Thanks everybody! I meant to start answering you guys on Saturday, but got way-layed; then Sunday spent the day trying to finish up some more of the photo-tweaking and that took ALL day. Then, it had let up raining a bit, so I went out and took more pics of what still looked decent. That added over 100 more to be tweaked. Geez. I'm kinda glad it rained all day today so I couldn't get out to take pics today!! LOL Carol, you are so right about us needing summer. We need that sunlight to get out of the winter funk! I do take Vitamin D plus lots of other supplements. As far as a bush shot of NIGHT OWL goes... unfortunately there's not a whole lot to see! It's a whimpy twiggy thing that only puts out a bloom every so often, and certainly isn't much of a climber. I think mine is barely 3ft tall after 3yrs. Jackie, I can understand rain into June, but freezing cold temps is just too weird. Hmm... my VEILCHENBLAU doesn't look like it's going to do much. It had a handful of blooms awhile ago, but I think it's done. I never did get around to deadheading it or fertilizing it. Lyn, I know what you mean about those spring grasses and other weeds. I've been putting off doing several beds that are overgrown. But then with this weather, it's been really hard to even try to get to them! And you're right, the forecast looks good for the rest of this week... FINALLY!! Bustopher, my CHARLES AUSTIN doesn't repeat all that great. I may get two really good flushes. But the blooms are usually really pretty and a lot of them. Connie, sorry your roses were all crispy for your daughter's wedding. That must've been really disappointing. But at least you had the florist roses. I hope the wedding was wonderful! Kay, KUROSHINJU is a great rose. I got mine from Hortico many yrs ago, and I believe they may still offer it. It's always got gorgeous velvety dark black-red blooms on it. The plant averages about 3-4ft wide and 4-5ft tall. Ya know, I don't remember ever checking the scent on it. I'll have to try to remember to do so after the rain is done. Ingrid, this dog we got is turning out to be a royal pain in the butt. I had no hand in picking her this time. My husband and younger son picked her. I wanted to wait a bit, but they felt she was such a great dog, they didn't want to pass her up. She can be a very funny dog, but being a border collie mix, she's rather high maintenance. I just wanted a dog to keep the deer out of the yard. She's become more of a pain than the deer. I just came home to find a rug all shredded in the front walkway. I could care less about the rug, but she makes such a mess and digs up the gravel in the walkways. The people at the pound said she was about 1 1/2yr old, but my son thinks she was younger. I know it takes time for them to grow out of stuff like this. Maybe once the weather is better my husband will take her for walks and do some things with her. Right now it's just hard to do anything. She probably has cabin fever just like we do!! Seil, you're absolutely right. Everything just takes time. But sometimes I just get impatient. I'm getting too old for this crap!! LOL Kathy, no kidding about the dang fungus. Looking at the garden yesterday, I see more powdery mildew than I've seen since we moved here 11yrs ago. And I'll be danged if I didn't see some frickin' RUST on a few roses. I used to never get rust, except on the grassy weeds. Yuck... The new camera may have come with some Photoshop program, but I can't download it onto my computer due to having the Lenix program UBUNTU loaded instead. It uses other programs not made by Microsoft. The GIMP program is very much like Photoshop, but it's just slow. But, my son says it just could be my old computer. I have a Sony system that was waaaay superior to anything that came out at the time. It's now almost 9yrs old. I want to get a new computer, but just can't right now. Gotta finish paying off some home repairs and car tires, and the friggin' roses I bought this winter. Then, my husband wants to either fix his POC (piece of crap) old motorcycle, or get a new one. That's not cheap. And the younger son needs dental work and we don't have insurance for him.... it just goes on.... Thanks guys for the compliments and encouragement. Sorry that I didn't answer everyone individually. I'll try to post some more pics in the Gallery later on....

"The mother tree, from which the acorns came, has experienced temps around 0 degrees F in Denmark" Yeah but an average winter in most of Denmark is zn 8, so in theory it will be a little easier to establish there. I had one die in the winters of the 1990s, but not one of the colder winters like 1994. Maybe 1996? In any case it clearly wasn't particularly hardy...for example...a small Pinea pinea survived the same winter. I think it died at 0F. Quercus suber was hardier too. Heat & humidity is generally not nearly as much a problem for the large flora of the Mediterranean as it is for those of California. There is/was Quercus ilex, suber, and Pinea pinea at the NCSU arb...and at Williamsburg...and various other Med. species I could mention, while Californian trees other than S. semprevirens and a couple others are very rare there. Certainly no California BLEs come to mind as doing well in the SE but I could be forgetting a couple. Compare Arbutus x andrachnoides which is sold by Woodlanders in SC and has been an absolute trouper for me int he past 3 summers, with Arbutus menziesii which is utterly ungrowable anywhere on the east coast. So you could certainly try it but expect it to die in a cold winter, not a summer. BTW though it is interesting to grow as a novelty, if you actually are planning a landscape around it you should be aware they are one of the most sombre looking trees I know of, and they cast dense shade. Search this forum for the picture of the one I posted previously for poaky (sp?).

Hi Andrew and Diana, Andrew, I should stop buying plants too, but I just can't seem to! LOL The thing about the Jungle Jack plants at our various Lowe's is that until yesterday, I had only ever seen for sale the 3 varieties that I mentioned at the top of this post. To see 'Elsie' AND 'Inca Gold' on that table was just too much--my wallet practically flew out of my pocket by itself. Diana: unfortunately, no writing on the trunk. These plants are identified by the small white tab stuck in the soil, like the one in my pic. Because JJ's potting medium is so loose and the plants get shuffled around so much, I think many of the ID tabs simply fall out. As a matter of fact, at one of the Lowe's I visited, the dozen plants for sale there had been moved inside after obviously having been devastated by whiteflies; adding insult to injury, many of the plants looked as though they'd been toppled and sloppily re-potted--at least half of those plants were missing the ID tab. I bought one of these plants, not more than 15 inches tall with a whopping 6 tips--and it has an inflo, so we'll find out what it is yet this season. I'll post a pic of 'Mystery JJ Plumie #2" in this thread soon. I believe you're a friend of John's, so you would know better than me, but I would tend to think that John would not send out noIDs to the FL wholesaler. Perhaps if irun from St. Pete reads this thread, irun can tell me the name of the wholesaler--no one at my store could tell me. At any rate, it's all for fun. I will be sure to post pics of all the new plants when they bloom--hopefully the flower will make the mystery plants' identities obvious! In the meantime: JJ plant w/ slender, upright growth habit, and pointed (not rounded) leaves? Anyone...anyone?? I'll entertain guesses!

Good point Chris, though I have Indigo and the color is different in person than the blooms on this rose. I really am not good at rose ID so I'm relying on the input of folks who know Gallicas better than I do to keep it in that class of guesses. I haven't found that my Indigo suckers (yet), since it only just survives my winters, but time will tell, eh? So far this mystery rose has stayed pretty contained but it's only coming into its third season this spring so it hasn't found its wings yet. I'll post more photos if I can catch it blooming, and welcome input. And Anne - I didn't mention it, but Alice Vena is also a RV rose and a gallica, so it's entirely possible. My impression from the HMF photos is that it's a bit more purple than this rose, but I'm sure that depends on the weather conditions. I don't recall if that one was in stock during the period this rose was a mystery rose, but we'll see as it develops further this coming spring. Cynthia