Thank you everyone. I have really been working on improving my soil the past three years and that has made a big difference, I believe. Good soil - good plants. Good rainfall, this year too. Belinda's Dream looks like a big, fat pink Snowflake. And she smells divine. Has a good strong fragrance. She likes full sun, no ifs, ands or buts about it. That 5-inch bloom is on a plant that is only two feet tall. I rooted it last spring. I just stuck a broken off branch in the ground, and no kidding, she rooted in about three weeks and began blooming within a month. Poor little plant was bent over double with those big blooms. She bloomed all summer last year. This year, her blooms are even bigger. I totally love Belinda's Dream. In front of her is a rose cutting I got from plantmaven. I think it is Rosa, Heritage, although I can't be certain. She is only 18 inches tall and has bloomed twice already this year. She bloomed last year too, but much smaller blooms on an 8 inch plant. She has a strong, lovely old rose fragrance and sweet baby pink color. I just cannot get enough roses! It is my new freak! If I keep on like this, I will have to change my home name from Iowa Hills Herb Farm to Rose Hill Cottage! Thanks again everyone. I'll be sure to tell my rose-girls how much you all love them. ~Annie

CasaLester, The climbing hydrangea is indeed H. anomala subsp. petiolaris, so definitely not the one that you want. I don't have any red flowered camellias, only white and one pink. The loropetalum I have is Proven Winners Jazz Hands White. I unfortunately have no more space for shrubs or trees or I'd take the hardy grapefruit. I don't need anything in return for the loropetalum. I will hold it for you. (Is you fine, or should I use they or them or another? I'm not so great at pronouns but I try.)

It rained on and off all day, though mostly drizzle and fog and mist, so I couldn't do anything outdoors. There was nothing I wanted to do indoors. So, we went to Gainesville "adventuring", just to see what was going on. There wasn't really anything much that we needed, though I wanted to get some sour cream and some ice cream if the stores had any. I was just thinking that if the coronavirus becomes too common around us, we'd just stay home but that hasn't happened yet, so I wanted to get out for a little while. Atwood's had a ton of plants outside, and I wanted to stay out and look at them, but it was raining, and it started raining harder, so I quashed that dream and went inside. I bought more vinegar for pickling and a few minor things, but nothing big. The major revelation was that the sell bacon grease (rendered bacon fat) as an official product! I think it was called Bacon Up, and they had small containers and really large ones. We've saved it from cooking our bacon forever and used it forever in cooking certain things, but I've never seen it sold in stores. It was kind of cool to see it there. Except for Atwood's being completely out of toilet paper and mostly out of paper towels, the store seemed normal. No panic shopping there. So then we went right next door to Wal-Mart, which did have several aisles with empty or mostly empty shelves, but once again, it was just the predictable items: beans, rice, pasta (all about 90-95% gone), canned meat and canned fish, soups, (about 90% gone), toilet paper and paper towels (100% gone), and bottled water (95% gone, and most of what was left was just distilled water in gallon jugs). I did buy us some sour cream, ice cream and a few other minor items but, really, most of the store looked fine. We didn't even go to the other side of the store, but I saw no hand sanitizer, liquid soap, rubbing alcohol, OTC painkillers and OTC cold/flu medications in anybody's carts, so I am sure those still remain sold out, as they largely have been for several weeks here. That's largely because it has been an awful flu season and those items have been hard to find since early January. Wal-Mart had a ton of plants out in the rain, so I didn't get to see them either, but I could tell as we walked by that they had a ton of cool season transplants that were getting pretty old and big, and a ton of freshly arrived smaller warm season transplants like tomatoes, peppers and squash. About the time we were leaving there, my son called and asked me to watch for brown rice because he could use it as part of a homemade bird food formula for his tropical birds if he cannot find more when their current supply is exhausted. Since there wasn't any rice in the two stores we'd just visited, we went to Tom Thumb, which showed the least signs of panic buying. They still had everything, though toilet paper was in fairly limited quantity and paper towels in very limited quantity. They still had all the other foods that were sold out at the Wal-mart up the