were heat stressed and it just seemed like I finally had time to do it. I don't like a newly planted anything. I want the plants to settle in and I can look forward to them looking better next year.

Ingrid, I completely empathise with a job, though not that big, being completed. I'm like that with everything! And I think you should toss Mme Antoine Mari. Life is too short. You could have another BHdS in her place!

I'm in Jeri's camp. Fewer, ideally-situated, happy, easily tended roses are a thousand times more rewarding than oodles of unhappy, unsuitable roses. Forty is still a large collection by any standard other than the highest tip-top percentile of collector's standards, and your forty are exquisite! Enough to fill the focal points in the garden and not so many that fine details escape observation and appreciation, the waxen beauty of a perfect petal or the unfurling of a porcelain bloom. I think that finding one's sweet spot of balance and serenity in the garden is where you are arriving. I hope I'm in your footsteps. A little peace is a wonderful thing. Your garden is lovelier than ever! Carol

Carol, I get lost in your prose; I love seeing my garden through your golden vision. As you say, a little peace is a wonderful thing, and peace in every way is what I strive for now. Jeri, I can remember the halcyon days when you reveled in your foggy weather since you didn't tolerate the sun well, and how that changed and your garden had to change with it. I remember your saying you were down to around 100 roses. Yes, it hurts, but facing reality and adapting is far better than being lost in dreams of yesterday. I see you very much as a realist, as we all must be.

Trish, I can't have another BHdS because the present one is going to get very large and will more than take up the real estate that MAM will leave empty. I also recently removed a small Pink Rosette in that area which looked altogether too plastic and aged quickly in the heat. I should have asked Lisa if she wanted it (I never think of these things at the right time) but I don't think it's worthy of her garden.

Right now gardeners everywhere, whether in Europe, Australia, England or wherever, are facing challenges in rose growing (or growing anything) as much as we are here, in addition to life issues, and I'm grateful that here we try to encourage and lift each other up and have compassion and understanding about life's travails that inevitably will affect us all sooner or later. And still, hopefully for a long time to come, the roses are there to delight and enchant us and transport us into a better place.

I wish I could write with more perspective about this part of your journey, having been acquainted with you mere months, but I will try. Choosing the roses to continue their stay in our garden spaces is necessary so we can not only care for but also curate a personal collection. These roses that grow well in a given area and its present conditions are naturally valued. The plants want to make progress "with" us. Additionally, I think, the nourishment to one's soul that rose gardening can provide is greater when the human tending to the plants is not overextended. With the "many years of old-rose obsession" I hope you may continually enjoy a community of like-minded people. Now, more than ever, you may muse on how this or that rose had a few good or bad years there. In a sense, on this journey, you have arrived at this peace. I hope that your aspirations for this phase of your garden are reached in a more relaxed state than the days of many roses, too.

Of course, underlining my thoughts above are the climate change/drought impact on the very act of any kind of gardening. In my opinion, your sharply chosen plants in your garden make up a great strategy for this issue so far. For my adventures with roses, I am enforcing a "wait and see" period once I reach 30 varieties. Beyond a point, I may "pay tribute" or "visit" other roses. Many Mediterranean-friendly seeds and bulbs might open up other wonders for me and the bees eventually.

Rosette Delizy is one of those roses that just always makes me happy to see.

The pale tints of Mlle. de Sombreuil and Souvenir de la Malmaison are very pretty. I like the touch of the daylily against the Mme. Lambard rose, too. I look at some of the old garden roses you grow and am grateful they have been preserved into our lifetimes. It is a gift.

Justin

Gorgeous roses! Thank you for sharing your roses.

Justin, thank you for your wonderful comments. It's been such a journey, with memories of four different gardens, and the intense thrill of acquiring roses that were new to me, that I had only admired in pictures. Despite setbacks and disappointments, the experience as a whole was incredibly enriching. I think we all need intense passions of some kind in our lives to make it really worth living.

Ingrid, I agree. Will yours still be gardens and roses or will limiting acquisitions destroy the passion? If so, what next? There is always a next. (If these questions are too intrusive, please forgive and ignore.)

Cath

Thats one of the things I like about gardening; you can use your mind to puzzle out data to develop growing techniques,or the physical work side for the planting and the artistic side to play with colours and textures...and you can choose which aspect you enjoy most, and concentrate on that! I know people that obsess over hydroponic gardening..its all what and how much of this chemical when and how much brings the greatest yield etc..or others who just like to get down in the dirt and dig a few holes that can produce green things. Or others that just want to look at beautiful flowers...Its what ever makes you happy and feel accomplised that matters

Your Charles Darwin still looks better than mine! :) I fell in love with it at the state rose garden here...sigh..its been 4 years and while every now and again coming up with a rather nice looking bloom, hasnt produced anything as full/double as yours ( or as divine looking as the rose gardens); and while not tragically sick looking, doesnt radiate evergreen foliage either... Its been given one more season to improve before being officially introduced to the spade.

