The older I get, the less energy I have, the less my roses need pruning at all. That is my new axiom in gardening. I think pruning is largely a matter of fitting the plant into the space allowed in the garden. The older I get, the less critical my jaundiced eye becomes. This year I had very little time for pruning and consequently many roses did not get pruned. One of those was Penelope. I have never seen her look better. Odd, isn't it? Then again, this year I managed to prune Ballerina before she leafed out (haven't got to her the previous two years) and she looks about the same as always. More and more I think that pruning the diseased canes and dead one (but only if you have to--the dead canes will be discarded by the plant eventually) works best for me. Buff Beauty who was moved last spring and pouted was not pruned and he looks pretty good as well. (Why BB is a he I don't know). Course, his looking good is really a matter of sprawling wherever he wants and that's exactly what he is doing. Now mind you, pruning only diseased canes can be a matter of cutting to the ground depending on the location of the disease, and this year I have a couple of those. Anyway, my advice on Hybrid Musks (and any rose for that matter) is prune diseased canes, step back, take a look, and prune for shape depending on placement in the garden. Don't forget to have the beverage of your choice when its over. Celebrate the work and enjoy your results.

Well guys, We still live in the house we bought to in 2014 in order to move Donna's aging mom who was (at that time) showing symptoms of dementia. The dementia progressively took its toll on her mind, and then in October of 2016, she was diagnosed with stage 4 bladder cancer. She lived until early February 2017 and died here at home with us, as she wished and she had made us promise not to let her die in a hospital or nursing home. She died surrounded by family and a hospice nurse was present. I only relate this story because Donna's mom's health situation was the reason we bought a house big enough for all of us to live in, under one roof.........and the subsequential multiple projects and renovations.........were the reasons I dropped off of the forum. As soon as we moved into the house, I had a long list of things that HAD to be done, and a long list of lesser things we WANTED to do......so my time on the forum just could not be justified.....I simply had too much to do. The first things to be done were to come up with safety measures to help prevent an elderly woman with dementia from injury by being proactive about preventing her from "escaping" the house. I had to equip all exit doors with a deadbolt lock keyed inside and out (all keyed alike) and we had to come up with a nearby "hiding place" close to each lock location for spare keys in case of emergency. This house has a full basement with stairs, and we did not want her mom to have access to the stairs, so I included the same deadbolt on that door too. The sliding door to the second floor deck was a challenge in that it had a key lock on the outside ONLY with just a paddle lock lever on the inside. I had to come up with a way to make that door lockable with a key from the inside. My solution was to remove the lock assembly from the door and "reverse" location of the paddle lever plate and the key tumbler plate, so that the key tumbler would be on the inside. I stripped out the guts relating to the paddle lever and covered the hole where the paddle shaft came through with a small brass plate.....heavily epoxied in place from the backside (inside the door). All you can see from outside is a small hole blanked off with brass. The deck is on the second story on the backside of the house with stairs leading down the the pool, which is enclosed inside a fence, so we never use the sliding door as a "key entry" point anyhow. Then there is the attic storage space epic adventure. The attic space when we bought the house, was almost non-existent. There was a total of 4 sheets of 4' X 8' plywood (128 sq. ft.) on the joists at the top of an extremely rickety pull down wooden stairs. Stairs were the first to go. Replaced with a sturdy aluminum pull down folding stairs. Then I hauled 22 4' X 8' sheets of 3/4 OSB into the attic space.(each sheet was cut in half lengthwise to fit through attic stairs opening). We now have about 800 sq. ft. of usable attic storage space. I built 2 inverted trusses (strong backs) to attach to the joists on the sections spanning the 12' kitchen and the 18' den. These trusses ensure that the load imposed by the extra OSB and stored material are ultimately borne by the load bearing walls at the hallway, den, and both walls of the kitchen. The addition of the trusses assures that the ceiling joists do not assume a sway back shape over time resulting in cracked ceiling gypsum board. I assembled the trusses in the attic and fabricated them to have about 1/2" "preload bow" on the 18' truss and 3/8" preload bow on the 12' truss. This was to ensure that the trusses were actually carrying some load right from the start. After I got the trusses built and fastened onto each joist they served with metal strapping, I built a 30' long, 2 tier shelf system into the truss structures. Shelves are 24" wide and the bottom shelf is 20" off the floor, while the second shelf is 46" off the floor, so you have the attic floor under the shelves, and the 2 shelves themselves for storage, That yields 180 sq. ft. of space, plus the remaining 720 or so sq. ft. of attic at various head space. The tallest overhead clearance is about 6'2" at the rafter collar ties (and I added collar ties so that every rafter has a tie, instead of every third rafter as the house was built). There were 4 rafters that had "split" open due to improper orientation by the rough carpenters. They had placed rafters with knots situated on the lower chord of the rafter (tension side), which is a no-no. These rafters had to be jacked back into place and reinforcement panels of 3/4" plywood "scabbed" onto each side, glued and screwed. The original scheme had the ventilation exhaust fans from both bathrooms simply dumping into the attic space, another no-no. I extended the exhaust hoses over to the gable area of the house and busted through the brick and installed 2 bona fide exhaust hoods with insect screens. On the longest hose, which was a 4" hose....I built a booster fan box in the middle of that run and wired it so that it turns on when the original fan turns on. I felt that a 16' run of 4" hose would probably need all the fan power it could get to keep from simply "stalling out". The other hose was 6" and only 8' long, so I felt it was adequate with no additional help needed. I could go on and on about other projects, but these were some of my most major undertakings, Now, about my employment. I no longer work as a forklift mechanic in the shop. In midsummer 2015, I took over running the parts department when our longstanding partsman retired. This was challenging in that it put me to the task of acquiring and dispensing the parts instead of installing them on vehicles. It has also been challenging in that I was the first partsman in our history to actually have the capability of searching the Volvo and Daimler websites to look up parts. It was in the summer of 2015 that the company finally got onboard with software to enable this. Prior to that advent, our method of ordering parts involve looking the parts up in hard copy paper parts manuals, or talking to a vendor/dealer on the phone and trying to describe what you wanted, it was sometimes a crap shoot whether you would get the right parts or not. The outgoing partsman never had to use the computer to look up and order parts, and when it was introduced, he refused to do it saying that his time was too short to need it, so he told me to get all the training and he would just watch. LOL He and I worked side by side for 3 months while he showed me most of the ropes before he retired in October 2015. That is a summary of what I have been up to. I know this was completely off topic, but since the request was posed here, I felt OK in responding here.

