Zuzu - must be nice.. I sent him an email 2 minutes after I got his email requesting a rose.. and it was already sold! I'm getting about 1/4 of the ones I order from him... :( One I'm really not happy about is Moonlight Magic. I had email him about 4 times asking (this is before he was doing the sell-off) and he said that he didn't get it. Then I saw that it was part of the sell-off. I emailed him 3 times asking for it (plus 5 others) and I ended up only with Macho Man. Sucks.

I think that when you wrote to him before the sell-off, he may have thought you were trying to buy a band from Eurodesert. He kept getting orders for months for Eurodesert roses and that's why he started stipulating in his updates that we had to use specific titles for our e-mails. I used the wrong heading once and received a reply telling me that all of the bands had been sent to Vintage Gardens.

Many of the roses on my original orders were unavailable simply because he couldn't find them. He had more than 5,000 to go through, after all. Later, when he did find them, sometimes he would remember they had been on one of my earlier orders and sometimes he didn't and they would end up on an updated list. Other things added to the confusion. I had ordered Fragrant Keepsake, for instance. When he dug up the rose marked Fragrant Keepsake on his map, the rose label down by the roots said Big Red. So I didn't get Fragrant Keepsake, but it's possible that someone who had ordered Big Red and didn't receive it suddenly did have a chance to get it or suddenly saw it on an update list and wondered how that had happened.

It really is the biggest rose sale ever, I'm sure, and I'm amazed it went as smoothly as it did. Most of the roses I received from him have already bloomed and only one out of all those roses didn't make it. Only two were mislabeled, and one of those was completely understandable because I had ordered Butterscotch the hybrid tea and I was sent Butterscotch the climber. Imagine if I had bought 112 roses from Vintage or Rogue Valley or Heirloom. How many would have survived? How many would be mislabeled? I already expect at least one or two out of every ten roses from Vintage and Heirloom to die very quickly. The same goes for Rogue Valley, and I expect three or four out of every ten from Rogue Valley to be mislabeled.

Oh, what fun! Sue came over with almond-flavored champagne and we drank a toast (or two) to Cliff and ate chocolate ganache torte. Now I'm so drowsy that I'm not sure I'll be able to finish this post.

Oh,yeah. We also went to three nurseries and bought only one plant. Sue bought it. I bought nothing. Wrong season, I guess.

Zuzu does the best digging when she is fortified with chocolate and almond champagne, just saying.

I dug out a big spiraea bush with no more than four or five passes with the shovel, and the root mass turned out to be the exact size of the container Sue handed to me. Dumb luck or drunk luck, I'm not sure which. All in all, a good day and one free of mishap.

Dark Night continues to amaze me by producing blooms of a color I haven't seen on any other rose. Even when it's curling up some of its petals to protect them from the heat, it still looks extraordinary. Here are two heat-stressed blooms from today.

That rose certainly is unique, as you said, a color you haven't seen on any other rose!

I think I will definitely have to get that Dark Night next year! It's gorgeous! Definitely a very odd color! Looked almost like my Midnight Blue that didn't survive the winter...

This is Café this morning, a one branch bouquet! Love it!





William Shakespeare 2000


Sequoia Twist

The dahlias (Bishop's Children) in my veggie bed are such a striking contrast against the green, I love the dramatic black foliage and bright tropical colored blooms!




Yesterday hubby & I sprayed the recycled satellite dish (off Craigslist) an olive green to match the poles that it will be placed on. I got this idea from Janet (imapigeon), her's is a much bigger one, I kind of wished I had waited and found a larger one too but hey, free is free and this will look cool once it's done.
My post of a few pics of Janet's garden: http://cubits.org/Califliving/...
along with her blog to document it:
http://satellitedishgazebo.blo...


And when it was done, up it went. It will be planted with a honeysuckle and passion vine, with Graham Thomas rose on one side and whatever else I can think of to make it lush and cozy. I want to add a stain and sealer to that old bench.


And while I was in the spray painting mode, this went from drab brown to hot paprika yesterday too with a plastics spray paint! Great paint for any of any plastic pots too. I am doing two white plastic loungers next, in lime green and rust.

I like the C-band satellite dish cover! Pretty nifty! And I LOVE LOVE LOVE that table setup! Sweet design!!!

If I get tired of the paprika color, I can always change it! I have a lime green and aubergine on standby. Teal, aqua or blue would be nice too. For my colors, this works.

Your Cafe is so amazing. I have to move mine. It hates its current spot. It's in one of those 6-inch deep beds in the driveway. Cafe deserves better.

That dish looks fabulous and I love the paprika set.

Forgot to say how much I love the photo of Kasey looking at the dish.

Love that satellite dish pergola! What a fantastic idea!!!

Such great imagination! I would never see the possibilities that you do.

And that Cafe is amazing: I love the unusual color

Here's something exciting: the first bloom on my new and gorgeous Stephen Rulo.

Wow, that Stephen Rulo *is* gorgeous.. I *love* that one. I'm really liking the coffee-colored blooms.. almost as much as the mauves!

That is a delicious rose! I am especially drawn to the subtle colors and blends.

Delicious is the right word, Porkpal. It looks like coffee ice cream with a little caramel mixed in.

This one should be the best of both worlds for you, Toni. The petals are supposed to have lavender edges. Maybe this bloom will acquire them as it ages, or maybe I'll have to wait for a second flush, but this one has beautiful coloring for the maiden bloom, I thought.

I bought it from Wisconsin Roses. I had been wanting to try their "maiden" roses, but had always decided against it when I read the growing instructions:

http://www.wiroses.com/instruc...

They have a "small numbers sale list," however, with really, really low prices, so I decided to give it a whirl.

http://www.wiroses.com/index.p...

I ordered Mu Lan, Silverado, Red Intuition, and Stephen Rulo. The detailed instructions turned out to be foolproof and I now have four lovely, thriving, and disease-resistant rose bushes. They're still small, but they're bushy, not like the one-cane wonders I usually end up with when I order own-root bands. And they're larger than own-root bands would be by this time in the growing process.

The main thing is the health factor. Their foliage has stayed mostly a lovely green while other roses around them have developed black spot, and they're still alive! I had already killed two Silverado own-root bands, so I knew that rose didn't particularly want to grow on its own roots.

The catalog of varieties is limited, there is no shopping cart, and there's no payment by credit card, but if you have the patience to communicate by e-mail, pay by check, and follow the instructions, you'll end up with beautiful roses.

For me, they have the added advantage of being budded onto Multiflora rootstock, which doesn't appeal to gophers.