President's Message - January 2025

Hello Fellow GRS members and friends. Happy New Year.

My o’ my, how fast 2024 came and went. With it came some challenges and opportunities. I hope we lived up to what you as a GRS member expected and if not, please get with one of the society officers and let us know your suggestions and thoughts. I do wish we are all on the same page as to how we can keep GRS a vibrant and working rose growing society.

I want to thank the ladies who did a great job of preparing for our Christmas dinner and gift exchange. If you were not there you sure missed out on great fun. Thank you, Mary, for being our Santa. Also at the dinner, I made a short announcement regarding our GRS show supplies and the storage of them. With our society vote to discontinue rose shows, we need to dispose of all the show supplies in order to empty out the storage space. The DSD Director, after hearing this, offered to pay our storage expenses if we would hold on to the show supplies and make them available for any society who would host a convention and show here in Gainesville. I presented this to our members who agreed. It is a win-win situation. The DSD treasurer has paid the storage costs through June 2025.

My tip of the month is to just keep our roses watered. We have been very dry for the past 10 weeks. And of course, use our CR’s as needed. For those of you wanting to grow a few roses in a small space, our program this month will be helpful. The PowerPoint presentation on Growing Roses in Pots will be fun to watch. Jean and I have just under half of our 160 plus rose plants in pots of many sizes. Please come and let’s see if we can get some good tips that will benefit our rose growing hobby. I just bet we will all learn something.

I hope to see you all at the meeting on the 12. Don’t forget your raffle items.

President's Message - December 2024

Hello Fellow GRS members and friends,

Here we are once again at the Holiday Season. Jean and I sure hope you had a blessed Thanksgiving with family and friends. With Christmas just a few days off, we want to remember the reason for celebrating and start making our preparations. Don’t forget our annual Holiday dinner and fun time this year is in Melrose at the Homemakers Club building, 15728 Park Street. If you volunteered to bring a dish, that is great. Jean is coordinating the list if you need to check to see what you can bring. Please feel free to bring a guest if you have a last-minute visitor.

The upcoming District Spring Meeting will be the last weekend in February, 2025. It is here again in Gainesville, close enough for all of us to attend, so please mark your calendar. This is the DSD meeting where I buy all of my roses and supplies for the year. There is no tax or delivery charges, so it is a great deal for sure. Attached in these pages is a Product List from Jim’s Organic. Pre-orders are recommended. Nelson Roses will also have modern roses and Rose Petals Nursery will have the antiques. These vendors need our support if we wish for them to keep coming. The registration form and speaker schedule for this event will be out soon, so keep an eye out for this in the next DSD Bulletin.

My tip of the month is – Clean up and Fresh Mulch, if needed. Our garden sure needs a lot of fallen leaves cleaned up. With my ongoing back issue, keeping our roses healthy has been a real challenge. I have just not kept up with my routine of spraying. With a large garden and roses so close together the plants need spray protection in order to keep leaves on the plants. The rainy 6 weeks did not help this situation either. I am hoping for a better 2025.

In closing, I want to remind you we still have a few of the Nelson’s Fortuniana Roses left for sale. This is a GRS fund raiser. Price per rose is $30 each or 3 for $75.00. Call me for the varieties still available. They make a great gift.

I hope to see all of you at the Melrose Holiday Dinner. Don’t forget your exchange gift if you wish to participate.

Stay well and come to the party.