WinterCat, Thanks for the poem! I've never run across that one before, and it's beautiful as well as botanical. I'm moderately interested in the history of rose hybridization, and plant discovery and development in general, but the lives of the people who happened to get roses named after them as a rule leave me cold. I've never cared for celebrity gossip. And, perhaps because of a minimalist element in my aesthetic composition, I don't collect plant-themed objects, or anything else, except for the plants themselves, and books. But my goal, or dream, is a very large, very complex garden filled with a tremendous variety of plants all in the place that's right for them. Much as I love both literature and gardening, I don't find a great deal of connection between them. Maybe it's like, oh, kittens: they're absolutely delightful in real life, but perhaps too charming to make good subjects for artistic interpretation. For years I've had a vague idea in the back of my mind of a garden poem, long, full, complex, rich, beautiful, like the garden of my dreams. I'm not going to write the poem, as I'm not a poet, and I haven't found that anyone else has written it, though I don't read much poetry, either. I don't believe that Dickens, that pre-eminently urban author, is commonly regarded as a notable writer of landscape description, but have recently become conscious of his sensitivity to the beauty of the countryside and his ability to describe it. From Nicholas Nickleby: [after a night of drinking and riot, ending in a quarrel] "They...emerged upon the open road,... Fields, trees, gardens, hedges, everything looked very beautiful; the young man scarcely seemed to have noticed them before, though he had passed the same objects a thousand times. There was a peace and serenity upon them all strangely at variance with the bewilderment and confusion of his own half-sobered thoughts, and yet impressive and welcome." And from Bleak House: [on a trip to visit a friend in the country] "It was delightful weather. The green corn waved so beautifully, the larks sang so joyfully, the hedges were so full of wild flowers, the trees were so thickly out in leaf, the bean-fields, with a light wind blowing over them, filled the air with such a delicious fragrance! [and the friend's garden] But indeed, everything about the place wore an aspect of maturity and abundance. The old lime-tree walk was like green cloisters, the very shadows of the cherry-trees and apple-trees were heavy with fruit, the gooseberry-bushes were so laden that their branches arched and rested on the earth, the strawberries and raspberries grew in like profusion, and the peaches basked by the hundred on the wall. Tumbled about among the spread nets and the glass frames sparkling and winking in the sun, there were such heaps of drooping pods, and marrows, and cucumbers, that every foot of ground appeared a vegetable treasury, while the smell of sweet herbs and all kinds of wholesome growth (to say nothing of the neighboring meadows where the hay was carrying) made the whole air a great nosegay." Melissa, with the help of Charles Dickens

Veilchen, I hope you had a great time in London! Even the "squares" there are fantastic, not to mention the fabulous parks. Hi Mendocino rose, I was surprised that I liked Pat's statues as much as I did, I had seen photos of some of them before but they always seemed rather "sweet", when in fact, they are really very earthy and magical. Hi Carla! We're in Oxford, and renting, so no big plans for a garden here. We share an enormous back yard with two neighbours, but most if it is covered in brick. There are also borders, but they have long established shrubs and trees in them. It's basically a "low maintenance garden" (god I cringe at that phrase). If we owned it, I'd be making all sorts of plans; but as it is I am content to put just a few things into the ground and try to enjoy the wonderful gardens and nature which surrounds me here. I put two roses in last fall: The Ingenious Mr. Fairchild and Alan Titchmarsh; this spring I put in bare roots of Gentle Hermione and Scepter'd Isle. I'm still deciding whether to put Spirit of Freedom in along the back wall, or to put it in a large pot outside by the front door, judging from what Daisy said, I might have to rethink this! Hi Florence, Thanks for the nice words. I miss my garden in California, but I'm just trying to appreciate that I'm now in a climate more conducive to growing the kind of garden I've always dreamed of. I always felt a bit guilty for trying to have an English Country Garden in the middle of a drought area! Here, we don't even have a hose!!! Thankfully, we do have a rainbarrel, so when things do dry up I can get extra water from the last rain. It makes me feel much better. Hi Andrea, I think Daisy is right, no children allowed at the flower show. I'm not sure what the limit is but I think it is on their website. We joined because members get a discount to the show... so by the time we added up the three tickets and figured the money saved would almost pay for itself if we got a membership. So now I have the card and get the monthly magazine. I'd love to get together with you sometime. Maybe we could meet at a garden somewhere inbetween our two cities? We'll form an Oxbridge gardening club! Hi Carol, we have Megan with us, we unfortunately lost our beloved Spencer to cancer right before we moved. Megan LOVES it here. We take her on long walks along the river, visit meadows, take her to pubs, and she is welcome on buses and trains as well. The British are so much more sensible about dogs! She's definitely part of our family and she really enjoys going everywhere with us. On the train she sits on my lap and looks out the window. People in the stations see her and smile and wave. It's delightful. Daisy, thanks so much for the information on Spirit of Freedom! I'm glad to know you thought it was a good rose. I've wanted it for a long time, and was worried because it is so rarely discussed. There was a recent thread where it was brought up with some recommendations, so I put it back on the top of my list. I was thinking of putting it in a pot in front of our house (many people grow roses on our street up the front beside their door, no one has any earth, just row houses built in the 1850s for railway workers, but with a pot and a trellis people have done wonders. Maybe I'll put him in the back and think of something a little less vigourous. Then again, you were in Cornwall which probably helped him grow with the extra sunlight! How did you like Cornwall? I have this romantic notion about it, and have it on the top of my list for places to visit. It looks so wonderful! Cheers, robert

