Carol, not enough of the Zeisz rose shows -- that wouldn't have been a fair test. But in case you don't know it -- This found rose has been available from Vintage Gardens for several years (and I suppose, now, will not be available). It's one of the (DNA-tested) sports/seedlings of 'Blush Noisette.' Gregg and Phillip collected it. Alice Flores collected it, and I collected it. G&P called it "Placerville White Noisette" and I called it "Jacob Zeisz" for the young man whose grave it guards. He was just 25 when he died -- The son of a Bavarian immigrant who founded one of California's first real breweries. "His friends paid for this monument" -- and his mother and sister are buried next to him. We really love Jacob's striding Grizzly bear. Jeri

Yes ma'am, a blog is one of the easier ways to chronicle information and make it available. It's almost like 'writing a book', only much cheaper and a lot more fun. I hope you find some interesting things there. Precisely! Anything that sufficiently stresses any organism is going to significantly impact immunity. It can also significantly impact fertility, ability to flower, grow, etc. When you boil it all down, virtually all families of organisms react similarly to the stimuli they encounter. When humans and other animals become sufficiently stressed due to malnutrition, over exercise, dehydration, they stop ovulating. Remember flowering is ovulation. Stress a plant by starving it, drying it out, pushing it to grow too vigorously through too much nitrogen, and it stops flowering. If you can think of one family of organisms in comparison to others, things start falling into place and making perfect sense. Oh, yes ma'am! Foetida, whose genes tell it to quickly push out those beautiful, marvelously scented leaves, use them up quickly, resulting in their entering senescence rapidly, then shedding them quickly due to the shorter warm season when ground water is available coming to an end. Mix those with the evergreen Tea genes which tell the organism to slowly produce those long-lasting, beautiful leaves, slowly meter their use so they last a long time, feeding, shading and moving water through the plant until the nearly year long growing season comes to an end and the next begins. Can you imagine how "confused" those leaves and plants are? The plant quickly pushes out foliage to use it up quickly, then refuse to shed it once it rapidly enters senility. Leaves which should only be expected to remain viable for a few months are "expected" to last all season long. You know what happens to "old foliage". It contracts rust and black spot. In this climate, Foetida remains healthy until quite late summer, early fall, when, where it naturally occurs, it would have shed its foliage due to lack of water and deteriorating weather. But, the first (and in many cases, several generations) generation hybrids of it with Teas and HTs are frequently disasters in moister years. I wonder why... There really isn't one source of information I can suggest to you for learning much about Pernet's work, other than the 1920s through about 1950 ARS annuals. LeGrice in "Rose Growing Complete" (1970s paperback edition rather than the earlier 1965 hardback); Jack Harkness, "Roses", again about 1977, both wrote about Pernet's Foetida work and what many results were, but in those early annuals, you find MANY reports of how his efforts performed for people across the country and even the world. You can't blame Pernet for the black spot issues, though. There is a famous story of someone listening to him speak of his roses, then asking him, "What about the black spot?" Pernet reportedly responded, "What black spot?" They didn't black spot for him in his climate, so he didn't know it was an issue until others, elsewhere reported it. Ralph Moore raise some incredibly interesting, beautiful and imaginative hybrid Rugosas and Bracteatas. There was one hybrid Rugosa with beautiful foliage; long, elegant, pointed buds of a medium red with buttery yellow reverse. They opened to scented, double, almost ruffled open flowers and bloomed constantly. The foliage was quite attractive and the plant had a decent architecture. There was also a striped, red and white, double, open, ruffled Rugosa hybrid on a decent, bushy plant which flowered all the time. He gave the ruffled one to Tom Carruth for Week's to test. I also grew both in my Newhall garden. A season or two after taking them home, I asked him about how Week's found them and he said Tom had mentioned they weren't interested because of the rust. Mr. Moore responded, "What rust?" They also rusted for me in spring and fall, but it required several more years for it to appear in Visalia because that climate didn't support rust on