road, and plenty of people shopping but nobody looked like a panic shopper or a doomsday prepper. I actually am surprised more people weren't stocking up, but maybe all those folks had done so on Friday, since that community had one person awaiting COVID-19 test results. I learned this evening the test was negative. Yay! If the weather is nice tomorrow, which is iffy because rain is in the forecast, I'd love to go plant shopping. I just don't want to do it badly enough that I'm willing to shop in the rain. I'm hoping all this rain keeps knocking down the pollen in the air. With family still down in the DFW metro, I follow the news from there closely, and panic buying made everything a big mess, especially at all the big box stores. Desperate metro shoppers were venturing into east Texas from the east side of Dallas, and driving as far as 80 miles without finding what they were looking for. Others drove north up to Sherman, and found a lot there, although I don't think Sherman residents were very pleased to have their stores invaded and raided. : ) Really, adventuring today just reinforced two things: I'm glad we prepared in advance and weren't out frantically searching for a lot of different products. We easily could live without sour cream and Blue Bell Ice Cream if we had to. And, there's lots of plants in the garden centers and the rain is keeping me from seeing them, enjoying them and maybe buying some. Then we came back home to the land of mud and puddles, and I started hating on the rain all over again. Our driveway is a river and more rain is coming. Tim picked up and then dropped a flat of tomato seedlings on the floor. I was not amused but resisted the urge to kill him. I always tell y'all that he is a plant killer---when he comes into the garden, plants die, which is why he stays out of the garden at last 99% of the time. Now he has expanded his killing to innocent seedlings growing under lights indoors. I scooped up everything and saved what I could. There is a reason I always start more than we'll need to plant. Despite the broken and dead seedlings, I should have enough to plant since I wasn't planning on having that many this year anyway. Marleigh, Your husband has my sympathy. I cannot imagine how frustrating all this panic shopping is for people in his industry right now. I saw lots of reports today of many grocery retailers cutting back their hours, even 24-hour stores closing down at night, to allow employees to clean, disinfect and restock and I think that's a great idea. I hope it makes the situation more manageable for the store employees. Here's your book at the website of used book reseller, half price books online: How To Cook A Wolf Larry, Your nutrients do look high, but your soil pH is great. I hate soil tests. Trying to decipher them makes my eyes cross and my brain explode, so I haven't had one done in years. I figure if something is deficient in my soil, I'll be able to see signs in how the plants do or don't perform, and the plants I grow look fine each year and produce well so I just don't worry about it. Your area is like mine---high in minerals. That is the one good thing about clay soil---we are having to scramble and add various nutrients to the soil. Nancy, Are your freezers full of a lot of fish? (grin) That would be my guess. Our freezers are so full after we crammed in the ice cream that we cannot buy another single thing that needs to be in the freezer, but we will eat well without shopping while the coronavirus rolls through the region and makes going out increasingly risky. I did think twice about not going to Gainesville today, but I think this could be our last good weekend to be out rather fearlessly, so wanted to do it. The whole time we were out, I never heard a single cough in any store except in Wal-Mart where one woman was hacking up a lung just outside the lady's room, near the water fountain. Her coughing was so hard and painful it scared me for her. I hope she isn't walking around in public with pneumonia or bronchitis. The cases of coronavirus in the DFW metro are rapidly expanding although I haven't seen reports of any deaths from it yet, as they are similarly expanding in various other major Texas cities, so I think we'll avoid Texas after this weekend and just go north to Ardmore. Tiny is such a garden cat! I used to grow valerian for our cats, but it was such a garden thug that I really didn't want it in the garden and eventually dug it out. Sometimes a volunteer valerian plant still pops up in the yard outside the garden. Valerian has a pheromone that affects some cats the same way that catnip does, and our cats seemed pretty fond of it. They'd walk on it, lie on it, roll on it, etc. just as they did with catnip. Graham crackers with milk was a favorite childhood snack of mine