It's nice to have IKEA as a choice. Our DD bought some items for her place and I ended up shopping there for myself recently for a few things. The attraction for me is not simply that they are inexpensive, for the most part, but that according to them at least, they make an attempt to be environmentally friendly and non toxic. Unfortunately, I was disappointed that their attempt is not always much better than other stores. I thought I might be able to buy a new mattress there, but evidently there is a law that requires all mattresses to have fire retardant on them, which I won't sleep on. It outgasses for years, even if you put a zippered cover over it. Not their fault that they are required to use it. I also bought a large floor mirror after my DD bought one for her house. I brought it home and unpacked it and it smelled horrible! Really bad. I wasn't sure if it was the packaging or the actual mirror. I put it in a spare room for 3 weeks to air it out but it didn't go away. I could still smell it in the hall as I passed the room with the door shut. I took it outside on the porch for two days. I was disappointed because it was just what I needed but I took it back. I was surprised. If they are trying to do non toxic, I just don't get it. It was a large mirror with a black wooden frame. What's so hard about doing that non toxic? Low VOC paint on plain pine and you're all set. I did buy a chest of drawers that I liked and that had no smell. It was very inexpensive and I thought it was attractive. We kept that. I also have one of their warm duck feather comforters that I have been very happy with. It's SO warm in the winter! I don't know what I did before that. Unfortunately, it is significantly smaller than most standard duvet covers and not really all that much cheaper, so now that I need a second one, I am looking for other alternatives that will fit the duvet cover better. An organic goose or duck down, but I am still looking. Overall, though, I have found some of the wooden furniture to be a nice inexpensive alternative. I have not found any of their upholstered furniture that seems worth buying. I also see a lot of that for sale on Craig's list when it is not that old. Photos of them at 3 years old look pretty worn. I have not bought lighting from them after being cautioned that their lights are not UL listed. Like someone else mentioned, my tastes run to the more traditional/country, so they are often a little too contemporary for me, but my DD leans more contemporary, so more of their styles appeal to her. I still feel they are worth checking out when I need something. They do a LOT of business. They fill a niche. I hope they will improve their offerings of non toxic, environmentally friendly products, because that would really interest me.

In 1965 my husband to be and I stayed two weeks in the Hotel Royal Bretagne at 11bis rue de la Gaîté in Paris. Years after I read in Simone de Beauvoir's memoirs that she'd stayed in this hotel for several months in 1937, commuting from her teaching post in Passy. She describes it as a very decent hotel and it still was in 1965 and also in 2000 when my husband was given a room there purely by chance when he attended a conference. A room then cost much more than the 17 francs we paid and was much improved. On this same visit we looked at the nearby Hotel Orfila in rue d'Assas where the Swedish author August Strindberg experienced the psychosis he described in his book Inferno. Another literary place I've actively sought out was Jane Austen's Chawton in Hampshire, on our way from Mottisfont Abbey. We arrived too late to see the inside but the outside loo was open, to our relief. The greatest disappointment was the long detour we made to Little House in the Big Woods near Pepin, Wisconsin, where we had hoped to show our children Laura Ingalls Wilder's childhood home. It was a shiny new replica with hardly a tree in sight. 29 years later it looks more weathered in internet photos.