Rose plan for 2007

It's still winter here. Nothing is growing. Everything is cold. I'm a caretaker for an Alzheimer's patient around the clock.

Therefore, I can not explain why my table looked like this a couple days ago.Note all the little paper tags placed on my garden layout. Note the green sheet of paper with more rose lists. Note the store-bought roses in the vase. It all adds up to... 22 new roses.
Twenty two.
Well, plus two more that the kids picked out at the last minute.
Which means my beloved Rose Support Team will have to dig 24 big holes around the property. That's 8 more than last year.

I did have the decency to ask my two main diggers if they minded digging some holes. They didn't mind! Which is really good because that will make the chore much easier once the roses arrive. And I also cleared the location of 24 more roses with the Rose Support Team. I asked important questions like: Is there a telephone line in this location? Are there septic tank issues in this spot? If I put a rose here, will we hit the TV cable? Which means this year we won't cut our phone and cable lines repeatedly like last year.

What possessed me to get so many? Why roses? Why this year?
After last spring, I told myself I would NEVER buy that many roses again. But then... the catalog arrived. I spent a long time gazing at David Austin rose photos on the Garden Web Rose Forum.
And I resurrected my visions of rose festoons.

Twenty four doesn't sound unmanageable right now. I'm optimistic!