Happy Birthday Zuzu!!

You light up our lives with your love of roses!!

Have a happy day full of anticipation for your incredible spring rose garden to come!

You are such a good friend! Kiss kiss!

Happy birthday!

I'm on my work computer right now so I can't dig up a pretty picture for you, but I hope you have a wonderful day!

A very happy birthday to you!

Hey there little lady, I hope your enjoying a nice restful day and that the weather is beautiful up there.

A very Happy Birthday to you.

Donna

Kelly, Liz, Weegy, Donna --

Thank you so much. Yes, the weather here was great. Upper 60's, and no breezes at all, so just perfect for cleaning up spaces and digging holes for this year's new plants.

I wish I had taken up a friend's offer of an all-day chauffeur for my birthday. I would have made a run to Nor-Cal, but unless it had been a chauffeured truck, I still would have been in trouble. They probably don't like putting dusty pots in a limo.

Kell, what is that gorgeous rose?

Happy birthday, Zuzu! May all your roses smell sweet and a world full of petals at your feet...........

Hope you had a very nice day!

Thank you for that highly poetic wish, Sherry. I love it.

I had a great day, Weegy. I'm so glad spring is finally in the air. I'm rushing to get a million things planted before our next week or two of rain.

Zu...in honor of your birthday, I pulled some strings and cancelled that rain.
You so owe me big time.

Boy, am I glad I'm your friend. I'd hate to have those awe-inspiring powers used against me.

Don't tell me there's more rain in the forecast please!

Up here there is rain on the way--I don't know about SoCal. We were having beautiful weather this week while you were having rain, but we've got rain coming back starting Tues/Wed or so (if the forecast is right...which it often isn't!)

I hope not, I'm pretty much done with rain and winds for awhile. Yeah, yeah, we need the rain, I know but we had enough already!

The birthday continues. I was taken on a birthday picnic to Sonoma Horticultural Nursery today. A few rhodies were already in bloom.

What a treat Zuzu! Sounds like your birthday is not over yet!

I'm going to go back every couple of weeks so I don't miss anything. I'll keep you posted. One of the really neat things I saw today was this dogwood. It looked like a camellia to me, but the guy said it was a dogwood.

Here's a closer look at it.

He's wrong about that being a dogwood...I've never seen a dogwood with flowers that looked like that, and in addition to that, from what I can tell in the picture this plant has alternate leaves and dogwood has opposite leaves. I think your guess of Camellia is closer for sure.

I agree, it sure looks like a camellia to me too!! I think the guy has no clue. LOL

So you took a camera? WOW Zu, I have never seen you with a camera.

It looks like Camellia Snow Drop.
http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/go/136961/

And it's blooming at the same time, Kell. That's a good clue.

I took my camera for a change. I expected to find a lot more in bloom, but the shade is so deep there that things are just now coming to life.

Yes, the guy was very insistent that I was wrong and it wasn't a camellia, and I gave him the benefit of the doubt because he grows dozens, if not hundreds, of different types of camellias. It's nice to know I was right, but I'm going to be polite and not tell him about it. If he wants it to be a dogwood, I'm not going to spoil his fun. You and I can snicker about it behind his back, though, Kell.

Ahhhhh Zuzu, what a sweetheart rose you surely are to have 3 birthday threads, spreading from one coast to the other. May all the good wishes continue for you as we move along from season to season this year, and even beyond.

You are truly a wonderful friend and I am fortunate to have you in my life. Even from a great distance, friendships can bloom.

Happy Belated birthday Zuzu. Hope that you had a good time. I think that's a sasanqua camellia. If not, it's still come kind of camellia. :-) The small leaves help identify it. Here's one of mine - but in pink.

They are great plants and will grow in deep shade and in the full sun.

Thank you, Doss. Nice to hear from you. Some of my camellias must have had some fancy grafting done to them, because they produce three kinds of blooms -- pink, red, and red and white striped. I don't know anything about them because they were already here when I bought the house 25 years ago. They also have babies every year, in contrast to the newer ones I've bought. I guess they're in a great spot, because the seed pods they drop invariably grow into little camellias.

I've never had a camellia self start like that. How lucky is that! How fun to have a camellia with that many different blooms. I have one that has two different flowers and I don't know where that one came from either. It is planted under a walnut so it's not grown as large as it might under better circumstances.

Most of mine are growing under a big black walnut, Doss. Actually, it's a really big black walnut, so about one-fourth of my garden is growing under there. I'm always amused by the old wives' tale that nothing will grow under one of those trees. I even have a pear tree and about 50 or 60 of my roses growing under mine.

It seems to be the perfect spot for the camellias. The ones in other parts of the garden never look quite as happy. They probably get too much sun.

I'm a few days late, half a foot too short, and missing a few marbles, but HAPPY BELATED B-DAY, ZUZU.
I "found" these Sand Verbena while at Joshua Tree NP on Monday. They're vibrant, fragrant....and WILD ;-) ....a fitting offering to you.

Quyen

Quyen, thank you so much. I LOVE the Verbena, and I personally think you're quite tall.

We've missed you around here. I'll be sending you an e-mail soon. I have so much good gossip to tell you about the last six months or so.

Hey, I want to hear it too. LOL

I can't tell it to you, Kell. Most of it's about you.

Oh then it will be so juicy!!

I read all of it in the Chicken Breeders Gazette...it had pictures, too.

How do I subscribe to the Chicken Breeder Gazette? I'd pay good money to read juicy gossip...w/ pictures.

Oh JD, am I hot or what?? I bet it made you a chicken lover for sure. I didn't think the Gazette pictures were even that good, as good as they were. It must be so hard to take good pictures in the dark when there is so much movement.

Quyen, I heard my issue was sold out. Sorry! Maybe JD will share his copy.

NO WAY am I selling the copies I have...they're collector's item's...(or possibly even blackmail material if Kell ever crosses me ! hee hee)