Alan, I sure don't blame you for staying indoors in that kind of heat! We broke all records last week here in New York with two consecutive days where the temperature reached 104. I didn't do anything in the garden on those two days (except water).
Interestingly, I just did a quick web search for summer pruning of Austin roses and found the following excerpt at www.davidaustinroses.com:
Roses for Zones 9-10
English Roses are extremely healthy and vigorous in the warmer US zones. Their ability to repeat flower three or four times in a season means that some varieties will tend to get significantly larger than required if they are not summer pruned.
In the hottest areas of the US, many of our larger shrub roses have a tendency to climb. Vigor is a great asset in a shrub rose, provided that the energy of the plant is diverted away from merely producing great height into producing masses of flowering shoots on a nicely rounded shrub.
To achieve this, we advise summer pruning the more vigorous varieties when they are grown as shrubs in warmer zones (8 and above). This will help to maintain the desired height and will also encourage quicker repeat-flowering. The other great benefit of summer pruning is that it will stimulate the growth of a greater number of flowering side shoots.
