It's SO nice to see some roses in bloom! Thank you for posting them, Zuzu.
We were blessed with wonderful weather this weekend - sunny and unseasonably warm, with temperatures in the low 70's!!! That's about 20 degrees warmer than normal, so I spent all of yesterday and today cleaning up the gardens. I pruned many of the roses, and cleaned up the fallen leaves out of some of the beds. I cut down the ornamental grasses, and cut off the dried stalks on a lot of perennials. I now have ten giant paper lawn bags full of cut rose canes and garden detritus sitting in the driveway.
The crocuses have bloomed, as have the hellebores. And the early tulips and daffodils are pushing up through the mulch. Virtually all my roses are covered in new bud shoots. They all seem to have come through the winter just fine, with the possible exception of Betty Boop. The piths of her canes were brown all the way down to the bud union, so I had to cut her back hard. Most springs I only have to cut her back to a height of about 2 - 3 feet, so this year her canes are going to have to start from scratch. I think I lost Marmalade Skies, too. It had weakened last summer due to root gall, so I'm not surprised. It just gives me an excuse to shop for a new rose to take its place.
It's going to cool back down into the 50's this week, but this weekend's weather was a wonderful way to start the spring. I actually got sunburned!
