All of us do things a bit differently, but here's my feedback. We just recently planted some potted up roses here, and also some others about 3 weeks prior to that. I know what you are going through in worrying about the effect of the heat on the rose for planting now. We've had mostly weather in the nineties, including the high nineties, but our newly planted roses are doing wonderfully well here in spite of it. Fingers crossed that yours will do great too. Books. If you're fairly new to roses, there are some cheap, cheap, cheap used books available at Amazon with advice on things like the planting hole. My favorite is Liz Druitt's "The Organic Rose Garden" because of its thorough discussion of organic nutrients to put into the hole and to use for feeding your roses. But another excellent book is Judith McKeon's "The Encyclopedia of Roses: An Organic Guide to Growing and Enjoying America's Favorite Flower" and it has all the necessary information. Judith McKeon's book is especially strong on illustrating the basics. Mycorrhiza. We use an organic product called "mycorrhiza" on the roots of all our roses. It's not essential, but one of the ways it helps the rose is in providing extra pathways for the rose to receive extra nutrients, including water. Planting a rose in the dessert in the height of summer heat, your plant can probably can use all the help it can get in taking in sufficient water. The product we used was BioVam from tandjenterprises.com and we were happy with it, though I don't know that one is better than others. David Austin also sells a product with mycorrhiza and it looks good too: "David Austin Mycorrhizal Fungi". You don't need much of this stuff per plant; once it makes contact with the roots, it spreads. Siting the rose. It needs some protection from too much sun in the near term, but probably not the long term. If it's a full-sun needy rose (almost a certainty), it would be better off located in a full sun spot or as close to full sun as you have available. Then you can use something temporarily added to help block some of the sun for the next few weeks while the rose is trying to adjust. Most people use a lawn chair for that, I think. (We never have that problem, as we don't have any spots with absolutely full sun, other than some spots that deer traipse through near our vegetable garden where we won't have roses anymore.) The planting hole. Don't step on the soil for tamping it down; it's too easy to break off your plant's precious roots that way. Just gently use your hands to tamp down the soil and let a lot of water settle the rest of the soil. Be sure to water your potted rose the day before you're going to plant, but never water it immediately prior to planting or soak a rose that's potted up; doing so leaves it vulnerable to losing large chunks of roots from the weight of the soil that might fall off. It's going to get plenty of water as soon as it goes into the ground. If the rose is pot bound at all, then you'll need to gently loosen and brush the soil away from the roots all along the edges and bottom, going inwards by maybe an inch or so. If you don't do that, the roots might circle round and round in the ground to keep growing in the same soil they've gotten used to, failing to venture out and get more moisture and nutrients that a larger site can accommodate. For the last three roses that we planted in the heat last week, they're all doing great. Two that started as bands in April that we had potted up into gallon containers weren't remotely close to being pot bound and they went into the ground intact. The one that we got from a nursery in April and were slow in getting into the ground was slightly pot bound, though, and we had to do the soil loosening thing on it. It's doing fine, but of course, it has been babied too, with its roots sprinkled with a little mycorrhiza during planting and then getting overhead watering once or twice a day. I'd suggest lots of organics for the hole; there's no risk of a burn or stress on the plant that way. If you get Liz Druitt's book, you'll see that you can use lots of different organics to add up in the long run to the macro and micro nutrients the rose needs. We use what we can find around here: lots of chopped up banana peels, bone meal, lots of composted oak leaves, some spaghnum peat moss, lots of alfalfa and cottonseed meal, composted cow manure, and a bit of greensand. Our roses do pretty much take off and start blooming like crazy once they get into the ground here, and that's true too for those roses we're planting in the very hot weather here of late. We never ever use anything on our roses other than organic products and they work well thrown on top of the mulch later in the year too. Watering. We water on top of the ground, and if we ever see powdery mildew, give the affected rose a good hard spray. The only roses that have ever gotten any powdery mildew here have been growing in far too little sunlight though, so you probably won't have that problem... especially if you can do the overhead watering thing when the sun isn't out to burn the wet leaves. Another benefit of overhead watering is that you'll moisten the mulch that way too, and that wet mulch will evaporate some of the water as the day wears on, thus reducing the dryness in the immediate area of the rose. And finally, if you overhead water or hand water with the hose sprayer, you stand a good chance of washing any blackspot fungal spores on the surface farther down under the mulch, where it won't affect the rose. (Note that this advice isn't standard within the rose world, but we've had excellent luck with this method--if you have enough water to be able to do this. Or at least do it initially, until the rose is established. You probably don't have much of a blackspot worry to begin with, though.) In the heat of the south and especially in the dessert it would be much better to water once or twice a day for the first couple of weeks until it's looking settled in and growing. That's assuming the rose has good drainage. It's more wasteful of water, of course, but I'd much prefer heavy watering on top of the mulch, not a drip, drip with crossed fingers that you've dripped enough to add up to something meaningful. With a rose that's just been transplanted, you don't want to take a chance on inadequate moisture. Good luck with your precious rose! Best wishes, Mary Here is a link that might be useful: The Organic Rose Garden [Hardcover] by Liz Druitt

