Can everyone believe it? It's almost over! Wow! The year's already over half over!! WOW! Does time fly when you're having fun?

So having fun? Not me, that's for sure.. too many weeds & not enough blooms!

But here's a Colorific from this morning. *swoon!*

Toni...

Too hot, too many weeds, too many projects, but loving the garden in bloom, even tho' many of them a looking a bit fried. Time to dead head so I don't have to see that part.

Here's a shot of a rose named after me, but the reason I am showing it is because it is the seed parent of the next rose and I am hoping the breeder will introduce that one to commerce.



A little more of a close up:



The rose I am testing 'LynGxCht'




The seed parent doesn't handle the triple digit temps as well as the new rose

Smiles,
Lyn

I love the new creation - a beautiful blend of soft colors!

porkpal said:I love the new creation - a beautiful blend of soft colors!

Very very pretty!!! Not everyone can have a rose named after themselves! Lucky!

I got a few blooms today. The weather's been much more "temperate" and "normal", meaning that it's not the high 90s, low 100s. Yay! So the roses are showing MUCH more prettier colors. Still pretty stingy on blooms this year. My season's already winding down as everything's getting into their fall flush. *sigh* 2 months of blooms almost doesn't make it worth it... especially when the roses get fried the same day they open! All these images are true-to-color.

Colorific


My original Blue Girl. I wasn't sure if she'd made it through this past winter. She had winterkill 100% down to the ground & then, with our season starting SOOOOOOO late, I didn't see any growth until June. And now? 2 flowers!


Charisma is such a pretty rose.. I have too many of them! Luckily, they're all tiny plants. The biggest one I have tops off at about a foot tall.


Della Reese is gonna give me another bloom! I'll definitely have to take pictures when it first opens & before rain / sun beat it to snot so I can give the extreme beauty of this rose. I love it!


Distant Drums is going pretty good, too!


Molineux is just SOO tiny this year... never been a huge robust rose for me.


But Star of the Nile.. what she lacks in stature she makes up for in brightness!


One of my absolute strongest roses, however, is Summer Sunshine. Bought this rose back in '09, have neglected it woefully.. heck I even forgot it was around until I saw blooms! But she blooms!! Consistently, all summer I'll get 2-4 blooms at a time.


Another small rose bush is Vavoom. I think it's due to such a short season this year. I wonder how many roses I'll end up losing this winter due to this?


And I do have some non-roses blooming, too. The fall plants are going pretty good. Mostly agastaches.. but my daylilies are also blooming. But I really cannot wait until my hibiscus start! I bought this as a single plant back in.. '10?



And in my daylilies is a Lucifer Crocosmia


Back also in 2010, I dug up this Rocky Mountain Penstemon (Rocky Mountain Beardtongue (Penstemon strictus) ) from my mom's property in the southern NM mountains and it's finally really blooming! Didn't bloom in '11, bloomed once in '12, but this year, it's been blooming for almost 2 months straight!

The rose named after me will never be in commerce and only used for breeding. The "naming" was more of a "thank you" for all of the volunteer work I've done in the rose world. Yes, it is an honor.

The funny part is that Hortico has introduced another rose that looks similar using my name for the rose. So there is a rose in commerce with my name, but it is the wrong rose

I am writing my report of the test rose and will share your comment with the breeder. I think it's a good plant, but I have two more years of testing before the final report. I planted it in the ground last fall and it was covered with snow for a month, but didn't die back at all. It's handling the triple digit temps very well and has the beautiful foliage of the seed parent.

It's a young plant, but I think it's going to be a winner and really, really want to see it in commerce.

Smiles,
Lyn

My roses are starting a second flush (finally.. of course.. right before summer winds down completely donchaknow), and because the temps have been cooler (I think yesterday it got up to 68degs.. I'm not complaining as that's SOO much more comfy than 96degs!!) the colors have been spectacular! Being lazy, so just posting a link to what I posted over on Cubits.

http://cubits.org/bluegardens/...

Oh Joy. (NOT). I found a ground nest of those nasty hornets, wasps, whatever they are. Wasn't there a few weeks ago when I planted the late season sunflowers out front.

I have to work out there in the planterbox to relocate some daylilies. Filling up empty spots to redo that garden area. I have to get it done as I already have plenty of bulbs ordered for there and the daylilies have to be in place first. I can't believe how ratty it looks in that garden bed. It used to be so pretty afew years ago.