It definitely seems heavy on the black and white and greys color scheme, which is fairly neutral and somewhat easy to pull off as far as then blending your furniture into that. I have a lot of white ware, cream ware and depression glass stuff, which is very adaptable to a lot of situations. A few choice show pieces with color and texture because that is all you can afford. As for using old junk as furniture and ornaments, that was "in" during the 90's too. So Gaines style to me is just a black and white version of shabby chic with industrial touches thrown in. Not my style, but I can see how some people might find it restful. Some of her stuff is great but some of it makes me shudder as far as being practical. I don't mind words as art if it is poetry, inspirational quotes, or great calligraphy or even an old advertising poster. But random huge words just to take up space, not so much. But then I love art too much and have too many bookshelves, so I am never at a loss for what to put on a wall! So I too, have a hard time understanding what people want. Do you want a cool color scheme emphasizing black, grey and white? Do you want a mix of industrial and shabby chic reclaimed pieces or the look of that, maybe mixed in with some more traditional pieces to give an eclectic look? Plain Jane background with texture in your art and furniture and accessories?

Elmer, Normally I would never set anything (I haven't yet paid for) in my reusable bag. I wasn't at all worried about placing the bras on the glass jewelry counter because they were undergarments, but because there were customers perusing the items under the glass top, so I didn't want to obscure their view. However no good deed goes unpunished as they say, since I then completely forgot about putting them in my bag! So I agree with your advice to take the time for a thoughtful decision, to avoid such a happening. When one does something they'd never normally do, it can lead to forgetting what they did, precisely because it was not something they would normally do! maddielee, you're right, there are those black globe ceiling cameras all over, in this store, and they could easily have seen me drop the bras into my bag, as I didn't do it inconspicuously. The sales lady handed me the little box to view the earrings, when I still had the 3 bras in my hand. So I said "Oh hang on, I'll just put them in here while I look at these" and slid my bag off my shoulder and dropped them into it right in front of her. Then I hung it from my arm, instead of putting it back over my shoulder. She didn't say 'Oh it's ok, I'll put them behind the counter while you look' so it didn't seem like she was at all suspicious that I'd try to sneak out without paying for them. Maybe because I had the bras in my hand the whole time I looked at the jewelry and even until she gave me the earrings to view, she just assumed if I was going to steal them, I would have sneaked them into my bag earlier, rather than put them in it right in front of her. Only question I still have, is If the security cameras saw me put the bras in my bag, why didn't they have their security person stop me from leaving? And since the cashier at the checkout had to demagnetize them when she scanned them, I still have no idea why their exit sensors never went off when I walked right through them the first time. Unless the door employee was telling the truth after all, lol!