I feel for you. I really do. Maybe after the rain you can stake things and when they dry out they'll perk up. This is why I stopped growing many perennials; they never seem to recuperate after heavy rain, but my roses seem much better. I was so excited to see Awakening in full bloom only to find her flowers face down in the mud! We've all been there but it doesn't make it feel any better. Yours don't actually look too bad.

Been doing the same thing here but our area is behind so no blooms yet...Maybe a good thing...I wish you the best!

That is really frustrating! I feel your pain when it comes to interminable rain -- we have that here in the winter, but I feel lucky that it didn't mess up my Spring flush this year. This seems like a great excuse to cut extravagant bouquets of almost-open buds and bring them inside.

I feel your pain. We have had tortential rain for the last 2 days

Finally today it is dried out but some of my roses that were heavy with buds look very unhappy today.

What a weird spring

So very frustrating and disappointing for you. I hope, like vaporvac and others, that your roses perk up.

Oh, I'm sorry to hear that. How sad and disappointing for you. And you garden was looking so pretty! Hopefully they will pop back up. It's okay to express your feelings here. We all understand.

I think some gardeners in California cut their roses every day before they fry but that must have been some rain. I wish you well Festiva.

Same here. Fortunately some of my roses are more rain tolerant than others.

Festiva,

You stay in roses because you are not a quitter. Also, there's just nothing like roses, and if you give up on them you won't have any.

Yes, you have more than your share of obstacles in growing them in Maryland (blackspot, mildew, midge fly, rose slug, thrips, Japanese Beetle, deer, rabbits, deluges, drought, damaging winds, winter kill, etc....), but your achievements with your roses are more precious and cherished than the other person's who grows roses in near paradisical conditions.

Moses

We have been having rain since Sunday and projected through this next Sunday grr. The thing I like to do when it rains, is to plant seeds. They get watered and come up quickly and I don't have to do anything lol.

I am just down the road in NoVA and it is the same here. On the bright side, my containers do not need watering. And from down the road I see lots of glorious color. The trick is not to view them up close right now.

So sorry to hear that your spring flush is ruined and damaged by the rain. We are certainly at the mercy of the weather at this time of the year. But I think many are affected by this persistent rain, me included. My blooming peonies are suffering greatly too.

Please add me to your well wishers list. Your thought crosses my mind many times during the year. it is usually followed by the sight of some little p retry sitting out there. I’m not even fighting rose midge this year. I spend too much time bent over as it is. :-)

I'm on the other side of the country, but know exactly what you're dealing with. Every year I think I will hit the ground running and get a head start on garden clean up, pruning, feeding and planting the new stuff. I always forget this is our one and only rainy season, and it is absolutely needed in this dry as dust place, but I can't get anything accomplished until June. It IS frustrating!

I know you were just kidding, but moving to CA isn't the answer. I lived there most of my life and now I would really hate to give up lilacs, peonies (even if they are laying splat on the ground) and all the other things that won't grow there. Every part of the US has it's own set of limitations.

And, if I remember right, "It never rains in Southern California, but, girl don't they warn ya. It pours, man, it pours."

Thank you all for the kind words of sympathy and encouragement. And thank you again for letting me vent -- I knew you'd understand! At least my three Knockouts are holding up pretty well :)

To me your garden looks pretty and healthy. Your roses are lush, green and flowering.

I agree with Margaret. I think your roses look beautiful!

Kristine, I got .6 of an inch. You must have been right under it. Festiva, I wish you could send that rain to California to Ingrid and Lisa and Jeri et al.

6 inches!!!! Hail!! 5 days of rain!!! Oh my goodness. That sounds dreadful! If you cut everything back by 1/3, then maybe your roses will be more upright and will have a lot more blooms. Maybe ?

I just looked it up and we get about 13" of rain every summer....you got almost half of that already!

Carol

In the Phila area - so similar weather.

Well. I think I might add more plants that bloom summer/fall. Because these late freezes and wet springs are getting to be a habit.

My only rose that really took a hit is my potted munstead wood so I just went through it last night and just cut it back a little bit took some of the weight off of it and I think it'll be fine and so will yours Festiva.

