Yep! I have found an occasional very small thorn on Reine des Violettes too. Usually right at the top near a bloom. Some people are always grumbling that Roses have thorns, I am thankful that thorns have Roses! - ALPHONSE KARR One of my favorite sayings!

So you want a security rose that will devour your neighbors? There are lots of options. Here are just a few: 1. Awakening & New Dawn (light pink) - lovely, lovely, romantic roses on canes studded with bone white thorns that could double for shark teeth. 2. Dortmund (bright BLOOD red) - he, he, he, he, he, he... 3. Julia Child (bright golden yellow) - the thorns chop flesh like a factory sharp chef's knife. 4. Mermaid (pale yellow) - should be renamed the Kraken. It will not only bite HARD, but will wrap itself around anything within reach and smother it. Provided of course you have a warm climate. 5. Rosa Rugosa Alba (white) - I get scared just looking at it. 6. Sombreuil (ivory white) - named after a noblewoman from the French Revolution who drank a goblet of blood. The rose is well named. 7. Westerland (orange) - so much beauty, so many thorns!

Thanks everyone for chiming in with responses! That is an important cautionary note, Thorntorn, about rose breeders having a possible agenda in promoting the fragrance of their own roses when they may be marginal at best. Certainly Delbard and Kordes roses do not come to mind when I think of fragrance, and I take Clements' statements of "highly fragrant" on a majority of his roses with a skeptical eye, since at least my poor nose can't detect much fragrance in most of his roses. Still, my impression of the Delbard book as a whole was an attempt to break down the components of different rose scents as "recipes" and celebrate the joy of smelling roses - most of the examples of scent combinations in the rest of the book were from OGRs. Also, until recent years I assume that fragrance was a not high priority in rose breeding, when more visual pursuits like high centered HTs or health concerns like BS resistance or hardiness have taken more precedence. For me in zone 5, those health/hardiness concerns are one of my highest priorities and I love the whole clan of (mostly) scentless Kordes and other types of roses. If I have to sacrifice wafting fragrance for that health I gladly will, but I'm glad there are the OGRs and new breeders like David Austin who have brought fragrance back into their lines. Regardless, I agree with you that it's too much work most of the time to try to detect (or imagine) a scent in a rose that is at best stingy with the scent. It's like trying to train my palate to detect the difference between a $10 bottle and a $50 bottle of wine. I can already tell the difference between truly cheap and a $10 bottle of wine, and frankly I don't WANT to develop a taste for expensive wines - I already have a taste for expensive roses! Sometimes the descriptions of rose scents are rather like those wine taster guides - who wants the taste (or scent) of "tar" or "smoke" in either one? For me, though, that doesn't mean that roses that don't have much in the scent department aren't worth wasting my time on. With my poor nose, I'd probably be stuck with a dozen or two roses that I could actually smell under normal conditions, and the intriguing look of roses like Red Intuition is totally worth it in my yard even though I can't imagine it having any appreciable scent. I realize that folks like Thorntorn choose roses with fragrance as a top priority, and that's part of the great thing about growing roses - that there's enough diversity of form, scent, growing habits, colors, and other types of roses to satisfy your own personal priorities. I totally agree with Suzy that what speaks to us about a particular rose is very individual and a complex combination of our experiences and priorities not just something that could be prescribed about the rose. So I agree with Mendocino rose that I wish my nose were better, but I'll settle for enjoying the look of most of my roses and the scent of a few select dear ones. I love the idea kittymoonbeam had to literally drink in some of the scent of those few favorites - I can't see doing that to try to coax a reluctant scent from a rose, but that would be so fun to try with my dear toe-curling fragrant Frances Dubrueil! Cynthia

The little lizards are everywhere lately lol. I just took one out of our bedroom yesterday and put it outside on the ginger plants. I looked out the bedroom window and saw this green form bouncing up and down and it was a lizard inside our window lol. I also found a little pinkish lizard with suction cup type feet (maybe some kind of newt??) trying to get into the clothes dryer last night. I couldn't catch him. I have been finding the tiniest baby green tree frogs in all the rose flowers here lately. They are feasting on gnats or something that fly around the blooms. As for the huge roaches or palmetto bugs...our Key West rescue hens love to get them and rip them apart! They actually fight over who gets to devour them first LOL! They must have got a lot of roaches on Key West because next to bread, roaches are their favorite food lol. I have a phobia of those big roaches so I was delighted when we got those Key West hens because they gobble up every one they find. ~SJN