Dana,
I just took a quick break from my desk work to get a cup of coffee and stroll through your beautiful parade of photos. They are just beautiful. We have many of the same varieties, you and I, but you also have ones I don't, so it's fun to see them here.
How is the Rose Midge problem this year? That's another thing you and I have in common.
For those of you who have never experienced rose midges, pray seven times a day, offer sacrifices to the gods, perform ritualistic ceremonies, or whatever else you must do to keep them away. They are nearly invisible flies that will lay their eggs just beneath a bud or a within a new shoot and the resulting miniscule larva will eat just enough of the plant tissue to abort nearly all of your rose buds after the first full flush - and that's if you're lucky enough to get even the first flush. Thereafter, you will have a rose garden with an abundance of leaves and virtually no blooms for the rest of the year, or you'll have bent-over buds that never open. Even if they don't already exist in your area, you can unwittingly import them on a potted rose from an infected nursery.
And the midges can stay. Forever. The teeny-tiny larva drop off the plant, burrow themselves into a microscopic cacoon and can over-winter in the ground, no matter how cold it gets, to come back next year in their nearly invisible fly-stage, and start/resume the process all over again. They keep coming back like an unwelcome relative at the holidays - only worse, because they stay. And their population can explode exponentially - like an unwelcome relative's undisciplined children, only worse - the children don't destroy the rose blooms (due to the thorns) but the midges do!