them, like Pernet's climate didn't support black spot on his Pernetianas. Mr. Moore's hybrid Bracteatas didn't rust for him in Visalia, but most did here. I could only grow Muriel, Out of Yesteryear, Out of the Night (his best for this climate), Star Dust, Star Magic, Pink Powderpuff and Huntington Red Bracteata in these climates without spray. All the others were just too rusty unsprayed. David Austin experienced very much the same thing. He had no idea for many years what his roses did when unleashed in longer, milder climates. Reports were he was astounded to see his "mannerly five foot shrubs" exploding into twenty-plus foot monsters. That's why it required as many years as it did for his catalog to reflect so many of his roses were suitable for growing as climbers. If you believed his British catalog, or even the Texas catalog for the first few years, you had no idea how monstrous many of his roses could become. LeGrice wrote of a very good yellow HT he raised from Pernet's work. It scored quite well in the trials early on, until it was discovered the plants defoliated completely after flowering, re grew the leaves, flowered well and defoliated again. That was an issue with many of Harm Saville's roses and quite a few of Joe Winchell's. So much inbreeding had been done to fix desired characteristics, some terminal ones were engineered in quite deeply. What too few seem to remember is, "recessives are forever". Yes, Pernet's and Mr. Moore's focuses were far too narrow when it came to their "obsessions". Thankfully, both produced some good plants along those routes, and they did push the envelope, but, as with most breeding lines, it required and will require, many other hands over many more years to refine their efforts into plants acceptable in today's gardens. You can't fault Pernet too badly. His climate didn't let his roses black spot. Hybrid Teas weren't yet very strong, attractive plants for the most part. Some were quite good, but the push for the "novel" was so great, anything different was greedily snapped up and promoted all over the rose growing world. They didn't have to be "healthy", nor did they have to really grow well, as the use of chemicals was accepted everywhere. If you grew roses, you dusted or sprayed. There were complaints about weaker growers, but the buying public still clamored to buy them because the flowers were so different and so amazing compared to anything previously seen. They didn't have to root at all as no one sold them own root. The thrived where suited and languished where they weren't. It took many years for them to be refined to the point of being "assimilated into the HT family", where their descendents could be grown more easily in many more climates. American roses didn't have to start becoming pretty "garden plants" until the 1950s. It wasn't until after WWII and the burgeoning new "Middle Class" whose large, suburban lots began making landscape use of roses that any real American demand arose for decent looking plants. Now we have increasingly smaller and smaller areas available to plant anything, and whatever is chosen had better look "on" much more than "off". There simply isn't room to have much else to take your focus away from something "dowdy looking". It hasn't been all that long that resistance to using toxins for pleasure has been more the rule. We didn't truly understand the costs of dusting weekly with DDT, nicotine-sulfate, or spraying with antibiotics and organophosphates until relatively recently compared to the length of their use. It wasn't as large an issue when the stinky spray was applied way out in the back yard where you probably wouldn't smell it in the house, but put it under the livingroom window or by the front door and that quickly changes! It's very possible you have multiple plants of Simplicity. J&P used to advertise them as "roses by the yard". They were offered own root in many cases and with quantity discounts, something not generally done with American garden roses. Simplicity was promoted as an ever flowering hedge, requiring only the basic care and even forgiving of shearing like other hedging material. It was very much a throwback to the 1950s when mail order nurseries were offering Ragged Robin (Gloire des Rosomanes) with quantity discounts for use as hedging. It was in response to that practice with that rose Mr. Moore released Pink Clouds (1956) to compete in that market. Somewhere, I have one of Sequoia's 1957 pamphlets advertising Pink Clouds as a hedging plant. Sequoia produced much wholesale stock for many other larger mail order concerns, so he had a front row seat to observe what was being offered. Kim

