I have personal experience with only three from your list. Arethusa, resistance is quite good. Will get some bs, but not to the point to look ugly. Wonderful fragrance. I have my close to the house, so it is semi-sheltered location. No dieback for me. Something to be aware of is that the blooms fry easily. Some afternoon shade probly will help. My Arethusa is in blazing sun and blooms don't last long, in have a day they are fried. I am considering to relocate my plant to less sunny location. Mme Joseph Schwartz, if you grow DdB, you know what to expect from this one. Similar experience with these two for me. For me it was slightly more resistant, kept more leaves then DdB, but still not what I would grow no spray. Mutabilis has minimal dieback, mostly when it is young. It looks good half of the time and is naked another half. I don't grow it myself now, but my sister who lives close to me does. She never sprays, but puts some compost in spring, waters and it is in full day sun. Her plant grows well and looks happy. It blooms wonderfully in spring, then BS comes and it looses most of its leaves, grows new set, blooms again, gets BS, looses leaves, and so on. 4-5 cycles per season. That is what I mean when I say it looks good 50% of time. So if person visits her garden when it has leaves, conclusion will be Mutabilis is very BS resistant rose. If the person comes when it is naked, conclusion will be it is BS disaster. In reality it is somewhere in between. Actually this is very common for some other chinas here too. Olga

Caldwell Pink -- 3 x 3 seems like a safe bet. Carefree Beauty -- mine is new this year. It shot up a new cane that's already 4' long. Hopefully, I gave this one enough room. Gruss an Aachen -- I have pink Gruss. 3 x 3 should be good. Mme Isaac Pereire definitely wants to get long. I let her peg herself ... she grows up and arches over on her own. Verdun is one of my oldest roses. It will easily stay at about 3' high, if you deadhead the whole cluster of flowers once they're finished blooming. It grows mostly vertically, with little spread. This one must be sprayed in order to have any leaves in summer. Shailer's Provence -- my original Shailer's grows in the front border by the cherry tree, so it gets less sun than it probably should. It wants to be about 5 - 6' tall. My second Shailer's is in the rose field, in full sun, and it's the same height. The difference between the two is that the one in more sun is suckering like crazy. Plan for this. Mableton Rouletii should stay about 2 x 2. It grows very densely. When it starts blooming in spring, the whole plant is a mass of tiny pink flowers. Wonderful! St. Thomas China is a bit looser than Mableton Rouletii, but still a compact grower. There was no winter damage on it this year at all, while Single Pink China and Comtesse du Cayla on either side of it were killed to the ground. 3 x 3, maybe if it grows for a couple of years. Little Buckaroo will fit very nicely with the other mini chinas. The size should be somewhere between Mableton Rouletii and St. Thomas China. Beauty of Rosemawr ... I'm beginning to doubt the ID on this one. It was sold to me as BoR, but I haven't seen a photo of it online or anywhere else that looks like the one I have. The flowers are stunning, but it's definitely not what BoR looks like on HMF. Thanks for the endorsement. I have tried really hard to make this a welcoming place, with quality roses and good information. It's nice to see that it's working. Too many other old garden rose nurseries have left us ... I have to hang in there to make sure these roses have a home, and to provide a source for people who want to grow them in their own garden. Connie

Congratultions, Marcia. What wonderful gift. He'll be great boy, after all, born under the same sign as me - my birthday is Jan 2!!! Peggy, beware of holding off until later. I did that last year and it never did get really cold with lots of snow as we usually get later in the winter and then I did not get good germination for those seeds that need several freeze/thaw cycles, so I will be starting next week. I did not plan on doing lots of WSing this year - just want to replace a few things that I got tired of, but I promised a neighbour to do some planting for him. He has a new house and is single father of two, so he needs some help. Of course there will be my petunias - it's just a thrill to see what appears each year. Most of my planting this year will be devoted to peppers and tomatoes which I start indoors and lots of veggies which are either direct sown or spring sown. I am in the process of ridding my house of whitefly/aphids which were brought in by some pepper plants I hoped to overwinter. I have some'decoy' plants out and I have made my sticky traps and I hope that will take care of them. Will be touch... Northerner.

Jay, The cost is a bit ridiculous and I can't see why it would cost them any more to produce seeds for a grafting rootstock plant than for any other plant. Celebrity looks really good when its growing. I haven't grown it in a while because its flavor is only average for a hybrid, but its vigor is incredible. Randy closed his business???? I completely missed that. If you get that close to Carol's, you'd better drop in and see her or she'll be mad at you. And, once you're at Carol's, then the two of you plus any other gardening maniacs she can round up from that general area just might as well hop in the car and drive to Baker Creek. Road trip! There I go again, giving you more ideas..... By the way, it is sunny and 50 degrees at my house and I celebrated by walking out onto the porch bare-footed. It isn't quite spring yet, but for a couple of minutes I pretended it was. I just looked at the Enchanced Weather page at the Norman weather office and "some people" here in this region have possible snow in their forecast tomorrow. Snow? Are they kidding? It had better not come to my house because we already have set new records for the muddiest month ever in December and I don't want for January to continue along that path. I toyed with the idea of starting tomato seeds today. Oh, yes I did! Of course it is too early, and of course I did not do it, but I toyed with the idea for quite a while. I will have that battle with myself every day from now until the time I actually do start seeds. Luckily for me, the earliest tomato plants will be arriving at Dallas-Fort Worth area stores about 5 or 6 weeks from now and I'll be able to pick up a few to plant in containers while I coax my tiny seedlings to grow inside under lights. If it wasn't for the Feb.-planted plants that give me tomatoes to eat in April, there's no telling what I'd do. Having those early ones coming along in their pots helps me control my urge to plant and transplant everything else way too early. Dawn