hey pam, are you looking for other roses for these? i have several therese bugnets and a hansa that need new homes. i have arisaema black jack coming next week. do you already have this one?

Nancy, I'm not familiar with OSO Happy Smoothie, but I've grown OSO Easy Paprika for several years. My Paprika bushes have been carefree and completely disease free without spraying here where even knockouts are bad to blackspot. Our humidity level hovers in the 90s and temps average in the mid 90s throughout the summer months, but these bushes never shut down. They provide constant color spring through fall and ask nothing in exchange. The Paprikas are thorny, but they are not marketed as thornless. I wouldnâÂÂt think OSO Happy Smoothie would be advertised as thornless if it wasnâÂÂt at least very nearly so, and I would assume Smoothie to have similar disease resistance and bloom power as the others in the OSO series. I only have personal experience with Paprika, but have seen some of the others grown locally, and they seem to be winners, too. I also grow Apricot Drift and Coral Drift. They are carefree, very disease resistant and constant bloomers, as well, but both do have thorns (Coral is very thorny; Apricot doesnâÂÂt have many thorns, but enough to prick you if not careful). The Drift roses stay much shorter in my climate than the Paprika bushes (and other OSOs that IâÂÂve seen). I prune back my Paprikas each winter to keep them at about 3 feet X 3 feet, but the Drift roses never get over 2 to 3 feet in height (and at least 3 ft wide) here without any pruning. Both the Drifts and the Paprikas will look better and give you a greater quantity of blooms with some deadheading, but both will continue to flower reasonably even if you donâÂÂt. I donâÂÂt think you could go wrong with any from either series as far as ease of care, but I'm not sure on the thornless part. HereâÂÂs a picture of Paprika this weekâ¦loaded with buds and some blooms beginning to open:

Jim, please go ahead and start a spring thread when you have time. We appreciate all you have done keeping the seasonal threads going and making them lots of fun. Love all your crazy photos, too. I only worked 1 hr and 10 minutes. Too many interruptions, plus sore knees from crawling along on pavement, cleaning out the beds that border sidewalks. The whirligig is going so fast in the breeze I'll never get a pic of the thing. That cat really knows how to ride a bicycle. Diane

Lovely pictures and stories all! For those of us in cold zones, At Last has been more reliably hardy for me in zone 5 than Livin' Easy. I haven't had mine long enough to mature to a gorgeous bush like yours, but I'll bring the computer out to the garden to show the bush the pictures and maybe it'll get some ideas. Cynthia