Cindi, that is one scarry story! So sorry for you problems and wishing you all well!

Cindi - FINALLY! Someone who understands living life! I'm not quite 40 yet, but if you were to look at me, with all my scars & contusions, the knot in my leg from breaking it (didn't even know I broke my leg until almost a full year later when the ER did an x-ray on it when I was in the hospital for kidney stones & saw the injury!)... I tell people it's not the age but the miles! It's like those people who buy white furniture to put on their white carpets, then cover everything with plastic so it stays pristine and yell at you for walking on the white carpet! That's why I like hardwood floors.. easy to sweep & I switch my couch usually about once every 6 months because the cats destroy it with clawing! You gotta live life, have fun while living, because you only get one shot at it and so make it count!

Views of the southside rose garden and also you can see the shrub border along the south property line. When it is leafed out compleatly, it hides my neighbors driveway so that you can't even see it.

wow, so green!

Wow Cindi, that is scary indeed! My arm and back hurt just from reading your description of tackling that monster root but I wasn't expecting the eye injury part!

Oh I'm sorry. I didn't mean to scare you all and make you hurt! What an empathic group!
I'm fine. It's just one of those things. Here's some pretty pictures to make everyone smile. First one is Eyeconic Pink Lemonade, which opened today, and then Shazam! which opened 4 days ago. Both new to me this year.





Well, shoot. Those pics didn't seem so blurry on my phone. The wind is blowing, of course, so the flowers were moving. Or are they not blurry to you all?

Shazam! is blurry pretty bad, but Pink Lemonade isn't that bad. I kinda like it. I am waiting to see what is local this year as I didn't want to order any of the Bullseyes (I know that some of the nurseries here are carrying them). But must be nice to have some buds! I've got lots of leaves.. everyone who survived is leafing out, but no buds yet. Could definitely use a nice rain or two to encourage them!

And we're just glad you're OK! Eyeballs are NOT things to be screwing around with! Going blind is SCARY! Last weekend I was working out in the yard & got a face-full of dirt blown back right into my face & got all kinds of dirt in my eyes. Couldn't see at all. Screamed for DH to come walk me inside & into the bathroom so I could wash my face/eyeballs. VERY scary.

I was just certain the brown dots were specks of dirt that got under my contacts. The wind is always blowing dirt in my eyes. I used the eye wash and when the dots were still there the next day, I threw out the contacts and did a more vigorous eye wash. My eyes still burn and feel gritty, and I'm still sensitive to light, and those are not symptoms that go with the vitreous detachment.
Today I have 8 roses blooming. This is the first time ever that I've had roses blooming at the same time as tulips, daffodils, grape hyacinths, lilacs, peonies and iris. We have a long growing season here and bloom times are spaced out accordingly. I even have some tall phlox in bloom!
Except for the wind, the weather is so nice today I might skip my Rose Society meeting tonight and stay home to pull weeds. Or plant my new David Austin order.
Or plant some of the new roses I snuck home today from Lowes. They had nice 2 gallon drift roses for 12.98 and I couldn't resist. Walmart had a Ralph Moore mini, 'My Valentine' for $10 in a 1gallon pot, but it was already 2 1/2 feet tall and blooming. I may go back for it. I have 3 of 'Valentines Day' and it might go nicely where the 4th of that group disappeared. Does anyone else grow My Valentine? It only gets fair ratings on Help Me Find.

Late to this thread.

Cindi, I am happy the eye injury wasn't worse--and will be extremely careful myself from now on!

Mike, I.LOVE.THAT.DOG! The boss' Husky comes to the office with him every day and has a bed in the corner of MY office...where her treats are kept. LOL




Borrowed a work camera and found it takes marvelous flower photos. NOID red.

No one has roses other than bodybags (Yes, I was BAD.. I bought a bodybag Lady X, and immediately regretted it when I opened the bag. NO ROOTS!! The bag was like 12" long and less than 3" of roots? WTH!!). Soon, soon.. *sigh* I just hate waiting.

This is all the blooms I have for now. Some five year old tulips that are just NOW finally blooming (didn't even know I had a yellow? first time I've ever seen it!). Need to complete the removal of the dead stuff out of my mini bed & remulch it.


I found out why I never got tulips or daffodils to bloom here.. and most of the time if they did grow they never bloomed. I planted them too shallow! Only time I'd ever planted them was in New York & there you barely put them in the ground w/the tips almost above the ground. Here? 4x the length of the bulb. So if the bulb is 2" tall, plant them 8 inches deep. Did that with these hyacinths and they actually grew!


