New Creation Roses - Three of Each

Edmunds' Roses - Fragrant Plum - The name says it all: this rose is one fruity beauty. Bountiful, plum-colored blooms with darker, smoky edges and heady fragrance reward growers of this beautiful grandiflora. The richly colored flowers, held high on long, clustered stems, are perfect for filling vases, and the lush, deep green squeaky-clean foliage provides a great backdrop for them. Hybridizer: Christensen, 1990

Bareroot Grafted Rose

Edmunds' Roses - This gloriously fragrant grandiflora honors the beauty and talent of this award-winning broadcast journalist and best-selling author. The Maria Shriver™ rose displays impeccable refinement with its large, fully double, pure white flowers held in neat clusters high atop long, elegant stems. Clean, polished, dark green foliage lends a formal touch. And the perfume! Maria Shriver ™ boasts the finest fragrance of any rose available on the market today. Hybridizer: Dorieux, 2004

Bareroot Grafted Rose

Ranger Bob wanted me to plant JFK white roses but I did not find them, so I got the new rose closely related and also white - Maria Shriver. Our winter was very harsh for roses, everything fine until January, when we began to have alternating freezing and warm sunny weather.

I have had good experiences with purple roses, so I wanted to try out Fragrant Plum. 

I soaked the bare root roses in a rain-barrel for days, waiting for a good day to plant them. Bareroot roses tolerate - and even welcome - a long soak: legends are told - for weeks. Soak a mint overnight and it is dead.

I trimmed the roots and the stems a bit before planting. Then I put two gallons of rainwater on each one, thanks to my far-sighted placement of rain-barrels. The rain will fall on plump new roses, which will give the plants more usable nitrogen and lots of incentives for soil creatures and fungus to grow. Veterans Honor red rose is already leafed out.

My final human effort is getting Uncle Jim's Earthworm compost to pour at each new rose.

Veterans Honor - red and fragrant, long-lasting in the garden and in a vase.

Change in Media Plans

Sassy guarded the Town Car limo when

I went inside a store to shop. Only one window worked all the time, so she sat in the back to retrieve her cone from McDonalds.

I decided to set aside the Parables of Jesus book and concentrate on Jesus' Titles of Majesty - My Good Shepherd. The idea behind the second one is having a graphic - new or old - for each of the 50 titles, each from a KJV Scripture. I will finish with an essay about the Good Shepherd, but it will be Norma A. Boeckler's book. 

I was startled to find I already had 1600+ views on the God, Grace, and Gardens page, where I keep completed Vimeos. My plan had been to add Vimeos about books and other topics, because we are now a video - not a reading - generation. "No man can serve two medias at once." I will rekindle that plan. We have a great set-up for producing and saving videos. 

Another reason to switch to video is having less short-term memory, especially when writing requires one's entire cranial memory library to be humming at full speed all the time. 

Writing will continue with the sermons written out completely and Ichabod posts bewailing the state of Lutherdom. I may produce a booklet of memories about Sassy Sue.

 I taught Iberia bank staff to have treats ready for Sassy at the drive-through. If they were slow, she used the mike to express her needs, at full volume. Everyone inside the bank jumped a foot, and they laughed, giving her three treats from that time on. That may have led to their closing, replaced by Armstrong Bank and teeny-tiny little treats.