I keep reminding myself it's only may I still have beautiful June to look forward to and roses hopefully will all just flourish by then

I so understand and share your agonies! What hit you Festiva came across from here and it whipped everything into a froth. This year my peonies were not blooming yet (way behind) when it hit but they are flattened to the ground. I cut most of them and a few are now blooming in a vase. My irises were blooming the best in years - now flattened. Several roses were broken off and my two newest that were in their big pots waiting to be planted if it ever stopped raining were rolled across the patio and unpotted completely for the second time. The four clematis blooming the best in years were ripped off the trellis's. Gutters came off, roof peeled up and my shade screen for the porch came off three hooks and smashed my new glass top table. Even had one heavy hanging basket of petunias come down. And now they have extended the rain and thunderstorms out another 5 days - it's been like 10 days already?? But the weeds are growing great!!!

I'm hesitant to like any of these posts. : (((( This is our usual fare over here along with tornadoes, but we've somehow managed to avoid the brunt of this front only getting the rain. It reminds me every year, that I really need to stake my peonies and snowball hydrangea. We're working on the roof and a big piece of debris fell and broke one of a set of pots that sit at the end of my stairwall. I don't know if I can repair it; if not I need to replace both to match and it's so hard to find a classic sytle reasonably priced anymore. That it terrible about your table top! I hope noone was hurt and you're able to find all the pieces. Maybe you can try rooting the broken pieces of roses and have something good come out of this catastrophe. Do you have power?

Yikes, Ikayetwv! Suddenly I feel like I should stop complaining! And yes, the grass and weeds look spectacular.

This morning it slowed down to a drizzle for a moment so I popped outside to look at the strawberries -- they are enormous from all this water, which also means they will be watery, tasteless and moldy... It never ends... Oh, wait , I was supposed to stop complaining :)

Qwertblahblah, I was also thinking about adding more summer and fall-blooming plants. My second rose flush in the fall is never impressive but I will work on it this year.

lkayetwv - wow! Your yard has been through the wringer! That's terrible!

Vaporvac - tornadoes! I lived through a huge one in Edmonton a long, long time ago. It was terrifying. I feel for you. :(

Festiva - yes, your strawberries will be terrible. Darn. They're such a thing to look forward to.

Well, I'm going to go outside soon and plant my last 5 roses.

Carol

Festiva - I just saw the flooding in Maryland on the WeatherChannel - hope you are up higher or safe! And yes they are predicting more rain for MidAtlantic states! Things could always get worse so I guess we better look at the bright side of things right now!

I think one of the things that makes rose gardening so addictive is the fleeting and intermittent positive reinforcement we get from it (referring to an older behaviorist theory from B.F. Skinner in the 50's). Theory in layman's terms: "when we know to expect the reward after taking a certain action, we tend
to work less for it. Yet when the timing of the reward or the certainty
that we’ll get it at all is unpredictable, we tend to repeat that
behavior with even more enthusiasm, in hope for the end result."

With all the work we do on our roses, we never know which days one or more blooms, or bushes will be PERFECTION, versus the next - covered in bugs, fried from heat, dead from freeze, blown from wind. But striving for - that perfectly formed bloom (for a day!), or the orchestration of a bush where it looks like someone actually coordinated its' blooms hoping the sun will stay in place long enough to capture in a photo - which never seems to replicate the beauty our eyes actually see, or that delectable fragrance that inevitably diminishes with subsequent sniffs, not allowing us to actually "capture" that ecstasy for more than a moment.

It is THESE moments we garden for.

Thats why we bother!

OH my, sorry for the garden mishaps you all! Interesting bit on addictive rose gardening too Karen. I am a rose novice because conditions have been poor for me (lots and lots of deer currently) but I am feeling driven to work harder to over come the obstacles and grow more rose lovelies.

I sometimes feel simultaneously cursed and blessed--cursed with an undeniable compulsion to garden but blessed with enchanting and lovely gardens--even when things flop or break, I do feel fortunate.

Karen - that is so well said!!! I agree totally!! I think doing what few people can do well helps too.

Carol