Baronne Henriette de Snoy looks lovely tho..as does SDLM. Always meant to try SDLM again. Thats a thought, praps I should swap it out for CD?

Curdle, if your Charles Darwin hasn't come up to snuff by now, perhaps it's time to try another rose. I don't know your conditions and so don't know whether to suggest SdlM which seems to like it fairly warm and dry. However, it does like a good bit of water at ground level, which all my roses do. I've done it mostly by trial and error, which is not the cheapest way, but I also pay attention to what does well for people in a similar climate.

Cathz6, I don't think having fewer roses will limit the passion for me. I still have quite a few that need to grow up and haven't even bloomed yet or only a little, and seeing them develop and thrive will be very satisfying for me.

Hello Ingrid. I’ve been busy and now exhausted so I’m slow to respond. I appreciate you being honest about MAM. I definitely don’t have the space for more big roses, especially the ones that don’t hold up well in the heat. The more things fill up, the more particular I have to become. As we both know. space, water, and energy are limited. If I had an endless supply of all three, I’d grow every dog gone rose available. Then I’d chose my favorites, and grow multiples of those. You’re being wise Ingrid. I think you’ll enjoy your roses more, the way you’re going about it. Lisa

Lisa, being very picky about the roses you allow into your garden is a very wise thing to do, and will save you money and aggravation. When it gets cooler I'll take out MAM since it's now seriously beginning to impinge on Baronne Henriette de Snoy on one side and Potter and Moore on the other. I hope you're getting some rest in the heat, and please don't overtax yourself.

" . . . the nourishment to one's soul that rose gardening can provide is greater when the human tending to the plants is not overextended."

Now THAT is an essential truth!

Very good quote, Jeri. I was tempted to snap up every bargain I could at the rose auction, but thought I’d better not. It may have been a blessing in disguise that it was so hot out. I tend to be more realistic when faced with frantic watering, just so I can go somewhere.

Ingrid, I hope YOU are staying out of this heat as well. Unfortunately, I had fallen behind in watering over the weekend. My daughter, (Ingrid:) and I are leaving at 6:30 this morning to welcome a new baby in Bakersfield. Yesterday was a day of constant in and out in the heat, moving the hose. I had no choice, but to do it in the heat of the day. I’m sure we will stay indoors, taking care of mother and new baby, so perhaps I can recover there. This sort of weather just is very draining. Things should begin to cool down slowly, starting today. It can’t come soon enough for me or the roses. DdB won’t be starring in any wedding bouquets anytime again soon. She looks terrible again. I’m glad yours doesn’t suffer the powdery mildew that mine does. It must be the shade yours gets, and/or yours is a better one. I believe mine came from Chamblees. Mine may produce more blooms than yours, but what’s the use when the bush looks like junk? Your SdlM’s also look much better than mine. Mine is only two, and still quite small. She also gets some PM, but nothing like the Duchesse. Do yours not get any? Your photos show her to be perfectly grown. As always, all your pictures are incredible. Lisa

Oh dear, Bakerfield, that's like going from the frying pan into the fire. I'm glad you're not going alone; I'm sure your daughter will watch out for you. I hope you can begin on the drip system when the cooler weather sets in.

I don't really get mildew in my garden in the summer; spring is the time for that. My DdB came from the ARE. My SdlM plants do get some mildew in the spring, but not to a horrible extent. It seems the baking radiant heat is good for something. My Rosette Delizy, which had a lot of blooms, turned into potpourri overnight. It's not a good look.

Ingrid, it's good to know you are still passionate about roses and will continue to be for some time. Cold weather has come, high of 50s today, and the end of Summer mess plus unfinished garden projects have been cooling my ardor for roses. Yet today I found Tess of the d'Urbervilles with a second flush of 3 sumptuous blossoms. I know, "nothing to write home about" but I had failed to remove hips (tired of schlepping the ladder from the cherry harvest) and had come to expect no more roses. I have been resisting the allure of A Reverence for Roses sale because carrying the roses over Winter here in pots is a very "iffy" thing and the roses I am dying to have, 2 Mrs Herbert Stevens, have already demonstrated susceptibility to cold. I hope I can hang on and wait for Spring when they will have a better chance of survival. I do hope that your new irrigation methods give you a wonderful Spring surprise.

Cath