Three cheers for your grandmother and her adventurous sense of color! May we all be bold rather than discreet in our old age. But perhaps we should skip the cheap cologne. I suspect the half bottle was because many people lose their sense of smell as they age and she honestly thought it didn't have much perfume to it. As for rose scents, I love them as rich and as heavy as can be. I love other intense scents, too, jasmine, lilies, honeysuckle. I will say that I prefer most flowers out of doors. Scented cut flowers in the house sometimes give me intense headaches, honeysuckle especially. Lilies are also too strong indoors. Narcissi actually become unpleasant to me in the house, developing a chemical undertone that reminds me of petrochemicals. Roses, though, are wonderful in the house or in the garden. And the same is true of my absolute favorite flower scent, lilacs. Rosefolly

I choose to enjoy my plants when I can. I live in China now, so I have a good friend who is taking care of my collection for me. I have him send pictures during the growing season. I am trying to figure out which ones of my relatives are into c & s, so I can decide who to 'leave' my plants to. I start most of my plants from seed, including saguaros and pachycereus pringlei. So I have no hope of ever seeing them grow arms. I plan to be cremated and thrown into the Atlantic off Maine along with my dog's ashes. I can't validate, but I believe VT was one state that took up the issue of being buried on private property. The school I teach in was on a former cemetery. The bodies were dug up and moved somewhere else. China has a very large population and cemetery land is being reclaimed for second uses. The government is encourage people to consider 'green funerals' such as cremations and burial at sea. The whole area was once a rural village. Traditional Chinese want to be buried in their traditional hometowns, so many want to be buried here. Where do they bury them? Along the median strip of the boulevards under the electrical towers. Last Christmas, I saw one burial right out side the school gate. Coffin and all, along with one guy digging a hole and the other lighting off firecrackers (the ever preset firecrackers). I was told there was another funeral yesterday. You see mini cemeteries along the roadside. Walk along the road and you'll probably bump into a grave. Maybe I use part of my ashes as a growing medium for my pachys or pachypodium rosalatum!

I love old houses - the quality, the history (I was THRILLED when I saw the names of the owners of our then under 5 year old house on the 1930 census), and the style. If I don't win the lottery, I will never live in another "new" build (80's and up) because the vast majority of non custom built homes are just not up to my standards. Of the 4 new builds I lived in in my life, only two were decent. The last decent one had been built by a guy who had previously done commercial building. It was built to last and I have no doubt that one would still stand after a tornado. Because of the commercial background, the finish "prettyness" wasn't there, but those details were added later, by us. The last new build was a nightmare. The "quality" semi custom build was so lacking that I can't even imagine how much worse some of the mass produced really poor quality houses will last. Within the first 5 years the deck was partially rotting (no flashing between the house and it), the roof leaked at the chimney, many of the windows wouldn't work well and/or leaked at the top, lots of the trim wood was rotting out and the floors of both 1st and 2nd floor creaked in almost every spot as did the entire staircase. And then of course you had the "minor" issues like one couldn't use a hairdryer in the master bath before resetting the outlet in the upstairs bath if someone had used a hairdryer in it before the master bath. And the defective shingles requiring a complete reroof at 3 years is hard to forget. My brother has a friend who last year moved into a house in one of those new mass built neighbourhoods in South Carolina. Brand new. 6 months after moving in, a water pipe junction burst (iirc, they thought it hadn't been correctly connected or something) in the attic while they were on vacation and ruined most of the house and their items. The builder denied responsibility and the insurance company was blaming it on the builder since the house was still under "warranty" and it was turning into a huge mess, to say the least. New does not equal free of work and I'd rather strip wallpaper than deal with finding out what corners were cut.