Well, Summer's winding down here. We've got our monsoonal moisture coming through, which means hail, massive thunderstorms, and lots & lots of lightning. But it also brings about a second flush of purdies! Yay! My roses did NOT like this huge heat we had this summer... too hot too fast. My average waterbill was well over $120/month, which is ridiculous considering I have a 100% xeric yard. But I wasn't going to lose my roses due to heat! Bad enough I lost a couple of trees (baby trees). But the Denver Broncos are in training camp & the Canadian Geese are starting to V up in formation in force. I just can't wait for that first snow storm on the mountains!

Here's a really pretty Sheila's Perfume bud I snapped last night, though.

Now that we've actually had our "spring" rains, I need to manure my roses. I usually don't like to wait this late, but this year I didn't have much of a choice.

I have some blooms out there now, but the JBs are still cycling so there aren't many really pretty ones, except for the ever-blooming Acropolis, which they don't seem to like.

Out of all of the roses I planted out behind the lake and couldn't water, the Grootendorsts were the only ones that had some leaf damage due to a rainless spring and early summer. I'm amazed.

Abraham Darby is the weakest-looking plant in my yard right now. It's stems are droopy, and it's not showing much vigor. Do you think it might need a dose of fertilizer, or is it typical behavior of this rose in hot and humid conditions? It did put out an amazing amount of blooms for a new plant, perhaps too many?

Chelle - can't help you 'cuz I have no humidity. I have 3 (count them, 3) roses that have a little bit of blackspot, and that's it. 1 BlueGirl, 1 Sterling Silver, & my Austrian Copper (BS magnet). I always feed my roses Age Old when they start looking uberdroopy, but usually my droopiness has to do with lack of water & 100+ deg heat. I do like that Grootendorst, very pretty! Sounds like if you offered iron that might help with weak stems? I know that iron encourages green growth...

Toni, what's the story behind the package of "cheese"?

It is funny reading you mentioning summer in the past tense. August is our hottest month and it's just beginning!

PPal - I agree, it's odd thinking about August & summer winding down, but it honestly does wind down here. Our average temperatures will be in the mid 80s, then dropping into the 70s by the end of the month. We'll see snow next month. http://www.weather.com/weather...

And about the cheese.. I loved the Godzilla image, but it was hard to see Godzilla w/the grass background (green on green), so decided to find something .. different. Now if this pic had been with a loaf of bread next to it, then it could have been a ham & cheese sammich! Some people on Cubits were offended by my avatar there, so couldn't bring it here as I didn't want to offend anyone here (and I changed it there, too). On a forum I was a member of many years ago, I'd switch out my avatar weekly.

Took these end of July but forgot to post so they go here:

My Gebrueder Grimm is a favorite rose now and in full bloom again. It's such a healthy rose with dark shiny leaves. Very impressed with it!


Grace (Austin) is full of blooms again, check out it's big visitor, one of the carpenter bees.



Lady Emma Hamilton is starting another flush



Sigh...nothing prettier than Aloha!! (Kordes)



Abutilon 'Victor Reiter' is in full bloom, I have 2 of them. They are shorter than most of the abutilons, so far about 2.5 ft. tall but this is the only one with the wide open large blooms, most are more of the closed bell shape.


An unknown reblooming iris surprised me. I was ready to get rid of it as there was nothing real distinct or unusual in the coloring but a reblooming iris is always a keeper!


This crocosmia came from my Mom's garden, the first thing I planted here. I love it next to the lavender that was already here, one of the only plants I didn't tear out when we moved here.


Dahlia 'Bishop's Children' is a descendant of the classic dahlia, Bishop of Llandaff.
The flowers come in a wide variety of warm-toned shades of red, orange, yellow, pink, and purple, in solid and sometimes bicolor blooms. The black foliage is very striking! The bees absolutely love it, just about every bloom has a visitor, I counted 3 different varieties of bees on one bloom as I was taking pictures.





Gladiola and lilies are adding pops of color:


Lilium 'Dizzy'


Got to go out and pick strawberries! Mmmmmm

Hmm, thanks, Toni.

Perhaps some Epsom Salts would help with mineral uptake. (??) It's passing strange that some of the roses here have stalks that wannabe tree trunks, and some are whimpy...there must be an imbalance somewhere. For instance, my Alchymist looks like a tall sapling right now...it's all of 11 or 12 feet - straight up. Very sturdy stems on that one.


