Randman it must be super exciting to start over, especially if you already kinda know what you love most, so your at a better place than when you first started planting roses. Although even our duds teach us lessons! Carol I sure will! I'm going to try and take better pictures this Spring, since last Spring I was so lax. Beautiful picture Daisy! Sheila it's sounds like you will be busy. I hope you have time for it all! Two Weddings and a Birthday! How Wonderful! The weather has been so wack lately, my tulips and Daffs are coming up. I'm going to go ahead and start pruning dead wood and weed. Do all I can do right now. Also will be cleaning the chickens and rabbit pens and putting out straw and manure. I've been debating exactly when to start the rose seeds, I'm thinking February..

I hope local rose lovers see this and snatch up the remaining Hubner Plot roses! It is SUCH a fantastic rose. Vigorous, fragrant, beautiful, graceful, and handles the heat SO WELL! For comparison, I got Jesse Hildreth about the same time and here are the two currently (about a year or so in my yard) Hubner Plot. Please forgive the trellis, I made it level instead of level to the fence (which is slanted down to the grade of the yard). I will probably fix it in time. Or I will just let Hubner Plot fill it in and hide it. Jesse Hildreth (not saying anything bad about it, just showing how much of a difference compared to Hubner Plot)! So tiny.

When I first started growing teas, I posted a summary of my experience on a similar thread to this one. That thread has been resurrected multiple times--and I've been a little embarrassed each time I see it, because I realize now that I still had so much to learn at that time. I'm grateful that the forum members here are so forgiving and supportive, no matter my experience level. So at the risk of embarrassing my future self again, here is my experience with teas and tea-noisettes to date: Blumenschmidt: This grew very well for me, and for a while I really enjoyed it--because it was always in bloom and the flowers varied between well-formed classic tea shapes and picturesquely quartered blooms. But eventually, it started to take on the characteristics of MFK, with flowers that always balled and mildewed in cool, damp weather. I removed it several years ago. Bon Silene: This is my most vigorous non-climbing tea, and it is always in bloom. It does suffer from mildew, which can be troubling because it is so huge. But I'm hoping with age that it will get more healthy. Right now, it's about eight feet wide and twelve feet tall, and still spreading. The flowers aren't always perfect, and sometimes loose and sloppy, but other times they can surprise me with their beauty. Crepuscule: This was my first tea-noisette, and I was probably too impatient with it. When the flowers first opened, they were a eye-catching apricot yellow, but they tended to turn to a muddy, ill-formed yellow brown for me. Because I had other roses I wanted to try, I took it out, but now I regret it. Madame Gregoire Staechelin took its place. Dr. Rouges: This is still very young for me, but I'm liking it so far. The flowers start out dark red, and then open to a coppery-pink quilled full bloom. G. Nabonnand: This is turning into one of my favorite teas. It's been very healthy for me, and the flowers, while they can be loose (as Capt. Thomas would say) are variable in the best way, ranging from huge, perfect blooms to casual, soft, collapsing petals. The color shifts from soft white to soft pink in my climate, depending on the season. General Schablikine: This remains my favorite of the teas, because it has such a spectacularly generous bloom in the middle of winter, with flowers that are the best type of copper red, fading to pink at the center. The bush has been very healthy, and it has not gotten out-of-control huge. Lady Waterlow: This is sometimes classed as a climbing hybrid tea, sometimes as a tea-noisette. After two rough starts, it's now doing great for me, and I am looking forward to next year's bloom as the bush continues to establish itself. After three years of growth, it's about 10' x 12' and still growing up and out. Madame Berkeley: This rose took a lot of abuse from me. I left it in a bad spot as a band for a year, and it always looked near to death but it did not die. I have it in a much better location now, and it has been trouble free. My only problem is that the blooms seem to look better with more vibrant color in hot weather, so most of the time, mine have been a soft flesh pink. It's also not the most floriferous tea I have grown. Mlle. Franziska Kruger: I bought this rose as Duchesse de Brabant, but it turned out to be MFK. Most of the time the flowers balled and mildewed, while the bush grew too vigorously. In my climate, even when the flowers did manage to open, they looked like they were stained with lipstick, with odd red coloring on the outer petals and a muddled yellow-apricot on the inner. So I removed it at the same time as Blumenschmidt. It seems like this may be a much better tea for warm, dry locations. Mamon Cochet: This was another tea that other folks love that just didn't work in my climate. Almost all of the flowers balled for me. But when they did open, they were spectacular. This one died on its own before I could remove it, but I was not upset, based on its performance. Marechal Neil: Just starting with this one, but it looks like I may have balling issues. I will wait and see. It's growing nicely for me so far. Marie d'Orleans: This had more deeply red flowers than any other tea I've grown, but I planted it in a difficult spot, and it died from lack of water before it could even get started. Miss Agnes C. Sherman: I'm really liking this tea, although after a quick start for me, it's been quiet this spring and summer. I am willing to give it time to continue to develop. Niphetos: I've posted about my struggles with Niphetos. It is extremely slow growing, it suffers from rust, mildew and any other disease that gets near it. Most of the time the flowers ball. But when I do get a perfect bloom (about once a year) it's probably my most spectacular rose. Rainbow: This one died almost immediately on me. I shouldn't have put the band directly into the ground. Souvenir d'un Ami: I had the generic version of this, with plain pink flowers, so I ended up taking it out. Thomasville Old Gold: This was another failed experiment for me--again, I probably shouldn't have put the band directly in the ground. William Allen Richardson: This is one of those roses that I've always wanted, and haven't been able to find. I got a small band from Vintage, and tried to give it as much love as possible, but it just didn't take off. If I ever find it again, I will give it another try. I have its descendant, Buff Beauty, which is one of my favorites.

Several times I have looked at your glorious garden, and I still can't pick my favorites. Picking favorites is human nature, of course. But I do have memories of certain of your abundant blooms and their combinations that have really penetrated my old brain fog. I remember Peggy Martin on the fence, Iceberg on the arches, and Climbing Pinkie on the umbrella trellis. So, in those cases, the structures are an important part of both displaying the roses and preserving my memories. But in other cases, it was the combination of roses that was outstanding, like Falstaff and Iceberg, or the wall of "desserts". And how the special roses worked together was what made them so memorable. Sometimes the outstanding singular nature of a rose came through strongly to me like the huge size of the Yves Piaget blooms. or the blazing color of Chrysler Imperial, not to mention the age of the grafted CIs. Such an enduring rose that one is. So putting all these together, plus the roses' wonderful companions, has made many special lasting rose memories for me. Thanks for the memories, Cori Ann. Diane