Beautiful, Jeri! I love the smoky tones of the larger petals. Almost a Coffee Rose! Lady Ann is often maligned, but she can be drop dead gorgeous. Thank you! Kim

That's a very rare red color - It looks like an exotic tropical flower. I was looking at your "JeriJen" blog' pictures and saw Sutter's Gold. Those two would be nice together.

Alas, 'Sutter's Gold' grows here no longer. It just couldn't make it in my coastal conditions.

I grieved over that, because it was my grandmother's favorite -- but she didn't live where I live now. Instead, I have hopes for "Durst Plot," a found (likely climbing form) HT from Northern CA, which seems to be very happy here.
{{gwi:250590}}

Jeri

That doesn't look like a rose, it looks like a gorgeous satin bow. Just beautiful!

I agree.
LAK's blooms look like a lovely loose bow tied of really expensive, thick Satin ribbon.

In Southern California, she's completely without disease problems, and a very good bloomer. Our plant has struggled for a couple of years, after losing much of its roots to gophers, but she still pumps out blooms.

Jeri

Jeri, when we were at Burlington on April 7 after the Friends of Sequoia event, Burling had me look at blooms in her green house to make sure they were Lady Ann. They were also huge. She wasn't sure it was right because they were so large. Kim

Did you ever see her that big, Kim?
I hadn't, so I was surprised. But it IS a Terminal Bud, after all.

So, today I learned a neat new thing!

Jeri

Oh yes! At Sequoia, she grew easily ten feet up into the canopy where the big plants of It's Show Time, Cl. Chick-a-dee, Papoose, Cocktail, Moore's Striped Rugosa, Cl. Rise'n Shine were, right behind the huge old, choice Marechal Neil. That was to the house side of the soil bin, behind the mini tables, across from the outdoor mister. Lady Ann threw herself throughout that jungle and delivered monster flowers most of the year. Kim

I love the color and form! Let us know if she produces any more of those huge beauties!

I saw a big one like that at San Jose!

I like Lady Ann, I think she's charming, but my friend thought she was unattractive. ha.

Maybe she just needs time to really grow up. This one's only 5-6-7 years old . . .

Jeri

Jeri, do you have a blog?

Sherry

Here is a link that might be useful: If only sweat were irrigation...

Oh, I also meant to say "Way to go, Lady Ann Kidwell!"

Sherry

Here is a link that might be useful: If only sweat were irrigation...

Sherry -- I'd like to, but instead, I have a quarterly newsletter and three dogs.

I sort of wanted to do one for our upcoming trip around the country, but it looks so complicated, I just couldn't face it.

Jeri

weirdly, I am not much of a fan of large frilly roses but I have always adored LAK - those long petals and the colour, which I absolutely love (I have a friend who has it (not in east anglia, obviously) with an even brighter psilostemon geranium rambling around beneath - eye-ache but I just love it). Must be the reflexed petals (although I definately dislike many others with this trait) and the colour combo together.

Jeri

Blogs can be fun and a different way to end a day of travel and collect your thoughts.

Says she who has not updated either of her two blogs in months....

Hi Jeri: when you said, "Sutter's Gold could not make it in our coastal conditions." Please excuse me for my ignorance, but what is "coastal condition"? Is it similar to my windy, less sun, and cold Chicagoland? I sometimes base my rose selection on what you grow!

I'm taking these outrageously high dose of vitamin D prescribed by my doctor. That's how little sun we have. These pills help my backpain BIG TIME - Prevetion magazine reported that vitamin D helped with 80% of backpain sufferers.

Strawberry -- Southern California has a "Mediterranean" climate to begin with. Our rain falls only in the winter months.

We have a very cold arctic current along our coast, and the sea breeze off our very chilly ocean waters keeps the immediate coastal strip markedly cooler than the rest of Southern California.

In May, June, and July, when most of SoCal is hot and dry, we are USUALLY cool and often quite foggy. We might not see the sun break through the fog until about 4 p.m., and it's back behind the fog bank by 5 or 6.

