Beautiful writing and interesting rose. She sounds like a survivor.

Lovely picture.

It is nice to hear from you, Melissa! Your garden doings are always of interest to me." if a gardener always does the most important task, the less important ones will NEVER get done. " Ah, so true ; I'm always so behind in everything,probably because I have too many irons in the fire.

Are you doing any planting this year?

Bart, it's good to hear from you, too--and hear from everyone else, of course! Too many irons in the fire here as well, particularly as my energy continues low. Also DD is working hard finishing her thesis, which is due this week, and I'm putting in some time proof reading it. I don't know beans about the technical topic, so my comments are limited to the English, but that's helpful, too, as is my company.

I should be planting more, I feel, but the weather has turned dry again, which puts a brake on my ambitions. DH and I have put in thirty-some plants, mainly subshrubs, and I hope to get in more before the end of the year. Time for trips to the local nursery and rebar factory, the latter for cages to protect freshly planted shrubs.

It's dry here again, and we're having a run of sunny but short days, chilly at dawn and dusk. We're lighting a fire in the evening, and protecting ourselves with layers of clothing and blankets, and lots of hot tea, in the mornings. I'm not getting enough exercise.

What are you doing in the garden? Planting, maintenance? And have you gotten back your fountain?

Sheila, 'Belle Amour' is a great rose. It did well for me in Washington, too, in different conditions than here, with a good deal of shade. I don't know whether it would take kindly to a hot, sunny dry position, though, even with irrigation.

Sad to say, the fountain is still buried under a pile of rubble. There's been so much damage done all over by the storm-a landslide damaged the railway ,and damages to the main road that connects our valley with Prato. So the damages done in tiny little settlements like that where the fountain is/was located are not of first importance. I only hope and pray they will eventually restore it! But for now on the road up to my land they're still clearing out small dirt roads that lead to other tiny settlements and isolated homes. The landslide in the fountain village only blocks access to two gates that lead to orchard-y places, belonging to the village residents,so it's less of a priority, i guess.

I'm trying to revise my garden-getting all of the roses that haven't been able to establish and the new implants somewhat grouped together to make watering possible. Providing shade is now a major goal, and to that end I've moved 2 wisterias, a paulownia tree, planted out 6 potted trees (poplar,cypress,magnolia,Kwanzan cherry,another paulownia, and a cedar-not sure if it's deodara or libani). A weeping juniper had been partially up-rooted by the storm-it clearly was not thoroughly established-so I replanted that,too. All in all, between moves and putting out potted plants, I've done about 35. But I am a bad woman, lol. I ordered 6 new roses from Barni (bad, bad bart). My excuse is this: one of my Quicksilvers is just about dead; I planted it in a place that I think is just too shady for roses. So I had to get 2 new ones, of course-especially since I think that Europe has me to thank partially and in a very small way for the introduction of it here! (I think it was on this forum that a lady who worked for Kordes posted , for some reason, and I asked her why Quicksilver wasn't offered in Europe, and she very kindly said that she'd offer it to Barni, and if they liked it...well, clearly they did, because now they offer it!) . Sheherazade was growing backwards, so I moved it,and got another just in case. I have two Pacific Dreams already, so I decided to add a third,to make a nice group. And then, there's Purple Eden. My own-root one is so slow and tiny, and I fear it will never make anything of itself, so I'm getting a new bare-root one.I want to try planting these out all as bare-roots,in places where I can water them easily,amongst other roses that I hope to keep watered. This is an experiment,because in recent years I've always grown roses up in pots for the first year, which I never did before we moved to the new house,and I am just wondering if this might be a factor in my difficulty in getting them established. For example, Sheherazade was in it's second year ,and seemed fine at first. Then, as this summer progressed, it started growing backwards,in spite of regular watering and being covered with shade cloth. When I dug it up, I found that it had a root system exactly like that of a potted rose-in other words, no roots had ventured beyond the original potting soil...the dreaded bathtub effect!. So I've gone back to adding lots of bagged potting soil,mixing it into the native soil,for one thing, but I also want to see if some of the difficulty of recent years could be due to this sindrome (though of course the extreme heat is at fault as well). So, as you can see, I've been very busy,and now have to hope and pray that I haven't taken on more than I'll be able to handle in summer. It's hard, because at this time of year everything seems possible, and full of promise...

Edit: I forgot to metion; my Barni order includes Minerva. The potted one looks ok, for now-but so did Sherherazade in it's first year. So I want to try it bare-root...