Patrick, What a wonderful gift to your mother and sister, and loving tribute to your late dad! It's one thing to dream up a grand project like that, and quite another to labour at it month after month, as you have done. And you have such good taste! Your lyrical descriptions have sustained me while waiting for my first Molineux buds to open, and I have saved for reference your treatise on fragrant roses. You are so right about The McCartney Rose, it's a monster! I hope you will not regard it as bad etiquette to add pictures to your post, but I would like to dedicate these photos of McCartney to your huge heart and enterprise. This plant has been in the ground since 2005, I can't imagine what your mum's bush was like! And a close-up of those amazing blooms: I would love to see what you have done there and also with your own garden creation. Do hurry up and post pictures! MayBee

Spring is way too far away! I just came in to rest, but after today, other than moving about 13 of my own seedlings into "acceptable" places in the garden, and one last order of about 20 DL's that should be here Mon/Tue, I am almost done..........planting that is! Then comes the cleaning up of the beds so that when I actually get to see them this winter they are presentable. It never ends, but as everyone says...THIS IS THERAPY!!!! After dealing with people and problems all week long, what better therapy than caring for things that not only will not talk back to you, but will reward you for your tender care?!? Kay, I understand the overdoing it part after being held down.... I am compensating this fall for all of the time that I gave to others rather than myself this spring/summer. I wasn't going to do ANY purchasing of DL's this fall, but everything that I have bought and the gardens I have created have made me feel good about doing something form myself again, and it was much needed. It is an addiction, as well as a way of staying sane! Now we just have to endure the wait... but what a wonderful reward there will be at the end!!! :) Julie

The other night we went to the local pizza place and the couple we were with ordered garlic rolls. My husband and I have never once in 4 yrs had a good garlic roll from this place, they microwave the rolls before bringing them out which as you know, makes them very tough and chewy. Not good. And more times than not, they've been microwaved beforehand and then brought to our table cold. So we don't order them anymore. But since this particular couple did order them, we each had one and it was the same thing, tough, chewy yucky. So I said to the waitress, who had a really funny personality, witty, fun, joking with us..... I said, "I'd love to come teach them how to make a good garlic roll" so she said, "Can you be here at 9:30 tomorrow morning?" I said, "Sure!"...... I knew she was joking - she knew I was joking. Well, minutes later the manager was at our table all in a huff because I didnt' like his garlic rolls. So I was honest and told him it was true, I really didn't. He said his restaurant is "known" for their garlic rolls and I was the only one who didnt like them. Ummmmm everyone I've spoken to that's eaten there HATES their garlic rolls. So I dont know what he's talking about. Anyway he admitted that they do nuke the rolls before bringing them out to the tables. He also admitted that he hates nuked bread too but that is how they do it. I was embarrassed because I never intended to insult the manager and I was a little PO'd w/our waitress for sending him over. If I wanted to complain to the manager I would have asked that he be sent over. It was obvious that he has no plans to change how they re-heat their rolls.

"I actually miss the chrome trim on newer appliances. I would like white fridges and ovens better if they had a nice metal handle instead of the plastic that yellows." Me, too! I'm glad our relatively new white fridge has white-painted metal handles, not white plastic handles, but I wish it had come with chrome handles. My much older white oven is only 2 years younger than my dad's white oven but I think it's aged better than my dad's for two reasons. One is that it has very little plastic on it and it's gray (to go with the chrome trim on the oven). The second reason is that the gray plastic has stayed the same color as opposed to the dingy yellow of the aged white plastic on my dad's oven.