Pernetianas -- and Sutter's Gold is one -- derive from the desert roses of the Middle East, where the air is very arid, so they don't respond well to cold dank fog. If it was a little warmer, they'd blackspot, but here, they just limp along, and maybe mildew.

Today's a good example. It may reach 90 today, where Kim is. Where I am, we'll probably stay in the low-to-mid 70's, and the hills will remain screened by fog.

We always try to tell visitors from other parts of the country to BRING A SWEATER in summer. They never believe us, and are cold, and have to end up buying one. I guess it's good for the local economy. :-)

Jeri

Thank you, Jeri, that's very interesting! I'm ignorant about Pernetianas - thanks for the info. I was asking for Sutter's Gold, but Burling, in her wisdom, gave me something else hardier.

We were 35 degree last night, now noon-time in the low 50's. It gets hot in July & August, but we have a steady wind. I used to grow up in Michigan near a lake. We didn't even have a fan, nor air conditioner - it was cool in the summer. Lake-side is so temperate, and I miss that.

No one has mentioned the hips of 'Lady Anne Kidwell', which are large, orange, profuse, and beautifully decorative. A wonderful rose!

Strawberryhill, during the summer, we can have a fifty degree (sometimes even greater!) temperature difference within as little as five miles from the ocean. In many places, the mountains are very close to the coast, and they prevent the inland desert heat from leaking out to the water, and the cool, wet air from the ocean from entering the valleys. Where they meet, there are some very interesting micro climates! Where jimofshermanoaks lives, just a few miles east of me (less than eight) and as up in the hills as I am, is much cooler, foggier and moister than here in Encino. It appears I'm zone 10a and he's zone 10b from the new interactive zone map. He can root soft wood cuttings easily, I can't. I have no giant white fly, he does. I have no rose slugs, he can. My citrus is sweet from the higher heat, it isn't sweet in his neighborhood due to lack of heat. His foliage issues I notice when I visit are mainly mildew, mine are rust and black spot.

Jeri is about 34 miles north and west of me and on the upslope facing the ocean, where I'm just over the mountain tops from the ocean. It appears the zone map states she's about a zone 10a also, yet between our two hillsides, as she said, there can easily be thirty degrees temperature differences, with mine being the hotter of the two. It makes a world of difference in what roses grow well as well as what plants can easily be grown. The mountains keep most of the fog out of my canyon. Jim's gets it funneled in by the Sepulveda Pass between the LA Basin and the San Fernando Valley. Jeri has the direct fog off the water with very little elevation variation between her and the water before you begin up her hill.

The worst I've ever encountered it was one Labor Day, I left work at 2 PM, right on the water where it was fog almost to the ground and a whopping 60 degrees. Fifteen miles inland and many hundreds of feet greater in elevation, it was brillant, direct sun, completely dry and 115 degrees! It's amazing what the cold ocean currents accomplish along this coast line. That weather difference accounts for the much greater population density at significantly higher prices in coastal areas compared to inland. The farther inland you go, the lower the density, higher and more arid the heat and lower the land and housing prices. Kim

That's true Kim.

When Clay bought this little hillside house, the spread of land out the window was all citrus orchards, with scattered homes here and there, out to the Oxnard Plain where it was all truck farming.

Now, most of Camarillo's orchards grow houses. Pricier ones at the west end of the hills, where the dang thangs look like hotels. And we'll lose the last of our orchards, if (as everyone fears/expects the Asian Citrus Psyllid makes it here). I hate to think of it taking out our old, old Navel Orange tree . . . :-(

The last couple of days, as your temps have heated up, our fog has been very thick, and the roses are dripping with dew.