So I guess I will be putting out the seven dust tonight when they settle down. I was out there simply putting in my measuring stakes to get ready so that I know exactly were each daylily hole goes and that is when I found the wasps. I don't think they want me near there.

Those colors are spectacular - especially the "blue" roses!

Toni......

Your roses are looking good. I couldn't even begin to grow some of them because they would fry in minutes in my garden, so I'll just have to enjoy your photos.

All of the then roses I planted and the six roses I transplanted have made it and have bloomed. They are young plants, so I really don't know how they will do once they are more settled.

I have one more flush, so we'll see how they do in cooler temps.

Smiles,
Lyn

Lyn - Why do you state that they'd fry there? What's your altitude? I'm at 6100 ft and we get into the upper 90s/low 100s a few times a year here. What kills my roses is the winter, not the heat/dryness for the most part.

Our altitude is about 150' and roses fry here.

Toni........ I am only at 2200 feet. You are right in that the higher elevations make the light stronger. My problem is that my rose garden is located between the back slope on my property and the house, so it traps heat ... and, yes, cold. In my climate, once it hits the 90s, it stays in the 90s and low 100s all summer. Not just periods of high heat, it's a long period of high heat.

Once the roses are more mature, they seem to handle the heat better. Firefighter was pure ugly this summer, but I only planted it this spring, so it's a young plant.

It's the heat that is hardest on my roses. Even when the temps get down to around 10 degrees F in winter, I have no die back. I think, it's harder on them when we don't have snow that sticks.

With the heat, I really have to make sure they are well hydrated and that I select roses with thick petal substance and dense foliage because everything else fries quickly. I can't buy mulch up here, so I have to go out to the forest to collect forest duff, or to a friend's to collect oak leaves and I go to the utility company's chipping pile for wood chips to top everything off. It's a lot of hard labor because I have to haul everything up from the street level. Without mulch, the top few inches of my glacier slurry soil dries out very, very quickly and that's where the feeder roots are located that take up moisture to the plants.

Next week I am getting an irrigation system installed, so I will be able to get everything watered on a more consistent basis. I garden on four levels, so that will really make my gardening life a lot easier.

The good news is that I have a rose garden

I don't think I'll be adding a lot more roses and am learning about other plants.

Smiles,
Lyn

A few weeks ago, the roses were great. We have had cool damp weather for a while now and the roses are showing it. I did a little Rose talk for a garden club last night and had shamefully showed samples of leaves with mildew, blackspot, bug damage, magnesium or iron deficiency, and an unknown issue: The leaf was bright yellow with irregular bright green spots. The only thing that I didn't find was rust....but I'm sure if I looked harder, I probably would have found that too. I hope that the weather improves and the roses have good fall display

Going here in a couple of Sundays from now.. WOW.

http://www.ssprd.org/Portals/0...

You can click on each quadrant & it'll give you a map of what rose is where. I can't WAIT!!

I LOVE that color of Charisma,just like the sunset glow and flames

Tried to get pics of some of the roses last night after the thunderstorm that fly through, but most of my pictures I took came out fuzzy. Will try again this evening (this morning was too bright).

http://cubits.org/bluegardens/...

Your roses are lovely - and they have wonderful foliage. Mine are now mostly leafless sticks - but some are still blooming!

Strange, strange weather ...

August is usually one of the hottest months in my climate. There is always a 40 to 50 degree difference between day temps and night temps. This year, August temps have stayed pretty much in the low 90s and high 90s, but night temps are dropping to the low 50s and high 40s. The leaves are already beginning to change color !

Next week's forecast is predicted to be back up to the triple digits as usual for this time of year. This is going to be an interesting fall.

Smiles,
Lyn

We are having what seems to have become the new normal weather: daytime temperatures over 100 with 50% humidity or higher, nights about 80 and NO rain. Everything is getting pretty crispy and our pastures have no green grass. The trees here are going dormant too, but it is for lack of water - at least I hope they are only dormant. The summer of 2011 was so dry many trees died. This used to be an area of fairly high rainfall - not recently!

Sorry to hear that, Porkpal. We generally have no rain during the summer months with high temps except for a few thunderstorms. Not enough rain to matter but, we often get lightening strikes to the ground, so that makes this a wildfire area during the summer months.

It's always something.

Smiles,
Lyn