It's HOT out there! Holy crapzilla Batman, is it hot! Anyone wanna send me some rain? Please? Purdy Please?

And as is fitting for this weather: Ring of Fire

It's really pleasant here. 79 degrees at 3:25 pm. Can't help you with the rain. We won't get any until the end of October or the beginning of November.

The Ring of Fire photo is super!

Finally back home after being gone for 2 1/2 weeks visiting the in-laws in Canada!
Lots of weeds in my beds but everything is looking great thanks to the auto drip system hubby added just before we left. Roses are building up for rebloom, daylilies in full bloom, and lots of lilies blooming. Spent the afternoon pulling weeds and doing some deadheading.
Below is Colorific and a couple of lilies, the yellow is Golden Splendor and more apricot one is African Queen.

Glad to have you back, Sue. The lilies look majestic and lovely.

Zuzu - *sigh* 79 degs? Try 102 when I typed that up. I had been outside for about an hour & was really feeling the heat. Ugh! Tired of this August heat!

It's a good thing we can't all afford to live where ever we like - California would be SO overpopulated.

Yeah, and Kansas would be deserted.

Cindi - Too bad the Rockies are in the way, Kansas is so flat, you could see California if it weren't for them! :D

Today's not as miserable.. only about 95degs out there right now w/mild wind / heavier breezes. Hoping that the forecast of rain is true!

There's a current discussion in Cubits about all of the abandoned cubits that discourage newcomers and drive them away. Some of them will be deleted if they really are abandoned (if the owner hasn't checked in during the last 60 days). Our Rose Cubit moved to ATP, of course, but some of the forums and threads stayed in Cubits because they weren't about rose gardening. I don't want the Rose Cubit to be deleted because some of those threads are of value to some of us. The ones I revisit most often are the pet threads in the Our Companions forum.

If any of you want to have non-gardening discussions, please feel free to use the Rose Cubit for those purposes. I'll be checking in every day to see whether there's any new activity. I'd particularly like to see new photos of all of your pets.

http://cubits.org/roses/

Actually, my fastlink to Cubits goes straight to the rose forum & haven't seen any new things there in forever & ever. It would be good to see new posts about people's pets & stuff. I'll start.

Just testing to see if my avatar changed. I see why I never uploaded a pic--it asks for a photo of yourself. It doesn't say "add an avatar of your choosing".
I clicked a pic from my computer that was so tiny who knows what I chose...for some reason I was unable to just move my photo from the database. I wanted to put my pic of Ketchup and Mustard on there but after 10 minutes of fiddling around with it, trying to move it, I gave up.
Guess I'm super grumpy because I tore my shoulder up and finally the temps are under 100 and I have 10 new roses I can't plant. In addition to a shade house full of plants that have been waiting. and I couldn't get my infusion yesterday because I have bronchitis, probably from a recent garden tour where I was on a bus for 2 days with my mother who doesn't understand the rule 'don't touch me, don't sneeze on me because my immune system can't handle it. ' She thinks she's exempt, and she works in a hospital. So...it hurts to sit up, so I can't do indoor financial work I need to do, I'm not supposed to do any lifting, and I'm not supposed to be around people. aaaaaack!
The good thing now is how beautiful my roses are. They are in a full flush like spring. I think it's because I cut everything back after the hail storm. My daylilies are blooming now while everyone elses' are finished.
Another good thing is I have a new TENS unit that zaps the pain. And a new massage therapist who understands old female athletes. Took her about 30 seconds to identify all my old injuries! And can you believe this, my doctor actually volunteered to come over and mow for me. He lives down the street. So I'm in good hands, I think.

Cindi - for having a sweet doctor & a great massage therapist! I've gone to massage therapy a couple of times and hated it each time, so I refuse to go back. When I broke my tailbone in '08, I was forced to go through it w/workman's comp (fell down at work on ice). I would leave in 3 times more pain than when I walked in. A few times, I couldn't even stand straight that's how much I hurt! Now I just go to my chiropractor if I'm in bad shape.

I created this a while back on how to change your avatar. I wonder why you're having so many problems? Not sure if it's changed much.. what size is your K&M picture? Can you treemail it to me or regular email? my email is *real* original.. [email protected] LOL

