I'm not sure whether this winter was abnormally cold or I've just reached that annoying age at which I'm going to tell everyone that each summer is the hottest ever and each winter is the coldest ever. I do know that I used to have a suntan by the end of February and that the name "June-uary" was coined here a couple of years ago when we had temps in the 70s in January. This year, however, I kept the central heating on until three days ago. The past three days have been sheer heaven: lots of sunshine and no need to bundle up in layers and layers of clothing.

I guess you could say I'm sunstruck, and that's the name of the rose in our thumbnail photo for this month. It's a Carruth apricot-blend hybrid tea. It's quite tall and majestic (about-8-9 feet) in my garden, regularly pumping out large blooms packed with petals.

Oh, beautiful rose for the month.

Weather has been warm here as well. We are supposed to be close to 90 F today. Unfortunately, it is brought out the bugs that I don't appreciate in my yard--aphids. Gave a lady bird beetle a boost yesterday to a rose bud that had them on there. She went to town having them for lunch.

Usually don't get fungal diseases either but have PM on a few of my roses. I also think I have downy mildew on a couple as well. I think that is why my Dottie rose has not been showing any growth and the leaves are mottled yellow and now appear to be falling off. I have used Neem oil spray twice now (a week apart) and the PM seems to be getting somewhat better but not the downy mildew and now the buds on my Franny Kruger rose are covered in PM or Botrytis. One of the two or both. Who knows? I think I may have to cut them off and dispose of them so it doesn't spread to other plants. Yes, I hate spraying as it seems that all it does is nothing but multiply the times you have to spray. So, as much as I love Franny, she may have to go as well as the Stranger (who started with all of this PM nonsense). Stranger responded very well to the neem spray. We shall see how the rest of the week progresses. The roses next to both Franny and Stranger show no signs of disease at all. Souv. de McKinley and Peppermint Parfait (so far) are doing great! No fungal diseases or aphids.

Can you use the Neem spray more than once a week? I would love to douse the buds of my Franny Kruger rose again before I get rid of all of them (there goes my spring boom again!). I would like to see if that gets rid of the PM or Botrytis but it will sooner than 7 days from their last spraying.

Oh, I just remembered that last year, my Yolande had fungal problems as well. Stranger was the rose that was attached to her when I got her. I removed Stranger this year. Stranger has the fungal disease and Yolande is a clear as a bell (knock on wood). Yup, I hate getting rid of roses but I think Stranger may have to go.

45 and showers here in NYC. The suburbs are supposed to get 32 degrees tonight on this April Fools day.
It's supposed to be warmer this weekend, so we'll get some time in the garden. What can one say about the weather?
David

We're supposed to get down to mid 20s tonight and tomorrow night.

84* here yesterday.

Small bud on Miss All-American Beauty (aka Marie Callas)



And this is how I will be watering the roses - by hand Since we live on an island our water is piped in from the mainland and really expensive. No one has green lawns in the summer except those who a very new and haven't received their first water bill yet



It's currently 45 degrees with highs expected in the mid 50s. No frost this morning.

Yesterday it was spring!






Ha! April Fools! This is what i woke up to this morning.

Ugh! Snow! Hate the white stuff. Needs to stay up in the mountains where it belongs! Hopefully, it will be spring soon for you.
Island Garden, love your rain barrels. Are they connected so they will fill each other from the downspout? I would imagine if you had to move them after they were full, they would be unbearably heavy.

@Mustbnuts, they are connected so that they all fill evenly. I can't even imagine how heavy they would be..55 gallons each. I would rather make more trips with the 2 gallon water can because that is heavy enough. My husband uses the 5 gallon (at least when he knows I'm watching)

I don't know what's wrong with this forum. After reading one thread, I can't use backspace to return rose forum and this website keeps kicking me out. This is my 3rd time post. It looks like AD codes failure. At one moment, my ad blocker told me it'd intercepted over 1000 ads. Crazy!

Just received 10 roses from RVR yesterday. 2 looked sad and the others looked fine. (Oh my lovely, strong minis!) I'm going to pot them next week and hope they can all survive. Comparing with RVR, HCR seemed doing better. I've potted 4 roses from them this week. And, during this week I also planted 4 roses from Heirloom. Three are $19 and I couldn't resist the temptation. LOL. This is my first time to plant 1g roses into the ground. Let's see how well they do for me.

I found that Heirloom has changed their free shipping policy. Now $100+ orders get free shipping. I can finally give it up without any regrets.

@Aerith - my Ma Perkins arrived from RVR yesterday. My concern is how tall it is. Last year I purchased Cornelia from them and she was really tall too and suffered wind burn. It's impossible where I live to shelter roses completely from the wind. Hopefully both of our RVR roses do well



I think when I pot it this weekend I'm going to put a tomato cage around it.

I think that's a good idea, Island! I have caged roses before to keep them from wind breakage. Otherwise it looks real healthy!

Hello everyone!
It is 80 degrees here in N. CA. There are few roses started.
Ambridge


Emma Hamilton


Golden Celebration


Louis Philippe


Peace

Great photos, Lynnez!

Lovely roses and photos, Lynnez

All beauties, Lynnez!

Thank you, Zuzu, Michelle and Seil. Glad to be in Rose season again

Lynnez, your roses are gorgeous!

MichelleB675 said:We're supposed to get down to mid 20s tonight and tomorrow night.

Yes it was quite crap here lately. Tuesday here I got sunburnt at work it was 80° Then Thursday and Friday it was snowing. Absolutely absurd the way mother nature acts. Lol.