Too bad it's coming too late. :(

There's a low pressure sitting on Nebraska right now and it's been drawing moisture and cold from up north in Canada down the Rockies, so we've been having a slow, steady, perfect drizzly rain now for 2 days. Too bad that it's here way too late in the season to help the growth. Luckily I'm not high up enough in elevation (I sit at about 6000ft) as it'll be coming down as snow at 7000 and accumulating at 9000 ft (the foothills). But we do have a frost advisory for tonight, so thankfully I got the last of my roses mulched in last night in my pond area and I need to get more mulch for the other roses tonight. I'll probably be putting this in the rain, but I'd rather get a little cold & mucky rather than losing my roses!

I can't remember the exact wording on this, but I've always been told that roses can't take up to 5 hours at 17 degrees, before you need to worry about protecting...so I'm guessing you will still be fine this time of year, if you don't get them all done tonight. Love Arizona...no protection needed at all. But our tree's do change colors here.

Oh my, that's a beautiful tree! What kind is it? Do you know, is it yours? I've got 6 trees that I planted specifically for fall color: sweetgum (http://www.arborday.org/treegu...), cleveland select pear (http://www.advancedtree.com/tr...), 2 Autumn Purple ashes (http://www.fast-growing-trees....), a "Hot Wings" Tatarian maple (http://bailey.virtual-services...), and a Brandwine Maple (http://www.usna.usda.gov/Newin...).

The mountains are supposed to have had their change of color for the past two weeks, but it's so boring with just the yellow aspens. I miss being in NY this time of year.. it's sooooooo beautiful being back east with all the colors right now.

I'm not going to complain about the rain.. better late than never. It's just that I wish we could have gotten this a few weeks ago. But this will help with all the fires we've had.. Colorado's been a damned tinderbox this year with at least 6 major fires, including the Fourmile Fire outside of Boulder. Been bad for asthmatics, like DH. The rain doesn't help that, either, because we've gone from smokey nasty (makes for some beautiful sunsets, though) with ash raining down (not as bad as back in '03, with the Haymen fire.. now THAT was not fun.. fire was about a hundred miles away, but most of the Denver Metro had a thin layer of ash everywhere) to a cold drizzle. Kind of reminds me of what I would imagine an English winter to be like.. cold, blustery, damp. This kind of weather just screams for a thick comforter, a good book, and a cup of hot chocolate. Not getting up when it's still dark to go to work. Bleh.

Yes, that's a Bradford Ornamental Pear. Supposedly it has brittle branches. But this one has been in my front yard for 19 years now, and not one single branch has ever broke off of it. And we get some hairy old monsoon storms with winds reaching 60-70 mph. I love this tree. I find it gets more vibrant red and orange leaves when I give it a dose of Chelated Iron every spring.

Most of my family lives in Durango, CO. I remember how bad it was in 03. They had lots of forest fires around them too.

Alan

I've heard about the brittle branches myself and that it has a short livespan. But, everything I heard bad about it was from various people back northeast (Ohio/Pennsylvania/NY). I think that the extreme cold and ice storms that fly through that area are what cause it to be "brittle". We rarely get ice storms here and I've seen some of these trees that are 20+ years old, so I'm not going to worry about it. Didn't know about the iron.. wonder if that works with maples, too!

I think Maples are just naturally beautiful. I'm jealous that you can grow them there, it gets just to darn hot here for them.

Alan

It made me laugh to hear 9000' referred to as foothills! We are at about 90' and we are the highest property around.
Bradford pears do have brittle branches when grown around here. I think it has to do with how fast they grow. Ours lose limbs often, they also rarely show much fall color. About the only thing that reliably has brilliant fall foliage here is poison ivy.

I'm lucky enough to have a swamp maple growing in my garden. It gets hot-coal red on a good fall day. But it is too cold here to reliably grow some tea roses - I have been told. I'm going into the first winter with Lady Hillingdon and climbing White Maman Cochet, so I suppose I will find out. Some of the wichurana climbers such as White Cockade and Awakening kept their leaves all winter last year. So did Baltimore Belle and Blush Noisette. Not sure what to expect from winter this year.

The Bradford pear in my back yard in NJ - some years ago - was old and brittle enough to simply crack at the bottom of the trunk and fall over in a windstorm. It was 45 ft tall and a foot in diameter. Fortunately it missed the house.

PPal - When the average mountain town sits at about 10,000 ft and most of climbable mountains are the "Fourteeners" (meaning they peak at about 14,000+ ft), 9000ft is foothills. Boulder Co sits at like 7000 I think.. old friend of mine, her house sat at about 11,000 ft. But, to be honest, when I live in NNY, we were at about 46 ft and it liked to have killed me. Being at an altitude lower than 3000 ft is hard on my lungs.. I can't breathe as I feel that I have an elephant sitting on my chest and my head is about to implode from the pressure.

Well, last night, when I got home, I rushed to make sure that the rest of my roses were under mulch. I used 3 bags of mulch and buried them at least 10" deep in mulch, knowing that we had the freeze warning. Was a messy job because it had rained a soaking rain all day, so I was going goosh goosh goosh in the muck where there wasn't mulch.. yuck! Plus the bags were heavy (wet mulch), but at least it wasn't dusty!

Then, this morning, I was glad I had made the mad dash to mulch everything. There was a thick layer of frost everywhere in the front yard and my van was frozen! Had to find my long-handled scraper this morning to clean my front windshield. My trees should be changing nicely now that there's a good frost to kiss the leaves and my roses.. well, I guess a good thing can't last forever.