It's what you feel is a good deal that counts when buying. Selling is a different issue, and it takes time. We sold vintage for years, and Ebay was the WORST resource EVER for uninformed buyers and sellers. What seems like a minor difference can be a major one when it comes to price (well, it looks *almost* like mine). Additionally, it seems that people assume everyone else listing the widget knows what they're doing, when they might just be flying blind too. The only good comparisions on Ebay are exactly the same as your item with BIDS-buy it nows and listings with 0 bids mean ziltch. And archived listings from more than even a few months ago might or might not be a good resource, as certain items ebb and flow like the tide (for a while, you couldn't touch a Duaflex camera, they were HOT for TTV photography, I think that's died down now-we don't sell vintage anymore-no space-so I haven't kept up on the trends). Then you've got sellers that inheritated something they were always told was "worth a lot of money". Well, maybe it was, once. And now...you can give it away, maybe (like those console radio/record players or sets of china, except certain patterns). Also, it depends on your location. We live in NYS. Where we live, I could sell something...say...an old wooden crate for $10, whereas it might sell for $30 in NYC. Vintage prices here are WAYY lower than there.

I'd totally get the Viking and I don't think it's shallow to want a pretty fridge! Everyone who is remodeling their kitchen wants it to look nice, what's wrong with that? I have no evidence, but I bet those few cf are in the curvy front. I hate curvy front fridges for some reason. I don't really understand how people use so much refrigerator space anyway. We have a 30" fridge and it's full on Sunday after our grocery/Costco run, but empty by the end of the week cause we only buy what we can eat in a week. Save for a few bottles of salad dressing and condiments we have around, but how many of those do you need at a time?

"The middle class isgoing away, too, isn't it?" No, I don't think so. I hate thinking or talking about things in purely class terms but the road to personal economic comfort and success in life has long been through education and hard work. Not just academic education, education and training in the trades, skilled jobs and other like pursuits count too. When the US had a large manufacturing sector, there were millions of people so employed without education, without much training, whose high wages made them think they'd found a back door to the "middle class". It was temporary. Economies evolve over time. Just as the guy who was expert in managing teams of horses to plow fields found himself unemployed when tractors became available, so too the unskilled factory workers had nothing to turn to when factories closed. There are more people employed today at higher paying jobs than ever in our history. But if your only skill is the equivalent of managing teams of horses to plow fields and you're unwilling or unable to train for other things and to move away from the farm area you've always lived in, you're going to have a hard time finding consistent work and income. Getting educated or trained for a job is the ticket into the meritocracy of our society. Not always, and not everywhere, but opportunities exist for those who have worked to get the right background to pursue them. If you do nothing, you get nothing.

Thanks for all the responses folks! Mmmm12 I have been grateful that my local rose society values garden growing of roses not just exhibiting, though they tend to emphasize the roses that show well. I'm looking forward to showing them the beauties of OGRs and shrubs and hybrid musks and polys when they visit my yard for a breakfast next June. Berrypie thanks for the encouragement - I consider the humbling experience in other yards as a challenge rather than discouragement. If their roses can look that good so can mine (within reason). Kristine makes that point well that always learning can be a good thing and I want to keep doing so. Carol & Ben - I'll have to check with someone to find out the organic fertilizer recipe they use. They get a local feed shop to mix the ingredients and then they sell it at cost ($25 for 25 pounds which is cheaper than Rose Tone). It's a fine textured powder that smells good and doesn't seem to burn anything. Ben, I appreciate the welcome back and I absolutely love the posts on HMF by Digger Dave and Deb. In my records I keep a one-line summary for each rose about key elements including comments on HMF and here about rose performance. Several of my posts have key Digger Dave comments that I treasure because of their insight and application to my yard. They stopped posting pictures about 2016 as far as I can tell and I'm hoping everything is OK. Sheila - with climate change and more extremes every year I think all of us need to keep learning no matter our location. Things that might have worked 5 years ago might no longer apply and I'm getting much more creative with mulching and watering given our increasingly longer stretches between good rains in the summer. Erasmus, Tututara and Diane - I know that multiflora doesn't like alkaline soils but I find my soil doesn't seem to be too alkaline for it. We have loamy clay so multiflora seems happy enough here, as opposed to places like California (even though it takes an act of God to turn hydrangea blooms from pink to blue here). Dr. Huey seems to fade faster and may be more likely to fail here, but that may be the health of the original plant if I plant body bags. I've had some body bags do fantastic things - World Peace is one I've never seen for sale but the once locally - and it's a terrific rose with stunning colors. Trish - thanks for the good wishes! I've missed posting pictures too and getting the warm responses from people here that help keep me encouraged during the low spots in the gardening year. Moses lovely to hear from you and your comments are gracious as always. I can get away without spraying here because of the "dry" part of "hot and dry Nebraska" in the summer, but I do sympathize with the depth of blackspot problems further east from me. I rather think we're starting to get midge damage out here but it's not bad enough to cause undue grief. Japanese beetles - well, I just don't expect any actual blooms in July any more. As for the equivalence of a 3-4 year old own root to a grafted younger rose, it seems entirely plausible. The robust HTs and flori own roots that I have bloom pretty well and since I have to bury the graft I figure that most of my established grafted roses have gone own root over time. I still love buying own root roses and we have fantastic vendors like Roses Unlimited and Long Ago Roses and Northland and High Country Roses and Burlington and Antique Rose Emporium and ... well you get the picture. I don't hesitate to buy from any of them for any roses that I want that they sell. It's just that I look elsewhere first for the HTs and floris now in grafted form. Even this past two years I've bought some own root HTs that have done fine and I'm sure I'll continue to do so in the future. I just have to temper my expectations and know that I'm zone pushing when I do so. Speaking as a zone 5 person who still grows one long-surviving tea (Maman Cochet) I'm quite familiar with the hazards but potential joys of zone pushing. Cynthia