Sue, your roses are just spectacular! Love the Princess Bride meme.
I rushed around yesterday trimming off any dead canes I could find on my roses so I will know for sure next spring how much winter kill I have. It was 76 degrees out and I didn't bother to put on my gauntlets. Big Mistake! My arms are scratched and bloody and my fingers have blisters from the pruners. But...I pruned and mulched every single rose. My husband went out and bought 20 bags of compost and topsoil so I could mound up some of the newer HTs. Temps dropped 30 degrees right at 5 pm, just as forecast, brrr! We got the hoses drained and put up and secured the lawn furniture right before the winds moved in. I was so tired I could barely stay awake to watch Dancing With the Stars. Glad I did, though, because Witney came up with really brilliant choreography and Alfonso was stunning.
The winds woke us up when a 57 mph gust blew the big wooden rocking chair off the porch. It sounded like someone's roof blew off and hit our house, so noisy! I am so glad we took the time to trim all our trees last week. Any weak limbs would have torn off in that wind had we not removed them.
Palatine is shipping my roses the last week of November. I've watered and mulched the places where the roses will go so it won't be too difficult to plant. Who knows, we could be under a foot of snow that week, or back to shorts weather.
