Amen! I think that is one reason I raise them from seed. I get to anticipate whether or not the cross will take; whether or not it will germinate; then what the results will be, all the while getting to watch how they mature. It fills in the blanks when the other things to hold on to aren't working.

Ouch! I'm sorry, Bart! Yes ma'am, plant some seeds and remember your "Fan Club" is always rooting for you! Kim

We certainly are, bart. I was thinking of you just yesterday, wondering how you're doing. You are not forgotten.

My dreams are greatly simplified these days - I just look forward to seeing the roses bloom, those that will condescend to do so. Cole's Settlement and Blush Noisette are finally recovering from rabbit depredation with wire cages around them, and the former I've never seen before. The irises have stopped blooming in the colder weather and hopefully will begin again soon. There's enough to keep me in happy anticipation.

Edited: One of the Rhodologue Jules Gravereaux I ordered has refused to grow back after being nipped by rabbits. I decided to order General Schablikine to plant nearby, so I do have something new to look forward to!

You are so right Melissa!

Bart, I am so sorry for all that you are continuing to go through. I went through a lot the past few years and I hope you soon get some small relief from all of what you going through!

This will be my first year, knock on wood , that my own health problems seem to be doing better. This also seems like it going to be one of my best rose years yet! I even have some rose babies growing well for the first time this year! So blessed :)

I hope everyone has a happy spring!

Bart, it does sound like you have a challenging year ahead. I hope you'll make yourself as comfortable as possible for it. I do think a small growing project might be in order, though I don't know what's feasible at your house, as opposed to in your garden. Plants are so gloriously non-static, and to watch them developing while you recuperate might be good for you. I think Kim described the pleasures of a project nicely. I spend a time in early spring mooning over the cuttings I took the previous fall, wondering which ones are going to take hold and grow.

Alana, glad you're doing better, and that your roses look promising. I imagine it's sweet where you live.

Happy spring, indeed! it snowed a bit again last night, and this morning the sky is gray and the wind is blowing. The last time I saw sun was Friday morning. The weather is supposed to clear somewhat starting today, and I wish it would. I'm tired of wintry weather. Still, all that water is good.

Bart, I wish you a gentle and speedy recovery from all of your upcoming events. Maybe you can grow an African violet or two indoors instead, this year.

Although winter is the most dreary of the gardening seasons, it is also the most dreamy, and the most hopeful. The garden is static, so when it is neatened up for winter, it stays that way for a while. The failures are hidden away or removed, the disappointments are things of the past. Everything grows perfectly in the coming season of our imagination. That's the thing about gardening. Every year is an adventure, where we congratulate ourselves on our successes, comfort our disappointments, and work and plan for the next adventure.

Beautifully stated. It touches my gardner's heart to hear I am not alone, and have someone say out loud what I feel. For me, the garden always reflects how hopeful I am.

Yes, yes, gardeners are dreamers and schemers.

bart, I don't know if this will be of any comfort, but I had major surgery last year, and I dreaded it as you seem to be dreading yours. It was not a picnic, but not even remotely as awful as I was thinking it would be. I very much hope that your experience will likewise be far better than you're currently worrying it will be. I know I'm not alone in wishing you the best experience and the best outcome possible.

Meanwhile, I hope you have some gardening catalogs to drool over. If not, you might enjoy perusing some vintage catalogues at Biodiversity Heritage Library.

Take care,

Virginia

We are the salt of the earth, dealing in compost and manure. Yet we are romantic dreamers. Feet in the clay, head in the clouds.

Cath

All these good wishes and kind words directed to me are deeply appreciated and I thank you all for your thoughts. Virginia, it actually does comfort and reassure me a bit to hear about your experience; I confess that I still have feelings such as "I can't believe this is happening to me; this can't be real". I do indeed fear and dread this operation. I'm also terrified at the idea that afterwards I'll remain but a shadow of my former self. The hip operation is a bit different: my hip is at present so painful, and walking etc so difficult, that I sort of "look forward" to it-not to the actual operation itself, of course, but the idea of being able to get around again. However I know that there are certain things you can't do after hip replacement-at least not for the first months; am unclear as to whether it remains so even after the recovery period. This does cause some anxiety as well, because as a gardener I tend to spend a lot of time in positions that are off limits. For example, doing my weeding/ fertilizing routine of early spring, which requires me to crouch, wiggle and crawl under the roses thorny arms in order to remove all the weeds and scratch in the fertilizer, as well as work the soil. Also I wonder about pruning; many of you know how much a gardener must sometimes contort her or him self in order to remove, for example,a certain cane at the base of the plant...I'll have to ask around on the "accessible garden" forum maybe for advice. But one thing at a time: first I have to face the lung thing. Once again, thank you all so much for your thoughts, prayers and good wishes.