Olga's roses are magazine worthy! I work at a greenhouse and nursery so I get TONS of stuff like that, especially because I'm one of the younger members of the greenhouse staff, some of the older customers totally butt heads on what I suggest to them. When I told a woman that rosemary wasn't hardy to overwinter in our area, some might be marginal towards the city, but nevertheless I was telling her about bringing it inside if she wanted to keep it- good harmless advice, but she insisted that she's had hers survive and make bushes here. I asked her if she had big bushes of it planted in her yard then and she said she didn't know where they were and that I didn't know my roseMARIE (her own pronunciation!) She was probably in her mid to late sixties- I was unsure. I had another person today claim she took care of her geranium hanging basket and watered it EVERY day, which is why of course it was bone dry, practically leafless, and she was returning it- but noooo she said it was diseased from the start and insisted that the Japanese beetles ( I showed her the beetle damage and talked about nitrogen rich plant food to fix it) MUST have came in on the plant and all her other plants started looking bad after she brought it home, which of course was July, when the beetles come out. Possible, but sketchy with the disease thing. I asked if she deadheaded the flowers, she somewhat answered but in general didn't know what it was. She got out the receipt but then wouldn't give it to us because " It was wrong, her husband grabbed the wrong one". Anyway I found at least ten dead Japanese beetles in the bottom of the planter- if she had watered she would have seen those buggers chomping on the leaves- excuse my language ladies but this lady ( I want to say rich b*tch because she complained about having come from a hot and strenuous tennis lesson- but that doesn't justify income or snobbery) was just flat out lying to get her twenty dollars back! Normally we wouldn't accept it, but being a gentleman I said to the cashier girl to refund it because I was getting annoyed with her intolerance and I didn't want to start gritting my teeth or argue because that's not polite and you don't do that with customers. I know people want plants and shrubs and all, but why stay so ignorant about them? It seems there is this abstraction people take with plants that just make them so black and white and set in stone, like the image of the ideal hybrid tea, they are a certain way and it doesn't change. A flower's a flower, give me one that I can't kill. Oh well, a bit of a tangent, but people like that make me a bit mad. - Max ( who would have a yard full of rosemary if it was possible)

OPENING QUESTION 1. What are the three most important things you do to make your rose garden beautiful? Fertilize, Mulch and Observe COLOR 101 QUESTIONS*** 2. If you could only pick two colors to have in your garden, what would they be? I like all colors in the garden, picking two would be very limiting and I probably would not garden if I had to. 3. What colors would you never combine in your garden? See above. Like um all! 4. Pick the combo that you would love most. A)Pink And Lavender B)Red And White C)Pink And White D)Apricot And Purple E)Red And Purple F)All Of The Above G)None Of The Above F GARDEN STYLE QUESTIONS*** 5. Do you entertain in your garden? Yes 6. Is there a garden in your neighborhood that you hate? Why? Yes, the one that is not a garden but littered with old cars, the shell of an above ground swimming pool, and felled trees left to rot. Fortunately it is not within view of my garden. 7. Is there a garden in your area that draws you in? Why? Yes, the one that annually plants a cutting garden along the side of her house. It changes every year and is simply lovely. It's not a design winner, just a rectangular plot of ground with well tended and blooming flowers. Such a joy to see. 8. What would you consider a bad rose garden? One in which there is nothing but roses. I like variety and though I'm as guilty as the next for planting too many roses together, ALL roses is boring. 9. If you had to choose between filling your garden with cupped, old-fashioned blooms or hybrid-tea, high-centered blooms, which one? OGRs!!!!! I have NO hybrid teas. ROSE DILEMMA QUESTION*** 10. If you had a rose-bush that had incredible flowers, but was an ugly bush, would you keep it? No. It would be sped in a NY minute. 11. If you could only choose two roses to take with you, to grow on a deserted island, which two? Tough question. This answer would change annually, yea maybe within the next minute, but here goes. Marie Pavie and Thomas Affleck. Why? They bloom! ROSE ESSAY QUESTION*** 12. What is the look or feeling, you are going for in your garden? Natural landscape with curved borders. Nothing formal. Barbara