It rained today! Just a bit, but enough to lift my mood.
It was a Seattle rain, slow, drippy, quiet, misty. Not worth a hoot as far as trees are concerned, but the cooler temps and cloud cover were a huge break. I actually opened the doors and put on a sweater. It's only 70 degrees!
Tomorrow we'll be back up at 97, but the rest of the week, the forecast is for 80's! This doesn't mean we're through with the extreme heat, but I think I'm going to take a chance and put some of my potted and waiting roses in the ground.
Our local weather guy said Monday was the first day with temps below 90 since June 3. Our average temp for last week of August is 90, so I should be ok planting the Heirloom bands, don't you think? Or not?
I have leventy jillion iris to plant also, so maybe I'll do them first.

Cindi - I plant irises whenever it's cool enough for me to do so. I've found that irises don't give a rat's patookie about heat.. which is good 'cuz I'm a lousy iris mom! LOL!! And aren't these cooler temps just WONDERFUL??? Yesterday I had DH open windows/doors at home & air out the house... my AC's been going practically nonstop for weeks now and I'm dreading my electric bill! I had bought 8 agastaches on Sunday & put them in the ground yesterday evening & watered them nicely today. Today's not too too bad, only in the upper 80s, tomorrow's supposed to be in the low-mid 90s, then back into the 80s & 70s! I think summer's just about had it! Yay!! Too warm of a year for me! It's pretty bad when even the weeds are suffering from the heat!!

Cindi, I like to plant roses in the winter, so I'm no help. I've not had much luck with summer planting here.



Update on my Abraham Darby... it seems that it just needed rain. We had two nice ones; one was a real roof-pounder, and one was a long slow soaker. Now, Abe's stems are righting themselves and putting out more buds.

The healthiest roses here are still the ones waaaaay out back, on the far side of the lake... ... go figure.

Chelle, this year I am going to try planting some roses in the fall. I ordered from Palatine last year and asked for them to be delivered in the spring. I've lost a few to the heat. We'll try Palatine's fall delivery this year. Everything I planted last fall made it, but then we really didn't have a winter last year. The winter before had been extremely cold, with temps at 17 below, so last winter I mulched like crazy, and most of the roses didn't even go dormant!
I'll mulch again this year, just in case. As Skie would say, up to their eyeballs!
An email from SW Greenhouses came today. Oh, so tempting. All their 3 gallon roses are $10. It's "just" a 12 hour drive. Do we have any Tennessee people posting or lurking here? Anyone near White House, TN?
Two gallons and minis are marked down also.
Closest I'll be to there in the next month is Louisville, and it's 150 miles away. That's too far.
If anyone gets in on that deal, I hope they report back here.
Today our temps will be near 100, but after that we get nearly a week of 80s/low 90s. Time to get caught up on everything!

Cindi - The two roses I planted in the late fall that came in bare root from England back in '10 did WONDERFULLY.. very healthy roses! I lost a few from Cliff that I received last year, but that could have been from a number of things (I don't think losing 3 out of 18 for me is bad). I'm going to try the fall planting of Palatine as well.. get them in October before the ground's frozen (expecting snow next month, but the ground shouldn't freeze solid for a few months after that). *crossing fingers!* I already have holes for them, so it should be pretty easy to plop them in 2' down & then cover them beyond their eyeballs in mulch.

That's good to know, Toni.
My challenge is keeping them watered in winter because we store the hoses, and the freeze/thaw cycle can be pretty extreme. The main rose garden is 200' from the well, and I get lazy about dragging cold hoses in the winter. I have to force myself to drain them and put them away again after every watering. That's a chore that makes my back ache just thinking about it.

Cindi - I feel ya! What I did for winter watering is I have a "winter hose" setup. It's a hose & winding reel that I got off of Craigslist for free. I keep it disconnected, and when the day's gonna be above 50 degs, I connect it, water everything, then disconnect it, wind it back up, and put the styrofoam cover back on the spiggot. Mind you, I don't have half the plot of land or the number of plants you do, but it's what I do. That's why I'm hoping for tons & tons & tons of snow. The more snow, the less I have to water as you don't winterwater here if there's snow cover.

Hmmm that sounds like a good system! Does the hose reel drain the hose as you are winding it up?
I have several of the hose dollies. We get very little snow, and what we do get melts in a day or two.
I spray my broadleaf everygreens with Wilt-Pruf and water them weekly. The roses only get water once a month if they're established. If they are new, I think they'll need more water because the winter wind really dries them out. I might try using tomato cages filled with mulch for the newer ones. (The ones i hope to get from palatine, that is!)

Yes, the hose reel does drain. I have to stretch the hose out, but I just drag the whole thing to the street. My street runs downhill from my house, so I just let gravity work for me. Plus usually gives me time to chat with the neighbors & let the dogs run around like the morons they are.

Sign on my garage:

Zuzu, where did you get that lovely Persian Autumn? I love that eye. Is it a Hulthemia?

Yes, Cindi. It's one of Ralph Moore's hybrid hulthemia persica roses. I bought this one from Pickering a few years ago. I don't know whether they still carry Ralph Moore's roses. I remember reading on their website last year that they were going to reduce their assortment drastically in 2012-2013 and were carrying many roses for the last time.

I have my sweet little Copper Sunset blooming again, love the coloring!



and if anyone wants to try seeds from one of my all time favorite plants, please check my blog:
http://garden.org/blogs/view/C...

You have to watch this wonderful video of a cat and an owl playing together. Thanks, Mike (Calsurf73), for the link.

http://www.wimp.com/catowl/

Incredibly cute!

I think the most charming parts are where the cat jumps over the owl, as if he's pretending he can fly too.

I love Wimp and have watched that cute video a couple of times. Amazing friendship!

That is a cool video, isn't it ?
My nephew and his wife have one of those huge Dutch rabbits (can't remember what they're called...) and their cat and the rabbit get along famously. The cat grooms the rabbit and the rabbit seems to enjoy it. The rabbit and the cat are both gray and white and we "think" the rabbit thinks the cat is it's child.
Too funny to watch them play together !

Mike - Flemish Giant is the big ol' rabbit.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Runt_and_Paxie.jpg

We had a mini lop that grew huge! Too huge for our rabbit hutch. Our neighbor loved it and she had a fenced yard, so we gave it to her. She had a black schnauzer that was smaller than the rabbit, and the 2 became inseparable friends. The rabbit used a litter box and the dog door. They had the run of a shady yard, rabbit heaven, really.

Thanks, Toni. I knew it was some European type rabbit but couldn't place the name.
They actually found the rabbit at a park near their house and had no clue what kind it was until it just started getting bigger and bigger and bigger. It weighs 17 lbs. at present...the cat weighs about 8 lbs !

It lives in a 40' long and 8' wide easement area next to their house which is chain-linked fenced on all sides and on top. Three huge ash trees next door shade it perfectly in the summer and the floor is grass.

Like Cindi said, this rabbit knows how (and does use) a litter box, too. WHO KNEW ??? LOL
My nephew built it this contarption that is sort of like a cat tree...and it climbs the different levels, has little "rooms" in it, etc. It even has toys it plays with. Again, who knew ?

They feed it some sort of special hay from a feed store. It shows NO interest in their regular yard and rarely ventures out of it's run...which is probably a good thing. This rabbit never had it so good.