too, and one I still enjoy occasionally as an adult. Rebecca, I am glad you grounded your mom. I'd be doing the same if my mom were still here. I worry about you being around all the sick people that come into the store, so please take good care of yourself too. I've never had anything from High Mowing Seeds that didn't sprout, but I've also not grown zinnias as winter-sown seeds or started them this early since they are true heat lovers. So, I don't know if you've got a germination issue due to the seeds or if maybe it still is too cool for them. Zinnia seeds ought to germinate in about 4 to 8 days if the soil temperature is 75-80 degrees, but will be considerably slower in cooler soil temperatures. I don't "think" the seeds would get cold rot if wintersown, though, because mine reseed every year and I get tons of volunteers in the spring. If cold, wet, clay soil doesn't kill them, then being wintersown shouldn't. Maybe your seeds just need some sunshine and warmth. Jennifer, I always expect late cold weather, but was thinking this might be the Spring that we don't have that. Now it looks like, from your forecast, there's a cold night lurking out there. I don't want to go look at my forecast because I don't want to see the same thing. I don't have any tomato plants planted out either in the ground or in large containers, but my son does, so I'll tell him he needs to watch his extended forecast. While the fruit tree blooms are fading as tiny fruit begin to appear on the trees, the native redbuds are blooming everywhere around us now, and a couple of days ago the first Indian Paintbrush in our wildflower meadow began blooming. While both of these plants will jump the gun and bloom before the end of the freezing weather, they usually don't get too terribly far ahead of the weather either, so seeing the paintbrush blooms made me think that maybe the cold weather is behind us now. Oddly, the redbuds are blooming just about right on time, and not a month early like the fruit trees were. It is interesting that they didn't jump the gun and bloom far too early. Look how much I wrote y'all! I practically wrote a book tonight. (grin) There's no one awake but me. The grandkids aren't here, the pets are asleep and Tim is upstairs, presumably asleep although his phone keeps ringing so I think he is half asleep and getting crisis calls from work. Today, at the airport (and at any US airport with inbound international flights where passengers must clear Customs), US citizens and residents rushing home to beat the travel ban found themselves packed into the Customs area like sardines (by the thousands at DFW) as they lined up to fill out questionnaires designed by the Department of Homeland Security and U. S. Customs. Let's just say that frustrated travelers were posting photos and complaints on Twitter and leave it at that. Maybe it wasn't the best choice for them to fly off on trips overseas with the coronavirus pandemic making travel more risky? The airports did not create this situation, and those two government agencies are trying to catch people who might be traveling inbound with coronavirus so they can keep us all a bit more safe. It just seems like an unfortunate situation for the travelers to find themselves caught up in. Maybe they should have stayed home and planted gardens or gone panic shopping or something.... Kim, I hope you're having a great time in west Texas. Dawn

Thanks, Merlena!! From your lips to God's ears...come on blooms! :) Your Quietness has a quiet beauty...very restful. :) Kristine - I laughed when I read your comment about the danged dogs and the seeds. Dogs...we love them, but whoo boy! And too funny...your roses are "mice nuts" in the shadow of his new truck!! Love it! Oooooh!!! Your lavender roses are sooo pretty!!! I think that Charles is my favorite! Merlena - oh wowza!!! Your Poseiden bush is glorious!!! What a fabulous bush shot! And the flowers...love, love!!! Dilly - Oh!! Lucy is a sweet rose!!! She has a beautiful face and lovely little fingers!! Yes, it must be wonderful to have your husband home for this precious time. Lovely flowers!! Especially the irises! Hubby and I went to a UFA feed store and got 3 big bags of alfalfa pellets! The weird thing is that my Barbra Streisand is the only rose I had that had a good foot and a half of cane that was left alive and green after the GGDO. It has done nothing for 2 months!!! Nothing! So I flung a bunch of alfalfa pellets on (as well as on my other roses)...come on Babs...get going! I have a question about alfalfa pellets...it's okay, isn't it to put them on bareroot roses? The pellets aren't in contact with the roots. Thoughts? We had a glorious, warm day of 15C/59F!!!!! The sun was shining...the roses went outside after a few days of being left in the garage. Life is good!