As you suggest, digging all the holes in advance takes away the stress of a big rose order. Whenever I find myself stressing over what I'm going to do, where I'm going to place the rose, and so on, I dig a hole. And I keep digging until I'm tired or the stress subsides or I have as many holes as I have incoming roses. I wonder if your daughter could help you dig holes? Or perhaps you could employ her to count them for you.
With holes in place, when thirty five plants arrive on your doorstep at two in the afternoon, you can get half of them very well planted before you go to sleep the same night, and the other half done before lunch the next day.
At pinch points in the garden schedule, I tend to forget that the purpose of the garden and the keeping of it is to reduce stress and increase quality of life.
As for remodeling, all I can do is wish you luck. And mention that we've been there and hope never to go there again. We had contractors adding on to our house for a job they swore would not take five months. it took the best part of a year. There was a solid week of jackhammering. Contractors wondered aimlessly through the occupied quarters regularly. Drywall dust encrusted everything we own several times despite painstaking efforts on the part of the contractor to isolate the addition. We found it so disruptive that we had to schedule trips to hotels in far away towns for three and four days at a time in order to regain some modicum of emotional equilibrium. I do hope your experience is better.
