A dwarf crape myrtle by the bird bath and the larger one by the house.

Aunt Margy's Rose has for some reason spread itself quite a bit wider this year.

Le Vesuve showing bare branches where there used to be leaves. Still, it's blooming!

Potter and Moore doesn't mind the heat

An effort to keep baby La France (left) and Bishop's Castle safe behind bars.

Note to Self: Buy roses that are not pink!!!

I was just thinking about you Ingrid and how I hadn't seen a post from you in a long time. Glad to know you are still there. And your garden still looks lovely to me. I think we look at our own with much harsher eyes. The rabbit damage isn't really noticeable to me. I can see the cages but they are beginning to fit right into the landscape. Your Aunt Margie looks huge. I think I need to rethink where my baby band will go when she grows up. Thanks for sharing your garden. Mary

Ingrid, it's beautiful and looks perfect to me!

I love the photos too, Ingrid. I'm amazed your garden can look so great in August. I think rose legs look good. To me, they connote a more mature garden, leaning further in the old olive trees gnarled trunk direction. Those crape myrtles also add color. I'm not sure you can have too much pink. I think the irrigation must be helping, to have so many roses blooming now.

Thank you all for your lovely comments. There are some roses that are still doing well, but I'm afraid overall the picture is bleak. The newer roses along Tea Rose Row that two months ago were growing strongly and blooming well are now being destroyed. Mlle Franziska Krueger, who was inside a cage, was somehow breached and in large part eaten, and I don't think will recover. Maggie is also denuded and not likely to survive. In the end I may be left with 15 or 20 roses at best. Without the blooming irises, sea lavender and ivy geranium the garden overall looks bleak. Of the two lavenders I planted, one is dead, probably because it was so small it was overlooked when I was hand watering. It was a mistake to plant anything during the heat, but I will be planting what I hope are rabbit-resistant plants in late fall. In the end I don't think there is much the rabbits won't eat when they're really desperate, but we shall see.

Ingrid, your garden still looks good, and has style, but I am so sorry for your continued losses. It must be so hard. Good for you that you haven't stopped trying.

Ingrid, your garden looks great. Everything blends in well and the cages are also fitting in. You cannot tell of any rabbit damage on your roses.

I agree with Cedemas, your garden looks perfect to me as well :)

Jin

Trish and Jin, you're so kind. I'm not giving up as long as the roses aren't, and I could swear they're doing their best to grow tall so they'll be out of reach of the hungry bunnies. The smaller of my two SdlM is half gone because the rabbits can reach it, but the upper regions have lots of blooms. I can't throw in the towel when they're giving their all to live and bloom.

Ingrid, your roses look lovely with the myrtle, and even with the heat, so many blooms... Aunt Margy's rose is spectacular! Very attractive pictures with dappled shade on the house, looks so restful...

Lisa, from your pictures I would never think that your garden isn't doing wonderfully well since you have so many beautiful roses and other plants in bloom. I do agree that the middle of summer here is just about the worst time in our gardens, especially after so many years of drought, and I see every day the continued stress the animals are under with trying and failing to find natural sources of food. It really is quite sad.

I am really hoping for winter rains for us all this year. The trees and all the roses and animals would so appreciate it. It could happen.

Hi Ingrid, thanks for sharing your garden! I think it does look beautiful and I love your Aunt Margy's rose! She looks like a special rose! I really like how all of your other plantings complement your roses. That dwarf crape myrtle has a perfect form, so pretty!

Thank you! I tried to buy another dwarf crape myrtle and was told they were hard to find because apparently people weren't buying them. It's a lovely tree for smaller areas or spaces where you also want to grow other things beneath them. I have two full-size crape myrtles in the back and they are crowding out everything else in their orbit. Aunt Margy's Rose is a polyantha but I think they forgot to tell her. I'm happy with the size since so much of the rose is above a rabbit's reach!

Beautiful, Ingrid. You have a lot of color, and there's nothing wrong with pink! I miss my Calif. days of growing crape myrtles! Wish I could grow them here.

Ingrid, I just love your garden and I agree, one can never have too much pink in it. It looks beautiful! Your crape myrtles are just delightful. There is a mail order nursery that carries mini crapes if you want to take a look at it. crape myrtle company I think everything looks so, so pretty!

I looked at that site, mustbe, and see that these minis are hardy to zone 5! Thinking strongly about making an order. Says they'll grow anywhere in any soil. Thanks for posting the link.

Thank you mustbe, I'll check that out. The one thing I've noticed is that this year there has been a much shorter period of bloom because of the heat, and that may become the norm in the future. That's one of the main things I like about the roses, that they continue to bloom and bloom, and that can't be said of too many other flowering plants.

I'm having to give myself pep talks because there is a large chunk missing from Rhodologue Jules Gravereaux, one of my favorites, and several other roses are decreasing in size. I tell myself the roses will catch on and grow taller and bloom only on top, although that will make for a strange-looking garden. These days I'll take whatever I can get and call it good.

Ingrid, by your pictures I would never know what a challenging summer you have had, everything looks glorious.

We inherited one crape myrtle and I bought one dwarf that is suppossed to be 4ft and another 8ft size. They are such a colorful plant and yours are lovely.

Kristine, you're so kind. In person it's all too imperfect, but I'm hoping that new companion plants to replace the irises, pelargoniums and sea lavender that are missing will make me feel better. Cooler weather and hopefully rain later in the year should also make a significant difference.

Ingrid, I guess it's like when I get my picture taken backup backup I look much better From a good distance lol

I don't believe that for a minute, Kristine, but it's certainly true of my yard these days, more's the pity.

Not looking too bad, Ingrid. The bunnies in my old yard, would eat everything to the ground, even those that they are not "supposed to" like the yuccas, or desert willow. I hope your irises come back. I've had my garden disasters also. My bearded irises mostly had broken stems in the wind and I didn't see a bloom on many of them (the spurias did okay). My lilies did horribly, some didn't even bother coming out of the ground in the spring, others collapsed just as the buds were forming. What the drought and wind didn't get, the hail did. We had so much hail on July 30 that it stripped the trees of leaves. You have to embiggen the photos to appreciate the damage.

All the green on the ground is leaves from the maple tree, the top foot or two was almost completely stripped, and the remaining leaves were trashed.

Munstead Wood's shredded leaves. Embiggen to see.

Evelyn stripped of leaves.

Lilies shredded.

The apples took it hard. Probably a third of the leaves left. The apples were terribly bruised and beat up.

I suppose that at least we got some water, after 9 months of barely anything.

Oh my goodness Noseometer! Those are crazy pictures! That's a lot of hail to see in the summer! It's wild!

Unbelievable,Noseometer! Did the moisture have to come this way?

Oh good heavens! Crazy, crazy weather

Wow! Is that a regular occurrence at this time of year? That’s crazy! Lisa

Even though it is common to get a bit of hail in summer thunderstorms, this was a very unusual amount of hail. Parts of the city received hail 1-1/2 inches across. As big as golf balls. A friend of mine who lives at a lower elevation, sent me a photo where three balls of hail fit on his palm. He went out in the storm with an umbrella to protect his plants, and of course his umbrella got shredded. Yes, I would have rather had true rain rather than hail.

So Ingrid got damage from the bottom from the bunnies, I got damage from the top from the hail.

Hard to believe that could happen in July. My brother lives in Las Cruces and one time they had hail the size of golf balls. All the cars parked on the street were damaged!

That's the first thing I thought about. Thank goodness my car was in the garage! The apples were not protected though:

Wow Nose! Unbelievable!