Gladly, Sue, although in England we have no blooms as yet, so it will be a little while. It's sad, because in France we had roses on our last trip there, back in March. We'll be going back to France on 22nd, and I'm really worried that I will have missed all the irises... But at least it should be warm enough to swim!

Every year, Music Box gets bigger and bigger. I think mine must be a sport. The blooms and leaves are all the size of a regular rose. In this picture, it's the monster on the left. That's Gertrude Jekyll by the arbor and Easy Does It to the right, and Music Box dwarfs them both.


The pink shrubby one in the front is another mystery rose I would love to identify. It was new here last year. It may have come from Chamblee.

My Music Box also dwarfs many of my other roses, but all of Ping Lim's roses do that here. I think the general range of 2-3 feet is appropriate only for the colder zones. Kiss Me also says it's 2-3 feet, but it's one of the largest roses in my garden.

Pretty picture Cindi! Reminds of my garden years ago when I only did pinks, blues, purples and lavenders

This cute little female was 3 feet in front of me, I shot several photos and these turned out decent.


Heaven on Earth


Cafe, love it's dark buds!


Julia Child, such a good and healthy yellow


Busy garden

I especially enjoy your "garden" shots. As you said, beautifully busy.

Cindi, I love that garden shot!

Beautifully busy garden, Suzanne!

Love your garden, Suzanne. I have a running wish list of roses from pictures you have posted, along with the other lovely posts here.

Me, too !

Most of my roses have yet to bloom, but a couple are in their first flush. I grabbed my old camera for a few shots of the side yard before I came in last night. It's a bit difficult to focus when I am seeing mosquitos landing on my hands, so I only took a few shots .. quickly at that.

Hopefully, I'll have more time for photos this evening




Sequoia Gold



Little Artist



Silver Cloud



Heuchera 'Paprika' and 'Obsidian' covered with dogwood petal snow in the side yard

Lyn, that Sequoia Gold is beautiful! I don't have any rose that covers itself in blooms the way that one does! Very nice!
I took a lot of pictures last night before the hail and 70 mph winds came through, so glad I did, because today everything looks kind of battered. Very happy the hail was only pea sized. People south of me in Oklahoma got hit a lot harder.

Little Artist!

Lyn your roses look so perfectly gorgeous as to almost appear unreal!

Gorgeous, Lyn! Sequoia Gold is indeed a stunner! Is that a second one near the dark heuchera? They're so pretty together!

Thank you ever so much for all of the complements. It is so very encouraging. I think at this point all I see is all of the weeds and all of the work that still needs to be done. The guy that was supposed to do the weed eating and go to the chipping pile with me today was a no show. Arggghhhh.

I have all of that to do tomorrow. Your kind words made my day !

Cindi ... Sequoia Gold just does that with no help from me. Both plants really got deer chomped last fall .... along with all of the other roses ... and came back wonderfully. I got one more full plant shot today and one close up:



Another favorite rose has always been Ralph's Creeper. The blooms don't hold up in the heat of summer, but I love the ruffly blooms in spring and fall, so it's a keeper for me:



Missy ... I love Little Artist, too. It was on the shovel prune list for this year, but with a hard prune by the doe last fall, the plant is really taking off. I am guessing it is a rose that really needs the taste of steel to do well. However, there are a lot of other variables messing with the roses this year, so I'll test that assumption next spring ... I may be able to keep it.

Porkpal ... I only keep the roses that are happy here, with one or two exceptions. I don't want roses that need a lot of TLC. For you it's the old garden roses that work best. I need repeat blooming roses because of the rose curculios, but many of them are still no care roses for me.

Neal ... good catch. Yes, there are two plants of Sequoia Gold in that photo. The heuchera in the photo is Amethyst Myst. It does look almost black at twilight. I was going to divide AM this spring, but it got deer chomped down to the crown, too. Next spring ...



Thanks, again.

Amethyst Myst is my favorite of the heuchera!
Sequoia Gold is so cute, that last full plant shot is heart shaped.

So glad I am fenced in, the deer do eyeball the plants from the other side.
Have you seen any weevils so far Lyn? I haven't yet and I keep checking. It seemed to me they are usually here by my first flush.

I only had a fraction of the weevils I usually have. I was extra-diligent about getting rid of them last year, and I think the killing spree paid off.

This year they came after about 10 of my roses (instead of hundreds) a month ago, and I just kept walking around to those 10 several times a day and squashing every weevil I saw. I haven't seen any weevils for about two weeks now, so I think that was it for this year.

Thanks, Suzanne. I think you would love growing Paprika at the foot of one of your blue toned clematis vines as a color echo, if you have one growing through an orange toned rose. It's a healthy heuchera as compared to many of them.



Oh, and you are right, that Sequoia Gold plant is heart shaped ...

I'll probably see the curculios in about a week to a week and a half and then all of the roses will be covered with them. I have species roses growing on properties all around me. Once they finish their bloom, my roses are the only roses in bloom so all of the dang bugs in the area head straight for my garden. At least they have to find it ...

Zuzu ... It's easier to just pick off the buds of those ten roses in the morning and then you don't have to revisit the rose several times a day. I don't think you will have the same problem I do with every rose being hit because my garden is the only source of food for them around. Just guessing. You are doing good work keeping them from breeding in your garden. I know it's a PITA, but it's the only way to make them come looking for your garden instead of having them just pop up from under the ground and say, "Where's lunch ?"

I decided against picking off the buds long ago for a number of reasons. First, because I don't have an army of gardeners to disbud 2,000 rose bushes. There's no way of knowing in advance whether the weevils will want to bother hundreds of roses or only 10, and no way of knowing which roses those will be, so they'd all have to be done. I don't even see the weevils until the buds get big enough to attract them, and by then it's too late to do all of the roses. Besides, it's easier to kill the weevils than to disbud the roses.

Second, because the weevils always attack the gallicas and other once-blooming roses, and I certainly don't want to remove their buds.

Third, because I gardened for years here without any weevils, and then they came here from someplace else, so even if I were to disbud every rose to break the weevils' reproductive cycle, they would just come here from somewhere else again. Judging by this year's weevil count in comparison with last year's, I think killing them is a better option in my garden.

I was a super hunter of them last year too! Removed any buds that had been damaged before it got any chance to fall to the ground too.