Gorgeous pictures, Sue!

I want some of those perfect strawberries! Pass the bowl, please.

It rained just a bit last night. The rain gauge said less than 1/4", but my sod that was nearly dead is now almost green! I wasn't so worried about the regular grass, because most of it is buffalo grass, which is super hardy. We laid fine bladed fescue sod in front of the house this spring and I was afraid it was a total loss. Watering new sod is so tricky, and there is nothing I can do about the hot dry wind.
We're due for hot temps again this week, but at least it's *just* 98,99 instead of 110.
After 2 extremely hot summers, I can tell just what type of plants I should be using in the landscape. I don't want plants that just barely hang in there, looking scraggly for 3 months of the growing season. Roses, iris, and crape myrtle are the winners.
"Dry" storms are common here, and last night we had 3 hours of thunder and lightning. The nitrogen helped our yards as much as the rain! Maybe more!
Most of my roses from the Heirloom Rose order dropped their leaves, probably from shock at our heat. I have them on a covered porch where they get indirect light. They are all still green, so I think they'll recover.

The random plant on the Rose home page seems a bit more random than usual. Rosa "Red Ribbons" looks like no rose I've ever seen.

Thanks for that report! I went and moved it out of the rose "Red Ribbons' and put it under the Daylily 'Red Ribbons'. Not sure how that one got through.
If you ever see any other errors, you can propose either a delete or move for an image by enlarging it and scrolling down to see the different proposal options.

I declined another photo of a daylily masquerading as a rose earlier today.

LOL, who was it from?

I think it was Joy because I called her a silly girl in the reason for the decline, and I wouldn't call many people that. Joy and I are pals from way back.

LOL, I've added daylilies to iris entries, it happens.

Several iris and daylilies share names, and that's part of why I now color code my nametags. I've pulled up daylily tags, thinking a plant was mis-named, when really the tag was referring to the iris next to it. If i were really organized, I would add the hybridizer name on the tag, and that would be a clue, but Niswonger and Maryott do both, so even that is confusing.

true!

Oh boy did I ever get in on a sale this morning. Whew. My favorite local nursery is running a one day sale, and all their shrubs are $10. They had great big lilacs, Itoh peonies, hinoki cypress, winter hardy camellias and azaleas, yews, hydrangea, viburnum, bamboo, beautyberry, osmanthus, and ROSES! I only bought 1 rose--a 6' tall Improved Blaze. I even found a 'Golden Tiara' clematis for $3, and a 'My Angel' clem for $3.
It's supposed to cool off to middle 90s later this week, so possibly I can start planting.

Wow! What a great sale.

OMG, you lucky girl you! *jealous* Nothing here is on sale yet, which is odd because it's definitely end of season & everything's dying from the heat, so you'd think they'd want things out the door! Well, Tagawa's has their roses 50% off, but they don't have anything of interest, mainly just knockouts and some carpet roses. But their normal price is almost $40, so half is still $20. Paulino's has their annuals at 50% off.. ooh, that's a great deal considering they're going to die in about 8 weeks...

Yeah, I don't understand it. They were giving away annuals. (coleus!) Our season lasts clear into November. By running a sale on everything, the very best ones get sold, and the crappy ones are left, and the price goes back up until fall, when they decide if they are going to keep them over or compost them.
If it were my store, I would take the saddest looking ones, put them in a separate area, and mark them down to $2. Get them out of view. I was there when they opened, and didn't see another customer come in for an hour and a half. I thought the whole town would be there--especially with those giant 5 gallon Itoh peonies that looked fabulous. I got some bamboo that had been $140 for $10.
The owner is a friend of mine, and he said they had thrown away more plants than ever before. They just couldn't keep them in pots in this heat. They have everything under shadecloth, with a swamp cooler running, and it's not enough. We had a long talk about what is holding on in the heat, and what we now know can't take the extremes. Blue Atlas Cedar is a winner, and all the spruces turned crispy. Crape myrtles are fine, buddleia croaked. pretty much how they did in the ground at my house.
I made a 2nd trip back to pick up more grasses and hollies. I'm needing evergreens so I have color in the winter. The grasses I usually depend on for winter interest aren't going to look pretty this winter since they didn't grow well, and don't have pretty plumes.
I''m going to have to go buy more soaker lines to keep these watered.