Your Woman at the Well seems to open flatter than in many pics I've seen. It may be due to Jean's TLC, but maybe also because of the heat. Here we have both heat and dryness, and the season is starting to look like a wipeout. Extra cold winters and extra hot summers--not my idea of an ideal climate.

I don't trust those things. Too many stories that didn't end well in the middle of winter on a deserted logging road. I don't travel but when I did - long before anything like GPS- I drove from one highway sign to the next and always stayed in the general direction I needed to go. Now I check google maps if I go anywhere I'm not familiar with. I print it off and take it with me, both versions map and satellite. And I study it while I'm still at home so if I have any question I can find out before I'm on the road.

Thank you for this. I don't post often as I have four children under seven but I always read. This is close to my heart. We are in our mid-thirties and moved about a year ago. I left many roses behind (including a 30 ft Peggy Martin trained on our chimney that will probably swallow that little house now that I'm not there to prune it) but I dug many and brought them here, to what we hope will be our home for the rest of our lives. It is a discipline to stay in one place, to look again and again. Amend the soil, dig out the plants that spoil the scene and plant something you plan to tend for decades. This is the garden I have the privilege of caring for. I might look around and wish for less humidity, changes in elevation, better soil, that the Norway maple in the back were a mature Cedar of Lebenon (haha) but ultimately no place is perfect and there is something rich in a commitment to a particular piece of earth with both it's flaws and occasional moments of beauty. There is so much in our gardens that isn't quite how we want it to be. The rabbits, the mildew, the weak rootstock. The picture is never quite finished but I am happy to know that I can look and look again instead of paying admission and moving on.

Rebecca is still flowering retaining a nice head of blooms and is starting to show new leaves in the crown and a couple of brand new flower stems just starting that have not yet come into bloom. Both new leaves and new flowers? A couple of the oldest leaves are starting to curl under, but they seem to actually be shaded out as the outside leaves seem to be stretching on their petioles. There is still a nice full crown. I like this AV a whole lot, and it is doing better than any of them I have had in the past, that would be a long ago past actually.