And, of course, my vinca's blooming. Can't kill vinca. This all was originally the gold variegated "Illuminations". But all the plants I bought almost all 100% reverted back to normal vinca colors.

I haven't even looked for roses at any nurseries this spring because I simply have no more room for new ones. Meantime the old ones are growing nicely after their big spring prunning. Basicly what is blooming arouind here lately are daffodils and tulips. And the flowering crabapples just started blooming.

Pretty, Rita.

I just love my daffs and tulips. They just say hello, it is spring, to me!

Rita, your crabapple blossoms are beautiful! you are the same zone as us, but our crabapples bloomed 3 weeks ago. My roses are starting their first big flush. i had 10 roses blooming today. the tulips are finished now. Smaller iris are finished and medians are starting, with a few mixed-up TBs blooming today.
I went around the yard today taking pictures of everything in bloom, because by tomorrow, the blooms may all have blown off. We're getting some rough storms tonight. I even took pics of stuff inside the house, just in case it wasn't here tomorrow!
Weather channel keeps talking about Wichita as if we're the bullseye. I hope not! Large hail not only smashes the plants, it compacts the soil.

Lets just hope all is the same tomorrow and the bad weather passes.

I have 6 small crabapples as I just think they are very pretty. I love it when they bloom. Just wish they would last longer. Not even sure if they last longer than the cherry blossoms or not. The roses do their spring flush around here each year begining of June so not going to be any rose blooms here for a long time yet.

Cindi, you okay?
=

Cut these from the yard, today.

Pope John Paul II - white
Julia Child - yellow
Easy Does It - apricot/salmon
Heritage - pink
NOID - red

First bloom on my patio/tree rose.

Wow! Everyone's got roses except me! No buds on anyone yet... leaves yes. Buds? No. But I think this past Sunday was the last of the cold for me. We had a nasty nasty cold storm blow through.. mainly wind (windchill was about 10degs, ambient temp was 25) and snow, but the snow melted almost on contact, so free moisture. I have 3 iris stalks (2 NoIDs, one I can't remember 'cuz I didn't write it down, so I guess it's now a NoID), my purple plum "Thunderchild" & "Newport" are done with flowering, my Profusion crabapple is literally bowing itself over with flowers (need to take pictures of the limbs literally bowing), hyacinth is almost spent, lilacs are just barely starting. Can't wait til I see my first rose! I did notice that my Ring of Fire has practically exploded this year. Last year it was about 8" tall. Right now, it's about a foot & half tall. Same thing with Picante. Last year she was only about 2' tall at the end. Right now, it's over 3' tall and I really need to prune it! I pruned only like 12 roses last weekend.. and that's because I pretty much had to. Ripped out a 9'x4' section of grass (my very last grass section in my entire lot.. and kept that only for the dog to roll around on, but he couldn't get to it any more due to the roses!) to put in my daylilies that I had ordered. Going to start remulching the back this week if my back will let me. Got new fabric (don't EVER buy this: http://www.homedepot.com/h_d1/... . It's absolute CRAP.) so need to refabric the sections I screwed up on & put down the new mulch I just bought.

It never ends!!

I bought a new pink double knockout rose on Saturday at about 5 pm. I feel so guilty. I needed the rose to replace one that died because it was in a hedge and looked like a missing tooth to me. The grocery store nearest me has a parking lot nursery and they had nice looking roses for 9.99. I jokingly told the clerk that I was buying it because it might not be there tomorrow, after the storm. That store was built where a huge tornado came through 21 years ago. Hedgerow trees in that path still show the effects to this day. Well sure enough the tornado Saturday took the same path. I'm still jumpy thinking about it. That intersection with the store, and the 2 main roads leading to it are still closed so I haven't been back. Their power is still out, so I doubt they're open.
We lost satellite tv for a while, but never lost power. Everything here is fine. We were as prepared as you can be, and i have to say the local news and even weather channel did a great job preparing us ahead of time. They were right on the money this time. Only shocker is that there wasn't more damage for as many strong funnels as there were. They must have just skipped around instead of tearing it up on the ground like they usually do.
As far as plant shopping on Saturday, I bought more than the rose because I was certain everything would get hail damage, so I bought what i wanted and put it in my garage. I brought in every plant I could and unloaded the top shelves in my shadehouse because I figured they would be spilled either from wind or hail. Usually with a tornado we get lots of hail. not this time!

It's been a very weird winter here. There's a lot of color in the garden from bulbs, rhododendrons, and other such things, but the roses are only budding now. The banksias are the only things to bloom on schedule.