Wow, those are some big beautiful blooms!

Well here is what my roses look like in Hot and Humid Houston, TX
I think I have definitely lost 'Souvenir de la Malmaison'
but 'Gruss an Aachen' and 'Rouletii' look pretty good.

'Gruss an Aachen'


'Rouletii'


'Souvenir de la Malmaison'

I have already ordered a replacement rose to be delivered in October and it will be 'Hermosa' which will give me nice pink blooms which
I can use to make "Rose-Tarragon Vinegar"

Travis, those blooms are enormous!

Willinator, hang in there!

Do not give up on SdlM yet. I see green cane there. Keep it watered and find a spot that only gets the cooler morning sun. It may yet surprise you.

Why I do not hold out much hope is the fact that it appears to be dying from the ground
up. That is not a good sign, even with a little bit of green in the canes.

That is not necessarily dead cane at the bottom. Many roses get that brown bark like wood at the bottom of canes. I nearly killed my Reine des Violettes because I was cutting that wood out and didn't realize it was still live cane. Like I said, give it more time.

This is a NoID I got last year, Death's Door. The deer ate every bud last year and did my pruning for me. This year it's been canker ridden and a magnet for every bug that passes by. They can smell weakness. I was set to shovel prune it when it suddenly started growing leaves on one cane and then a bud! I'm just wondering if might have reverted to root stock.








Salita
I bought it because it's the exact colour of my front door. I glad that I put one in a vase because it has suddenly been infested with wooly aphids. Yuck. Those things creep me out. It's not just the sticky fluff, it's the way they jump at me when I try to squish them. They won't just sit there and die like the green aphids.



Raspberry Cream Twirl

OK here is what I think. First this is on its own roots as an OGR and thus it is not a rootstock plant and when these die from the base as young as the
plant is, it is likely dying and I will know about the cane soon enough and long before a replacement plant might arrive. I will watch to see if any part
stays alive. I will also contact the Antique Rose Emporium where I got this rose on March 27th 2020. I will try to send them photos of the Rose bush
as it is now. I am waiting for a reply from the Antique Rose Emporium about this rose.

Change of subject... I don't get bad infestations of Japanese beetles; usually just a couple of weeks of them, and they mostly bother the light colored blooms. Normally I just pluck them off, but this year a flock of sparrows is doing it for me. They are hovering over the roses like helicopters, then diving in to gobble them up. I've never seen the sparrows do this before.

The lowly sparrow, which usually gets a negative rap, comes through like a champ !

That was what I thought too, and felt bad about maligning them in the past - briefly, at least.

OK, I realize this post is probably not everyone's cup of tea, but for those who appreciate the interesting designs of snail shells, you may like these pictures. Today we were blessed with a much needed heavy rainfall, which always causes the garden snails to crawl out from under the creeping phlox that grows at the top of the old brick wall that separates the courtyards from the elevated garden. From there they traverse their way down the wall where the rain can't drown them, and I'm always interested to see them and their interesting shells. Here they are for your perusal:

Cornelius


Marguerite


Jerome


Matilda


Salvadore


Josephine


Speedy


Blob - uh, I mean Bob


Titus


Marcel


Angelica


Marlene


Gerald


Mrs. McKenzie


Eunice


Wilhelmina


Frenchy


Slim


Baby Snooks


Margerie


Norbert


Maxwell


Marconius

They are all so beautiful and I love their names!

Wow, ours are so boring looking compared to yours Mike! I rarely find any in my garden, I think the chickens find most of them.

I hope they all ended up in your freezer! I had to do that when we lived in the Marshall Islands. We had the large African snails and they could eat a shrub in one night. I'd go out with a flashlight and have a snail hunt most nights.

They don't do any damage in my gardens, as they live under the creeping phlox, which is inedible. They are a lot like earthworms, just digesting detritus and producing micronutrients.

In that case you are super lucky! Why is creeping phlox inedible?

Creeping phlox, aka moss phlox, is not a leafy plant. It's a ground cover with tough intertwined roots like a bowl of spaghetti noodles, and thin, needle-like greenery growing above it, almost like a conifer except that it forms a thick mat. The snails live beneath the mat, and live off decomposing detritus and microbes found in the soil, rather than eating the plant. During heavy rains, water can pool in the flat area where the phlox grows, so the snails exit the phlox where it spills over a brick wall, and crawl down the wall vertically so they don't drown in the rain puddles above them. If you lift up the "blanket" of phlox during dry conditions you can find a small nation of snails slowly going about their business underneath.

OK here is what I think. First this is on its own roots as an OGR and thus it is not a rootstock plant
and when these die from the base as young as the plant is, it is likely dying and I will know about
the cane soon enough and long before a replacement plant might arrive. I will watch to see if any
part stays alive. I will also contact the Antique Rose Emporium where I got this rose on
March 27th 2020. I will try to send them photos of the Rose bush
as it is now. I am waiting for a reply from the Antique Rose Emporium about this rose.
Here are some photos as of today



These compare with a few days ago!

Thanks for the explanation, Mike. That is a plant I've never grown. I might have to try it.