My wife loves roses and at first all I did was dig holes where she pointed. Now the whole garden is my domain and all her tea roses are segregated to one raised bed. (Which I still have to weed .. grumble.)

I have mostly climbers and shrubs but also a couple of h. Teas. Got any favorites? Of the teas I like Hot Cocoa. All the climbers are great: Iceberg, New Dawn, Royal Sunset, Autumn Sunset, Altisimmo .and Sally Holmes.

@MarkWD Re. vying with the wife over gardening space. One of my perks of being divorced....I am now sole master of my property! Hazah! Of course I am supplementing her income, and she has her own house now. Also, we are still gardening buddies when it comes to texting about stuff. Amicable divorce is definitely the way to go, lol.

But as for roses, I definitely have favorites, and they keep changing. But I like to talk about them. For most of my life I rented and grew roses in big pots. Now I have bought my first place as of two years ago. I am on just a quarter acre, but the house is little, so it leaves a bit more yard space.The back yard is partial shade and is twice the size of the front. I still haven't done much with the back, other than to let the wild dewberry vines grow (I made a berry cobbler from them just last month) and plant a couple paw paw trees to hopefully bear fruit in a few years. I have a big composting area back there, roo.

The front is where my only suitable sunlight for roses is. So they take center stage. I have only just planted the climbers as of last year. They are New Dawn, Peggy Martin(a gift from the ex-, cl. Crimson Glory, and the lavender Quicksilver. I have just purchased a Lady Ashe piller rose, a peach blend sport of Alohah. You mentioned Royal Sunset. Gorgeous! I grew that years ago but didn't really have enought light or space for it at the time and so gave it away. It blackspotted horribly if I didn't keep it well-sprayed with fungicide.

I have always been partial to voluptuous hybrid tea blooms. Most of my roses have been that and minis and minifloras(which are very suitable for pots). My favorites back in Washington thirty-plus years ago were Mr Lincoln and Peace. I have neither now, because this Gulf Coast climate is so different. They will grow here, just not nearly as large or healthy as in WA. I try to go with what grows best here.

It has only been the past couple of years that I have decided to ditch all chemical spraying. Doug Tallamy(look him up on you tube) and his movement to turn our yards back into viable natural habitat for bugs has converted me. The birds and really the entire ecosystem depend on us replacing native food source flora, so that birds can have the bugs they depend on to raise babies. About 30% of the plants all over the U.S. are now introduced species, many of them invasive.

This is blackspot hell on the gulf, so picking resistant roses is vital. Fortunately rose breeders have made great gains in adding to varieties that are highly resistant or even virtually blackspot-impervious. So I still have a few HT classics that can tolerate the blackspot, if not repel it. They include Tiffany, Oklahoma, Paradise, Firefighter, Belle Epoque, and Sweetness.
My promising new additions are More HT-like shrubs and a few floribundas. I also have an old tea rose that is fantastic and largely carefree. It is Madame Antoin Marie.

My new disease resistant ones: Grande Amore, Grande Dame, Francis Meilland, Savannah, Beverly, Belinda's Dream, Winter Sun, Sunny Skies, Wedding Bells, Plum Perfect, Gaye Hammond, Dark Desire, Paloma Blanca, Maurice Utrillo, Caramella, Easy Spirit, Pink Enchantment, Dick Clark, Poseidon, and brand spanking new, the bullet-proof award winning True Passion.

@MikeInBatonRouge Well l like the sound of a bullet proof rose. For me the one rose which has never gotten any speck of disease is the climber Sally Holmes and that is inspite of sharing an archway with a climbing pelargonium and now with a Podranea ricasoliana vine well established on the other side of the archway and always looking to cover everything in its path. (Fortunately it seems the more I prund it, the more it flowers.)

Your quarter acre seems like plenty to me. At 12,000 sq ft I'm slightly bigger than that but then my warehouse sits on 3,200 of those feet so I'm sure you have more ground to plant. My lot is mostly flat, dropping maybe a couple feet from back to front over 120 feet.

I hear you on lawns. I had been down to a hell strip between sidewalk and street and a 20’ circle in the back. But with female dogs who prefer peeing copious puddles no where else I substituted flagstone for the circle lawn and just this winter I planted the hell strip with perennials. My neighbor had put in a horrible stolonous grass. But so far I’ve removed all the weeds and come back attempts of the grass from hell, always spraying Roundup on the grass first. (I know .. boooo.)

Some people love a lawn. Not me.

I am part of the gleaner group (my profile picture is picking Kiwis). Our picks go to the grower, the picker and our local Lopez Fresh (semi- food bank). I wonder how gleaning groups will work this year.

Nah, more isn't always better. I suppose is you can get some share croppers to make it work that would be another story.

Beautiful blossoms, but "epi"? I only know that as medicine, is there another/expanded name?

@tinkercreek Yes, it's short for epiphyllum, a group of succulents bred to have outrageously large flowers. [worldofsucculents.com]

Oh yeah. I'm just about there now and I don't expect to get much fitter. Fortunately it doesn't have to be in perfect shape for me to enjoy it. But when I invite gardening friends over I feel compelled to put its best face forward.