Jeri

Very interesting and detailed explanations. I can relate to it all too. I am on the water too and the Great Lakes effect my weather in very significant ways as well. And because we have 4 seasons it does it 4 different ways. In the spring when it warms up and the lakes melt I'm always a few degrees cooler than areas just a few miles inland from me because the water is still cool. But I also often do not get the night time frosts/freezes that inland areas will get because the water temp is above freezing and keeps us more moderate. Cool breezes off the water keep us several degrees cooler most of the summer, which is nice. Go West on any road and as you cross each major thoroughfare the temperatures will climb a degree or two. However, our humidity is always higher than theirs. Then in the fall while everyone else West of us is cooling down rapidly we're still warmer by several degrees because the lake water is still warm from summer. That's when we usually have our worst bouts of fog. The warm air comes off the lake and hits the cooler air, condenses and just sits on us. In the winter, once the lakes have frozen, we're cold! Always 2 to 4 degrees colder than inland. And year round if a storm has winds coming out of the Northeast we're in trouble! We get Nor'Easters just like they do in New England off the ocean.

That's why knowing your climate and micro-climates is so important in growing roses and gardening in general. I have roses that spot regularly for me but are usually very clean for some of my friends in my rose society that live only a few miles further inland. But there are years where I'll still have some roses blooming at Thanksgiving while theirs were shut down at Halloween. Like Jeri always says, and taught me well, location, location, location!

Interesting, Sharon, thank you! Much like the warmer Gulf Stream moderates a lot of the east coast. I wonder how we get the cooler temps without the humidity? That would be ideal! Kim

Bakersfield is currently 92 and 33% humidity.

We are at 54 with 92% humidity

We are Cold damp and drippy. The fog crawls in your sweat shirts. I often wake up and can not see across the street and it looks like it rained overnight.

Bakersfield is about 100 miles as the crow flies

The hotter Bakersfield gets, the colder we are for several months of each year.

Yup. Kippy's got it.
Watching out-of-state visitors shiver in their sundresses is one of our cherished traditions. :-)

Kippy -- I love you! You're the only person here who comes close to sharing my microclimate. You "understand." :-)

(Kim understands. He just doesn't want to be here.)

Jeri ;-)

(Cold drizzle possible by Monday or Tuesday)

I would rather be THERE right now than HERE pulling weeds, hacking trees and trying to get the blamed chipper started to clean up before the fire dept deadline for brush clearance when it's 98 blinking degrees and NO shade! I just don't want to try growing the plants I want to grow without heat! Kim

Can hardly see across the street here.....

We still have visibility, but the local hills have disappeared, and it won't get cold tonight because fog holds the heat in. (That means I won't sleep well, and I will feel crabby when I wake up.)
S'OK. Not complaining. We're headed for Oklahoma next weekend, leaving roses behind to bloom with no one watching.

Jeri

I'm sitting in the den, looking out at the setting sun over the Simi hills. Nothing between here (Encino) and the mountains at the far west end of the San Fernando Valley. It's finally cooled off to comfortable levels, but it was HOT again today. Kim

And we had to close the windows (we don't "do" air conditioning here) because the air was too chilly and dank.

:-)

Jeri

That's one of the best parts about California weather, it usually gets quite COOL at night! Kim

hush now, you warm climate souls - still snivelling in our woollies here_ although the rain is more than welcome. 0 yes, Seil - I also know exactly what a nor'easterly is - we get them directly from Siberia. Microclimates are weird tho'. My little sheltered garden is hot, but also strangely windy as the prevailing winds just funnel straight into the garden and roar around the tiny little space. If I strategically place a dense box bush in one area, I get a little warm and windless place for seedlings. Less than half a mile away, the entire allotment drops 5 mteres down from the surrounding area, acting as a massive frost pocket - I have walked from my lush dahlias at home to see blackened stumps at the allotment. I spend a lot of time and effort arranging windbreaks and screening plants - often nothing stands between certain capsicum death apart from a flimsy green shade net.

Thank you, Kim, for a wonderful explanation of CA climate. No wonder my 3 sisters in CA live so close to the coastline and the lake! Yes, I take the cool-damp over blistering hot days anytime. I don't work in the garden in July and August not because of the heat, but the blast mosquitoes are hungry for my blood.