Bart - so if your roses don't get pruned as perfectly as you'd like for a year (or two)...no big deal!

Thanks, Noseometer. Actually they aren't likely to all get pruned this year either, lol; I'm WAY far behind. I decided to give priority to the ferilizing/weeding job,since it's been at least 2 years since I did that properly- I was too busy working on the anti-badger fencing. Sad to say, this yearly early spring clean-up is basically the only time that my garden gets decent ,systematic weeding done,since during the spring flush I'm busy picking off beetles, struggling to get more areas card-boarded and mulched,etc. And, of course, once the heat and drought of summer hit, you can't do anything aside from watering really.

Today I had to go to the city (Prato), which is a bit further south from our valley and I'd guess about a zone warmer. As in Melissa's area, the weather here is not particularly spring-like. Even though the sun was out today ,there was a fierce and cold wind blowing. This latest cold snap, though less severe than the first one,has done damage to the early-flowering trees , which come out much earlier in Prato than they do up here. The magnolia flowers were looking sadly zapped by the cold, though some mimosa trees, whose blooming had been delayed by the former cold, are now opening very late for their schedule, and were looking great

That is why I do not like winter. It's like everything is dead. I'm on a search for beautiful evergreens, and even then it's nothing like roses, or ranunculas or rosebushes, or dahlias. Unless you live in a roach infested southern place like Florida. But I remember even in December roses didn't always bloom. Maybe the weather has changed and they do. All I remember is bugs, snakes and scorpions. I like it up here, just not winter. So I agree, you have to live on your dreams its what makes things happen

Starchild, where do you live? You could get plant suggestions here on the forum. If you're in a mildish climate you might find quite a few plants that bloom in winter. In my zone 8 Mediterranean garden there's a brief down time in December, but then the sweetbox and winter aconite start flowering in January. We have a real winter, too, with frost and snow.

I love evergreen foliage like you're looking for, especially in the low times of the year.

we are in zone 6b, so it gets cold here, usually below 0 in winter. I'm going to have to find some evergreens to perk me up in winter. Preferably hollies with red berries, and some of the new dwarf evergreens that look really cool. Those are nice to look at. Also the new witchhazel hybrids are pretty cool. I'm super into vines also, because they cover the house, and I'm not really interested in looking at square boxes which is what almost every house looks like to me vs say a tree and wisteria.

Evergreens seem to me an excellent idea. Though, like Melissa, I am in Italy where winters are brief , evergreens are a big help psychologically in what is to me the "deadest" season of the year: the heat and drought of summer. When everything seems parched,and the heat makes you feel miserable, the mere sight of them (especially the deep, dark green ones) is so refreshing, almost re-vitalizing. They are also note-worthy for the enormous differences in the different kinds. Of course I have to go for the ones-like Italian cypress-that are happy in this climate,but there are plenty that will love yours,starchild!

Melissa, I go through those moods also, when it seems that the whole garden is a failure, those "what's the point?" moods. The climate here fluctuates so much that it's hard to grow anything. The wind destroyed my lilies, the heat my roses and so many perennials that I can't keep count, the cold destroyed my borderline plants, the dry destroyed so much, the flooding rotted my lavender and penstemons, the intense sun fries everything, but the shade is too dark...I keep vowing to move to a gentler climate. But those times are also opportunities...and yes, I hate it when people say things like that to me! But it is true. It opens new spaces for new discoveries, perhaps something that can tolerate the vagaries of your climate a little better. Like your daffodils, I've discovered hellebores, which seem to do quite well here in the shade and provide "roses" throughout the winter. These would also be great for you, Starchild! My Helleborus niger ‘Jacob’ begin blooming at Thanksgiving, and last through February, when the other hellebores begin blooming. They are earlier than the crocuses and last much longer.

'Jacob'

'Pink Frost'

Your hellebores are beautiful and I'm glad that you have overlapping varieties so that you'll have these pretty flowers for a long time. I hope they do well for you. I thought my conditions were bad, but I'm impressed by how much worse yours sound. I only have the heat which radiates off all of the plentiful hard surfaces here, including the huge boulders, and of course poor soil. In most areas, even where I've planted with good soil and mulched constantly there is hardly a worm to be found. I hope that in spite of everything you'll have lovely spring roses.

