Wow! Well done!

You're an inspiration, Rita. Thanks for urging everyone else to post comments. In particular, please post comments for your favorite roses, so that we will have a more accurate top 25 next year.

Well, I posted lots of favorable comments about roses I grow. But I also posted comments under roses I used to grow and have since tossed out of my garden. In that case the comment was about why I did not care for that particular rose or why it did not do well for me.

That's good. It's good to warn people that certain roses might have negative traits.

88 comments. I did 88 comments on roses in these past few days.

Hmmm. The challenge, then, is to identify one's 25 favorites.
The daily random photos that appear on the home page have prompted comments from me, but if I continue on that path, it won't improve the accuracy of Dave's top 25 list.
I'll sort through my spreadsheets and see if I can rate them. A few years ago, when I was more organized, I assessed every rose twice a year using a 1-5 star system. My helpers have graduated and moved on, and the computer with that info also moved on, so I'll have to go on memory.
It wouldn't help to walk the garden; all tags and most roses are buried under a foot of snow! So unusual for us!
I love love love deep snow. It cleans and brightens everything! I don't need lights in the house when we have new snow outside! We still need more moisture, so I'm hoping for several more snows like this. Too bad the forecast is for a warmup this weekend.

Cindi, Trish really wants us all to build the comments sections. Not just on roses. And that means not just on 25 roses in one's garden but in all our roses. So that anyone coming to ATP looking for information on whatever they are looking up finds pictures and comments. Hopefully comments from multiple people in all sections of the country.

my front yard this morning after a few days last week of melting, then 2 days of freeze, now a day of melting. This is before the sun popped over the trees/houses.




and my poor mini bed looks so.. dead. ugh.

Maybe it will all melt soon Toni.

Big snow coming here for Thursday. Just watched the weather forecast. Showing 10 inches for our area.

We are just having day after day of weather in the 30s and rain, but to me that is bad enough! Blasted groundhog!

PPal - At least you're getting rain! Look at it that way!

Rita,
I have notebooks full of observations of my plants and from plants in gardens all over the country. Photos, too. If it weren't tax season and I had loads of time, I could add thousands of comments. Realistically, I'll never have time, so picking the best 25 roses and getting those entered is a better goal. I grow 1200 different iris, and around 800 daylilies, so maybe I could get to those some time too....and then there's the lilium and daffodils, hostas and heuchera, and all the sedums and echinaceas, oh where do I stop? It all gets overwhelming so I don't even get started. So, setting a smaller goal is best for me.
I spent the afternoon getting a root canal that was supposed to end my pain but instead I hurt worse. My face has been swollen for a week and I really wanted to get beyond this and go to a daylily regional meeting this weekend, but it looks like the infection is going to keep me home for a while. So I'm grumpy. . And I tore the meniscus in my right knee so I get surgery on it AGAIN...ugh. That means another 12 weeks of physical therapy and no digging, and very little weed pulling. I'm hoping to get it all finished before May so I can go to ARS national meeting in California. Sigh...

Oh Cindi, so sorry for the knee pain and root canal pain. Tooth pain is the worst!

I know what you mean about having lots of pictures. I try to do a comment on every new thing that I add to the database but that really makes for slow going. And then I have pictures I added years ago that I never put comments in on. All sorts of plants.

zuzu said:You're an inspiration, Rita. Thanks for urging everyone else to post comments. In particular, please post comments for your favorite roses, so that we will have a more accurate top 25 next year.

waytago Rita! You tackled 300+ pages and posted 88 comments so fast I didn't even get a chance to look up all the roses yet!

Re: the database, it seems to me, as a newbie to all of this, that real comments from real people with real experience can only be a good thing...
The metric to select the top 25 'favorite' may need to be revisited for accuracy, but the top 25 'most talked about', 'most photographed', 'most viewed', or most ?, is still interesting though.

Cindi--hang in there
and when you can't dig or pull weeds... and you happen to have something to say about one or two plants just say it. That's a whole lot less overwhelming, way more fun than taxes, and seems more beneficial for the database and surfers than nothing...

I'm thinking a want a 'Penelope'...

dirtdorphins said:

waytago Rita! You tackled 300+ pages and posted 88 comments so fast I didn't even get a chance to look up all the roses yet!

Re: the database, it seems to me, as a newbie to all of this, that real comments from real people with real experience can only be a good thing...
The metric to select the top 25 'favorite' may need to be revisited for accuracy, but the top 25 'most talked about', 'most photographed', 'most viewed', or most ?, is still interesting though.
.

Thanks! I wish I grew more of the roses but those were the ones I had experience with.

I just posted, like, a thousand pictures of this little beauty, blooming like crazy on my so Cal patio. I'll add my first rose comments once I can figure out how to describe the yellow (gold?) inside the petals? It glows!

Rosa 'Orange Honey' -- and it is!

We're still in the grips of one of the worst winters in recent history here in Michigan.
But one good thing is all that snow will be good for the earth once it melts.
It's suppose to warm up a bit this week. Certainly will make doing outside animal chores easier.
That will be a most welcome relief but its not suppose to last very long.
Well after all its still February. I need Crocus & Snowdrops...
or on second thought, maybe a Caribbean beach and a Margarita would be better.

Sited a Pileated Woodpecker on my suet feeder recently!
They are very elusive and I only see them a couple times a year
and I've never seen them at the feeding station so that was a thrill.

Vicky - WOW.. talk about snow! I wish I could have some of that snow!! we're still so dry here in the city. The mountains have gotten hit pretty good, but dry dry dry here. We had horrific winds all weekend. Not so bad on my side of town.. I'm about 30-35 miles from the foothills, so we had stiff breezes. The foothills were having winds between 40-50mph steady & the mountains themselves had 80+ winds. Not gusts, but steady WINDS. They had to shut down I70 for a while because of the winds being so bad.. and that's a MAJOR artery through CO & the US itself. That woodpecker is so beautiful.. GORGEOUS shot! Seriously!!! Past week or so, I was hearing this loud jackhammer-like sound in my living room. Had NO idea what it was.. could NOT identify it at ALL. Finally, on Friday, I was outside & I heard it again.. it was some kind of.. woodpecker? flicker? something (the sun was directly behind the bird, so could not see it too clearly) standing on my chimney calling out, and then hammering on the metal top of my chimney! THAT'S what that sound was!! duhhhhh now I feel like a moron, but I hadn't heard it before. I think it's a red-crested flicker.. looks pretty close to what

The winds we had this weekend, plus the fact it was in the upper 50s to mid 60s all weekend REALLY cut through my snow in the front yard. I have very little left! Yay!! I was able to take a peek at my roses.. maybe, just maybe, I haven't lost as many as I though as, while I do have horrific winterkill, most that I saw was still had green down low. Yay!! But talk about a major pruning undertaking.. it's gonna take me days to prune everything down to get rid of the winterkill. I need more mulch. Bleh.

I think its drier and less snow in Colorado isn't it?
Have you tried spraying your roses with Wilt Pruf in the fall (according to directions)
and mid winter if its warm enough. I'm trying to remember but you can only apply it
above a certain temperature...40 maybe.
At any rate that stuff works really good and I highly recommend it.