One of the roses which is growing up the support for our back stairs, and thus must be taken away from "touching the house" accd to our fire department, is CL Rainbow's End, the only miniature rose I grow. I like the blooms and how they change color (the usual yellow, to yellow & orange, to orange, to orange & red, to red & white), and also the fact that it is a climber. Years ago when I first got it, I had trouble actually getting the climber - I ordered it three times, and of course presumed that the roses which came were climbers. However, the first 2 times after I waited 3 years each for them to start climbing, they remained 12-18 inches high. Sigh. So, being a glutton for punishment, I tried again for the third time, and within the 3 years was happy to see real climbing canes emerging. That was about 10-20 years ago, depending on when you start counting.

Anyway, today I cut it way down to about 2 feet tall, and we are going to try and transplant it to our new rose garden, with a large obelisk to climb on. The reason I am writing this story is that, when I went to cut it down, I was amazed to see how tall it had gotten! It was growing up into some other roses on the small roof over our back stairs (Cl Cecile Brunner, Blaze, and Reve d'Or), and I had not paid much attention to who was what. Well, Cl RE had a strong climbing cane which was at least 8 feet tall to where it was tied onto the support of the roof, and then the same cane continued to grow, and was sort of arching out over my head - by at least another 8 feet. That means that it could have been tied up 16 feet tall! I had no idea this miniature climber could get that tall. However, all of the roses in my garden get taller or bigger than the catalogues or HMF say they will, so I should not have been surprised. In the pic below, you can see the miniature bushes growing below it - they never got any bigger.