Thanks so much to all of you!
So many things could have gone wrong with this rose.
The daylily is 18" away from the rose, and Sue, that is what dormant daylilies look like here in the spring. That one is very well established. They come up, get frost bitten, grow some more, get bit again. This one may have spring sickness also. We've had too many days in the 80s and nights below freezing, and the poor daylilies aren't as smart as the roses. The evergreen daylilies in particular take a beating here in the spring. By summer, they look great.
I will relocate the daylily. That whole row of roses has daylily clumps behind them, so I'll most likely be doing quite a bit of digging and dividing.
I don't have gophers, chipmunks, voles or moles, but we do have mice. I'll be on the lookout for those. Rabbits do some burrowing and chewing too, so I'll have my dogs check out that area every morning for a while. Sometimes, a hole means there's a turtle nest or snake eggs!
I've been watering every day, which sounds like a lot, but the wind and heat dries everything out so quickly! That's why I had straw around the rose. It's possible it's had too much water, right?
Neal, fertilizer burn is a real possibility. I fertilized my daffodils earlier this year, and then I fertilized the roses, and in that area, I have both so it may have gotten a double dose. I forgot all about that until you mentioned it. The daffodil fertilizer, which was just basic 10-10-10, was applied the week before the Easter snow and freeze. Horrible timing for a rose, for sure.
In looking at my own picture on the big computer monitor, I see the ends of the canes look ragged and chewed. I'm not sure how that happened. My felcos are nice and sharp. When rabbits prune for me, they leave sharp edges too. This doesn't make sense?
Hybrid teas are always a challenge for me. I'm trying to do better this year, trying to figure out where I go wrong. This year, if I can't get my few HTs to grow well without spraying, then I'll dig them out. I am going to put forth some effort to grow them organically before I give up on them, though.
