My Oldtimer Story: In spring of 2021, I was browsing the body bag roses at my local Home Depot, and spied an unfamiliar label: Oldtimer. Intrigued, I fired up Helpmefind on my phone and looked up the pics and comments. The plant was a poor specimen, and there was only one left. Still, I wanted to give Oldtimer a shot, and he was taken home and duly planted into a smallish 4 gallon pot (I've largely container rose gardened for the past several years, due to multiple moves). Long story short, Oldtimer lived, even though he struggled mightily to put out a single bloom at the end of one of two spindly canes. But what a magnificent bloom it was: bigger than ANY I have had on the 300+ varieties of roses I'd grown over the years. The form was exquisite: classic hybrid-tea on steroids, with a dash of organic fantasy, and then....the fade began, the same day, as I recall. Still, the denouement was a showstopper, a fading glory in 7 acts, or something like that. But one flower later, I was sold on that rose. I began to coddle the Oldtimer, make sure he didn't miss a feeding, groomed those stunted canes and sparse leaves. Then a blistering summer set in. Oldtimer tried several times to produce... but gave up time and again, the blooms would just stall, ball, and wither to a hardened lump. I thought fall would be better times for Oldtimer, but he was still reeling from his first summer in New Mexico (I guess he's NOT a local, LOL) and same story for the fall season's blooms: Mission Abort. Over the winter, Oldtimer began to shrivel and blacken. By spring 2022 when I began the seasonal inspection and cleanup, he looked to be a goner. I kept watching him, and ... NADA. Finally I placed his pot out near the trash bin, ready to be dumped, and got busy administering to my brood of 50 pots. Weeks later, I passed through the dumpster zone and a flash of apricot caught my eye. Oldtimer was alive! I hastened to scoop him up and spirit him to a water source, then put him into the regular maintenance routine. 3 beautiful blooms later (I've uploaded them into the photo gallery), Oldtimer was officially back! His second season (2022) was definitely more of a success, he produced a handful of the big beauties, even though his habit is the runtiest I've seen in all my years of rose growing. And THIS year promises yet more: he is proudly ensconced in a new whisky barrel pot, and budding out like a champ... well, ALMOST like a champ. I'll make sure to capture that first spring flush and share it here....