Jenny, As you know, I bought my first "Miss Kim" this year - now, that lilac of yours is truly "inspiring" - Okay, so I have to wait 6 more years, leave my southeast side and relocate to the opposite side of my building and pray for hot muggy weather...easy! All kidding aside, your Miss Kim, is absolutey gorgeous - thanks for sharing posting it for all of us to see.

I have no roses that I regret acquiring, but I do have roses that I regret putting where I did. Everything seems to grow larger than expected here, and it took me some time to learn that. I now have monster roses that really need to be relocated. Crepuscule finally got a haircut of about half her growth in January. I hope she doesn't get too pissy with me. She loves her location just a bit too much. Alberic Barbier has canes that end up about 15 feet beyond the plant on the ground UNDER THE FALLEN OAK LEAVES. Ouch !!! I do a fair amount of barefoot gardening. And finally, Silver Moon (aka The Kraken) is going to smother Ghislaine de Feligonde (not exactly a small rose herself). I just had to trim Ghislaine from a pathway. These monsters need to be shuffled around and I am not looking forward to it. The Kraken is staying put - I am not dealing with those fish hooks. It almost ate me when I tried to "scratch in" some fertilizer. Wow, she gets thrown some 10-10-10 from now on. It's funny, though. These are all great roses and have won their places in my garden. I just didn't leave them near enough room and now I have to try to move giant briar patches. Gardening is definitely about location.

I can't barely smell phlox. I can't smell phlox at ALL. Period. And nobody tell me about zinc. I can smell everything except phlox. There isn't another of the flowers (or spices, or anything) I cannot smell if they have a smell. I also cannot taste BitrexTM. There are a few percent who cannot. I'm disappointed. It's supposed to be so murderously brutally bitter, and I can't find out. And yes, I can taste other bitter things. Dandelions, yuk, methylsulfonylmethane ugh; Tylenol, arggh, etc. Bitter soda water, nicely bitter. Swedish bitters, yup (but no thanks). Etc. I discovered about phlox some 20 years ago. My sister said, 'Ohhh... PHLOX!! I LOVE the smell of phlox". And she goes and bunches a bunch together and sticks her face in it. "Mmmmm!!" I try it and I'm like Dang! she's playing me. The stuff has no smell and she's pulling my leg...

Oh yes, the lovely frustration of Clothilde Soupert. I find her less frustrating if I simply think of her as a novelty rose with round blooms, sort of like a white balloon flower. Almost nothing else balls in my zone (not the very double Austins, not Belinda's Dream, not Eden), but CS is dependable to ball in her first flush or two. Even in my semi-arid zone in baking hot sun between the sidewalk and street, here's what she looks like most Junes: Fortunately, later in the year she condescends to open up and bloom more conventionally, though even at the best of time her young blooms have a very round quality. As for Austins, I'm fortunate that they do quite well for me no-spray, since they are among the hardier roses I grow beyond the once-bloomers and Canadians. That's one of the benefits of being in a dryer zone, as I need to remind myself next August when I'm hauling the hoses around the yard in baking 100 degree heat. LavenderLace, thanks for the recommendation of Twice in a Blue Moon. That's another lavender that is just surviving in the warmest spot in the yard by the skin of its teeth (what you think roses don't have teeth?? Ahem, they're called thorns). I do get a couple of blooms a year but it's hard to call them lavender. Still, I don't consider this a washed out pink and this one earns its 6 square inches of garden space. Now you want lavender/purple, Veilchenblau blows them all out of the water in its spring flush. Here is was last year and it has almost doubled in size this year. I'm expecting very nice things from it... Cynthia