Love the cat couch shot!!
And the view!

Me too!

Love your cats and beautiful garden I think I would love to live in your garden.....I will bring my cat

I would like to be a cat living in your garden.

Beautiful photo of happy cats, zuzu. I'm completely sure that cats do have hierarchies - in Cambridge I had some bookshelves built into one of the walls of my house - floor to ceiling; at the time I had six cats. For some weeks after the shelves were installed, the cats occupied one shelf each, with the 'top cat' on the highest shelf and the weediest cat on the bottom shelf, with the others in between in order of rank from high to low.
What I eventually realised was that they were happy with their social order, even if it meant that certain cats got to sit on my lap more than others.

Zuzu, that kitty photo made me all kinds of happy! And your show has begun! Gorgeous already, can't wait to see progress shots!

Calif_Sue said:Love the cat couch shot!!
And the view!

Me too. Just love the kitties.

Here's a definitive answer to the question of a class system and the "lowly tabby" not being allowed to "snuggle" with the long hairs".
I went straight to the source and posed the question to Opie, my red tabby.
He said, "Us tabby cats, numerous as we are, with the broadest spectrum of color variations, and being of highest intelligence prefer not to engage the likes of "long hairs" in any sort of communal sleeping quarters. To do so would be the ultimate indignity as we do have our standards. Now what else would you like to know ?"

There you have it.

Thank you. That explains why Rabelais is above the rest.

There, award your smart Opie an acorn or two!!

Blooming this morning on a beautiful day:
A nice big bloom on Proud Land

Some other nice sized booms this morning.




I think my pruning has kept the plants to a much more manageable size this year.
Touch Of Class:

Proud Land:

Miss All American Beauty:

Olympiad:

Sonia:
Chrysler Imperial:

Oh, I wanted to show my first bloom of the year on my Mary Washington rose, and show all the buds with the promise of future blooms.

Larry, nice collection of classics, and nicely grown too! I believe that is the 'Sonia' that used to be popular in the cut flower market. Does it have a lot of tiny thorns and an odd scent, it reminded me of the smell of ant spray. A lot of varieties I used 25 years ago are no longer produced, replaced by longer lasting varieties with higher petal count and fewer thorns.

I am going to have to check on the tiny thorns and the scent. I was just mowing the yard and had several large fire ant hill, just wondering if the Sonia does smell like ant spray if I could fool the fire ants with that?

Floribunda Rose (Rosa 'Cafe') first bloom coming soon!


Rose (Rosa 'Crepuscule') is filling along the back gate, we eventually will add an arbor over the gate for this rose. Always grateful to Zuzu for giving me this one!


Rose (Rosa 'William Allen Richardson') is starting to fill in nicely, I first saw it at a public rose garden where I used to live and it always looked so great so it went on my wish list. Zuzu helped me get it when a friend of hers moved and she didn't want to take it with her, I was so surprised she had one.
It was wet from rain so not the greatest shot today but you can see the other images in the entry to see why I needed it!


You can see what colors I favor.
I think some of my favorite roses are ones I got from Zuzu!









and other favorites in my garden were influenced by seeing them in her garden, kinda handy living only two miles away.

And you should see all of the roses I got from Sue. Those two miles are a two-way street.

Uh oh...I'm really liking "Brown Velvet'..........a LOT !
Such a great color.

I look forward to the beautiful blooms posted by Zuzu and Sue!!! This is the first thread that I go to each morning with my cup of coffee. It starts my day in a very positive way. I'm curious to know the nature of the rose gifts to each other. Are they newly purchased bushes or have you two been able to successfully grow them from cuttings? Just wondering if I could start sharing my bushes from cuttings and whether you have a real success story with this type of propagation.

Often Zuzu has duplicates of certain roses on my wish list that she's shared. The ones I gave her I had purchased and then changed my mind about keeping them. I think there were only a couple of succesful rooted ones.

Sue, such sumptuous colors! I love looking at all the photos here, especially on a dreary day like today. I have the beginnings of buds on some roses and we're expecting temps in low 30s tomorrow morning. Storm season started last night, with hail and a tornado south of me.

The late May tulips are in full bloom, lilacs are gearing up, sdb iris are doing their thing. Clematis are going crazy, many with big buds already, and one in bloom! Early peonies are lovely and tree peonies have big fat buds.
I just hope the expected freeze is brief.