The thread "How to change your avatar picture" in Roses forum

Reporting from hot, drought ridden Michigan.
Well this was the most weird rose crop I've ever had.
With the mild winter almost all my rose canes stayed green
and with an extra warm spring the roses bloomed early but
with the heat came bugs and disease galore and my roses
looked a wreak by the end of June. Then of course the Rose Slugs and Rose Chafers did their
damage and now the Jap Beetles are here. Not as many but that could be
because of the dry conditions. I'm not convinced that the Milky Spore has made much
of a difference but if the numbers stay down I might then think MAYBE the MS worked.
My lawn is brown, crunchy and dried up. All I can afford to do is water my flower beds and small veggie patch.
Between watering and running the AC non-stop I can hardly wait for our next electric bill.
With the ungodly 100 degree temps all last week many of my younger/smaller ornamental shrubs have dried up
but I must put a plug in for Hydrangea Lime Light which seems to be the most hardy and drought resistant Hydrangea I've ever grown
and I have tried several varieties.
I haven't watered my big shrub roses (Some towering 8 feet now) and they seem to be doing OK but I'm sure mighty stressed
by this awful weather. I dug up several smaller roses this spring that have not done well.
I continue to weed out the slackers and do not plan to replace them with roses because I
have such an ordeal with the beetles ruining them. I'm going to replace them with Lilies because
they're fragrant and the beetles for whatever reason aren't attracted to them.

Busy, busy with work, babysitting grandkids, a bumper crop of Sebastopol Geese and raising 4 turkeys this year,
my first and I'm finding them to be quite interesting creatures.
Hope everybody here is doing well.

3 month old goslings

3 week old turkeys

Grandkids acting goofy at our 4th of July gathering

Zuzu, ironically I just visited Cubits for the first time in ages and it didn't look like their had been any discussion on the rose forum since 2011 so i bugged out of there.
BTW does anybody have a link to Burts/Bleeks website?
I tried to find him on ATP and Cubits co-op forums but he wasn't on there.

Bert's at eFlowerGarden and Touch of Nature:

http://www.touchofnature.com/s...

He's still active in Cubits, but mainly through Barb's co-ops.

I really miss Cubits, CR. I enjoyed our group discussions of anything that came up. Here I feel constrained by the need to focus on gardening. Porkpal, Toni, and I have been discussing pets in the Rose Cubit today. I'm going to start a general chat thread there too because I have things to talk about that aren't related to gardening, such as my messed-up toenail.

So glad you said that, Zuzu!
I always feel guilty bringing up anything besides gardening. Nobody has ever told anyone to stay on topic here that I've seen, so that sensitivity must come from other sites where it is strictly enforced.

Cottage Rose, it sounds like your roses have every malady except Rose Rosette. Just wait! THat's a real fun one.
I was wanting to plant 10 roses today, but it looks like I'll be digging out another 10 that have RRD. I won't be able to use those spaces for roses for several years. The virus is still there if any pieces of root remain in the soil, and my roses have long long roots.

Last night our Rose Society had the most pleasant picnic dinner meeting. One of our Rosarians hosted in her beautiful garden in the city. I looked around and noticed several of her best roses were missing. (including her Red Intuition!) She said she had taken out 24 roses this year, leaving her 54. Rose Rosette appeared in those 24. Two trees were missing from her yard also--a beaver came up out of the lake into her yard and chewed down the trees! I thought I had it bad with the hailstorm and drought, but wow! So far no beaver has attacked any expensive ornamental trees.
I do have some critter eating my peaches, now that they are ripe. They leave me a pile of pits each morning. Not sure if it's coyotes or raccoons.
It's always something, isn't it?

The Daylily Forum has a regular ongoing off topic thread. http://garden.org/forums/view/...

Our chat thread could also be seen that way, but I miss Cubits sometimes.

I know, me too.

Well, I'm going to continue chatting off topic here until I see my posts getting deleted.
Today I have a list of 8 more roses I have to dig out because they have Rose Rosette Disease. Our local society is shaking some trees trying to get more researchers working on a cure for this virus. We've aggregated data, now we have to persuade some chemical company that this is a priority. RRD is spreading faster than predicted. The virus has been identified by researchers at Universities in Arkansas and Oklahoma. Surely the larger rose growers are hearing about it from nurseries. One of my local nurserymen told me he won't carry knock outs next year because so many of the knock outs in commercial plantings in town have been devastated by RRD and customers are refusing to buy them. I told him he's wrong on 2 counts: he's not selling his knock outs because his are $30 and box stores have them for $10, and the disease affects every class of rose. They are seeing them on knock outs because that is what has been widely planted in public areas because the color is outstanding and those roses are 99% disease free. The roses we see diseased in medians and around businesses are trimmed with power trimmers. The landscapers just mow along the row, spreading the virus as they go. They then take it to the next job, spreading it rapidly. The businesses refuse to remove the plantings because they still bloom and look nice from a distance.
Now for some good news. I'm waiting for my cutie-pie UPS man to drive up with my NEW CAMERA! I finally took the leap and bought a better one. yay! Maybe I'll be able to post some decent pics in the database.
ok, going outside to work and wait for the brown truck.
hope I can get in at least an hour or two.