Starchild, that's a colder climate than any I've lived in, so I don't know what's hardy there, or whether there's anything that blooms during your winter. Btw, I disagree with Bart about our "short" winter: it's mild, we can get out in it, but it sure isn't short, at least not up here. And this year it was longer than usual, starting off with a bang with the ice storm in the first half of December, and we're only just now beginning to emerge from winter conditions. Long, awfully long. And summer's just as hard as she says. Anyway, is box hardy where you live? I love its elegant foliage. Also, in addition to berries for winter interest, how about evergreens with variegated foliage? My horticulturalist sister once pointed out that they're like flowers in bloom twelve months a year. Would yew be of interest? As Henry Mitchell said, some evergreens change color over the seasons, they're not static plants. I'd like to hear from cold-climate gardeners who live with conditions similar to yours and see what they have to say. Are there times when you simply have to forget getting out in the garden, and concentrate on other things? Ski, read, knit, go to the gym? N.b. Last summer our garden was inaccessible for the opposite reason, too much heat and sun. That's when the potted plants under the pergola come into their own. Time to admire my Sansevierias and various succulents.

Noseometer, I once spent several weeks in Albuquerque, in the middle of winter. I thought it was a wonderful place, but can see it would be hard to garden there. Some places have highly specific requirements. North Florida, where I grew up, is too hot and humid for many temperate climate plants and too cold for tropicals (my sister was just complaining about this last night), so gardeners and nurserymen search the world over for nice plants that can handle those conditions, also taking a close look at natives. It's an article of faith with me it's possible to make a good garden practically anywhere, but some places are a challenge. I wish you luck!

Ingrid, I hope you'll have good roses, too. Keep on mulching!

Noseometer, we were just in Albuquerque and experienced some of your difficult conditions first hand. DD-in-law mentioned the large number of rosemary bushes growing in the area. These may give you some kind of evergreen structure being well adapted to the conditions. I was also wondering if a raised bed would work for your plants needing good drainage; lavender and penstemon, etc. Good luck on your endeavors. We all hit the wall from time to time.

Cath

Yes! At least the rosemary is looking good this year. Not as great as in California, but not bad. One year, it got so cold that all the rosemary in town froze to the ground. The nurseries were saying that they couldn't keep it in stock that spring.

Gorizia:

Blue Spires:

Albuquerque's not a bad place. But it is a tough place to garden. I just walked around the garden and noticed the wind-snapped stem of the clematis 'Betty Corning'. Not too much damage (yet), considering the recent winds. Last year, I created a whole perforated cardboard windbreak around the clematis stems, to 3 feet high. The stems that poked out were ripped to shreds.

Lily 'Silk Road' before:

After the wind:

Heartbreaking.

We experienced the wind too. Quite a thing to deal with.

When the top 5' of my best Silk Road lily snapped over (even though tied to a sturdy 6' stake), I cut it and put it in a vase. I had to cut the bottom 12" off and steady it against a mirror to balance it. When my DD-in-law passed by she did a double take and said, "That's a BEAST!" I probably ended up enjoying that one even more than the ones left in the garden.

Another thought about plants that insist on drainage: you could try them in a gravel mulch. It doesn't have to be very deep, only enough for the crown to be surrounded by gravel rather than soil.

Oh Bart, I pray for fast healing for you! My garden is my little slice of heaven...I work all the time and race home to "see" what I missed! Did a bloom open, did that clematis climb another foot? Crazy, but it truly lifts my spirits. I live in humid South Ga and do love our long growing season. I am just a couple of hours north of Florida and we are not roach infested! lol Our family has dealt and is still dealing with a lot of issues, but I can get in my garden and get lost. Just time where my only concern is weeding or bugs...no phone calls or stress..I can walk around and get a whiff of something and it just takes me back in time...People that don't garden, just don't know what they are missing...one of my sister in laws, pays someone to plant her pots around her pool!! I just couldn't imagine!! Digging in the dirt is so satisfying to me!

Thank you for your prayers, gagalzone; they are much appreciated and needed. I, too, just love digging in the dirt alone,never mind all the rest of it.

Now as the spring advances I'm seeing that the late cold snap actually did a lot more damage than had been immediately apparent. For example, my newly -planted rotted Love Song had a LOT of blackened canes. Not being used to dealing with winter-dieback-type issues,only yesterday did I finally have the courage to cut it back; probably not as much as I should have,but as I said, i don't have much experience with this sort of stuff,so I'm going to wait and see how the plant reacts to this primary trimming before I go further.