Thank-you all for such a warm welcome. It is so nice to talk to other people who feel the same as I do. My DH understands that I MUST have a garden and is very supportive, but doesn't share it. Dear Melissa, Your garden in the Apennines sounds wonderful. I love the way it seems your roses do so well for you without mollycoddling. They must be happy roses. The weather here, I am still finding out about as we have only been here since late September. All I know so far is that last autumn was golden, with just occasional rain. This winter has been wet with lots of rainfall, and just one night of light frost. The soil is better than I thought it was on first viewing the plot. It seemed to be a thin layer over solid rock. However there is a lot more depth to it, and it is certainly supporting a lot of weeds! The site is fully exposed to the colder north winds, which should prove interesting! The water is not connected yet. When I potted the clematis and herbaceous plants, my DH had to climb halfway up a steep hill to the village pump to collect water for them. Luckily there has been lots of rain since. Dear Chance. Yes I am English. I have holidayed on Crete many times and fell in love with it. I loved Cornwall too, but not the weather. Most of my time was spent staring out of the window waiting for the rain to stop. Frustrating! I have always loved OGRs. I have to blame Graham Stuart Thomas for that. His writings made me fall in love with them, before I ever even saw any. I am now looking forward to seeing the teas and the chinas which I don't know. Dear Carol. Thank-you for your welcome. I can certainly keep you all updated with descriptions. The pictures I will have to learn!! Dear Florence. It is VERY exciting. The people on this forum I can see are very helpful and supportive to each other. I hope that I can help some in return. Dear Mendocino Rose. Thank-you for your best wishes. I am guessing about my zone number. That information is hard to find over here. As it is now winter the daytime temperature can drop to 10c ??f. Everything is very green and the almonds and other blossom trees are coming out. Whoopee! Dear Sherry. Yes, I am dying to get started. Luckily the builder has now said that I can start my garden at the far end of the plot away from the build area. So, as soon as I can find a mini-digger and driver that can pull the precious top-soil away from the edge of the terrace above my neighbour's field, its all systems go! I think you are right, about it being an all year growing climate. The Jasminum polyanthum which grows in our rented place has been putting out the odd cluster of flowers and new growth all winter. The wild flowers have also been growing and flowering too. HelpMeFind looks good. Thanks for letting me know about it. Daisy

Several things keep me at home in April: my nine year old daughter; our budget; my own garden. When we go to the U.S. it's during summer vacation and we go to Florida where my family is; and as long as my aged father is with us, to Florida we will go. We have wonderful vacations there, in the small town in north Florida where I grew up, seeing my siblings and nieces as well as my dad; and the swimming is wonderful. I've had a plan in the back of my head for some time. When my daughter has finished middle school, say, if I can come up with the money, I might take her on a summer tour of the U.S. We could fly out to Washington state, work our way south, visiting rose forum friends, if I may call you so, along the way, and then zigzag across the country back to my home state. My girl has never seen any of the U.S. except Florida, and that would be a good time, I think, for her to become better acquainted with her other native country. Meanwhile, while you folks are working on Dirt Day, I'll be out digging my own soil, which certainly badly needs it. We have six tons of oldish hay arriving this afternoon--HALLELUJAH!!! we were nearly out--and I'll be able to resume digging it into the clay which constitutes our soil. Five years of this kind of thing are showing results: the soil is becoming friable, and is loaded with earthworms. But we have a long way to go. So, you all have fun, and we'll meet one day. Happy Spring! Melissa

Randy, it's just another way of saying I wimped out. Ingrid, Enchantress' first blooms balled pretty badly. Maybe it was thrips or temps or her being a baby in the pot. This flush is doing better, but I don't think I saw the finish of that flower. Souv de Francois Gaulain balled, too. It was not a good first flush really. JBS has not looked anything like she did last year. Her flowers were bigger and deeper pink in the centers last year. The second flush is about silver dollar size. Mrs B R Cant is starting her second flush, and they're normal buds and flowers but not as many so far. Ya know what Forrest Gump said about the box of chocolates? Well, that's been my garden so far. Even Louis Philippe is still balling. He never did that last year. Bermuda Spice looks terrible and has the tiniest flowers. Don't know what's going on but this year is different. Mme C Testout was about the only normal one. She just sailed through. And Souv de la Malmaison has been gorgeous. I just got 2 SdlM's in February and also the climber. I just put one bush in the ground today. Her flowers are wonderful. Oh, and Niles Cochet and Gen Gallieni were planted today as well. And I got soaker hoses down in two areas. It's been a very productive vacation. Didn't get the front feeding & mulching finished, but I got a lot of annuals/perennials in. Sherry

Safety tips for the garden: NEVER USE GAS nearby a flame source, like a pilot light in a water-heater, or furnace, or a tiny ember. One neighbor used gasoline to kill a big & thorny rose grafted on Dr. Huey: she poured on the rose, then put a trash-can-lid over it so it could not get rain. That surely destroyed the soil. During my volunteer days in rehab (decades ago), I still remember a man, burnt badly from head to toe ... he was in utter misery. He told me how he did it: through using gasoline to kill a patch of poison ivy. Another man did the same and became a human fireball, except he attempted to light some wood in a wrought iron outdoor fireplace, the $99 type at HomeDepot. He could not get fire started, so he grabbed the red-can of gasoline container (for mowing the lawn).. it has just a little of gas inside. He thought he could splash just a tiny bit of gas onto the barely alive flicker on the log .. but that tiny flame ignited the fumes and shoot the flame into the gas can and caused a HUGE EXPLOSION .. and he became a fireball. Luckily there's a pond 12 yards away, and he jumped into it .. alive, but in the hospital for months with 17 very painful skin-grafts. He wrote his near-death-experience and time in hell (after death) in the below Amazon book-on-line. Just click on the book and Amazon shows the first few pages of the book, where he landed in hell after death. He's an assistant principal at an elementary school. http://www.amazon.com/Hell-Real-Too-Death-Experience-ebook/dp/B018UYNQCG/ref=sr_1_9?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1460265353&sr=1-9&keywords=hell#reader_B018UYNQCG There's another sad & true story of a teenager boy was chopping wood with a chain-saw, he ran out of gas, and it's freezing cold outside, so he brought the gas can down the basement to re-fill his chain-saw, except there's a furnace down the basement (with flame inside) .. the entire basement exploded, killing the boy. Another near-death experience involved a man came back to his old house on sale .. the water was turned off, so he could not wash his hands after spraying a wasp-nest with wasp-spray. He got some wasp-spray on his hands, was hungry so he ate his sandwich, noticed a strange taste .. he got ill, and was in a coma & had a near-death-experience (went to heaven) then hospitalized for 6 months before he could walk again.