Florence Bowers Pink Tea

It still looks beautiful over there. Enjoy your warm sunny day!

Yay, finally warmth and beautiful plants & blooms!! What a stunning Iris. Everything looks very happy including the Hosta shown. At least the slugs have ignored those.

Edit: Nice Pieter! Your post was not showing yet.

Gorgeous blooms! Those velvety iris....swoon....

It looks lke nice and warm day and beautiful plants. It has been cold here too for long time, I feel we had winter and now summer started...

Yay Oursteelers! So glad that you are finding that all is not lost. I would hate to have to come looking for you on the Basket weavers site.

I was getting SUPER cranky between the deer, the pests and the weather. This day couldn’t have has better timing!

Oursteelers - I hear you about the crankiness. :):) I am soooo happy that you've had a good garden day!!! And I'm WOWed by your pictures!!! That iris...oh my sweet goodness!!! Your FB is exquisite!!! I super love that picture!! And your lupins are really beautiful!! What a difference some nice weather can make!

Yes, please do not give up gardening, you are too good at it! lol LOVE your photos of your garden. Every year there are multiple issues to take some of the fun out of it, [rabbits have become one of my annual issues], but the areas that aren't experiencing issues, well for me, most years, it makes me forget all about the issues. [g] The color of your Lupine is wonderful! And that is a pretty pink rose.

librarian, so good to hear you're having a good gardening day.

Kristine, I'm still chuckling!

happy to hear that you finally have a sunny day!..it actually depresses me a little that May's over..we had so much rain that I felt cheated out of a couple of weeks of gardening 🙁..

here's hoping we both have a nice summer..

Oursteelers, that purple iris is a purple lover's purple. I could eat that color. The rest of your garden looks lovely. Is that Jupiter's Beard in the second photo? I have many, but they are the darker red. It's one of the only things blooming with abandon in my garden right now. I agree it's been a rough spring, with record cold here, and I'm still recovering from terminal crankiness. But it's warm today and sunny, so things are looking up. Diane

Looks lovely!

Very nice. I have tried to grow lupine, but each attempt has failed! Yours is great. Love its leaves.

Diane, yes it’s Jupier’s Beard. I love it, so easy and nothing bothers it which right now is a huge asset!

Oursteelers, your pictures are amazing! All the beautiful colors!! I just planted lupine myself this year for the first time. I hope they do well. I will admit I have had the same crankiness, but that is mostly about being overwhelmed!! lololo

debra

Debra, I’m overwhelmed by weeds-they love this spring but the lack of blooms has sucked up my oomph to get to work!

I had totally forgotten about Jupiter’s beard…never had success with it so did not recognize it. Gorgeous, as is all your garden.

Gorgeous!!

Oursteelers, the weeds this year, I feel that I will mever get caught up.

I have a huge amount of blooms but so much thrip damage

I went out last evening a d chopped off dozens of deformed blooms. Time to get out the blue cups.

And I have no idea what is killing my beautiful Munstead.

My potted roses look terrible. Last evening I even wondered what I would repleace those roses with.

Kristine - your Munstead is still declining? Do you want to post another picture so we can try to diagnose? So you've got weeds, thrips and a dying Munstead Wood. No fun.

Kristine, just a guess, but I think your Munstead may have spontaneous dieback, something one of my rosebushes had years ago. I grew a very healthy, lovely Heaven on Earth, first planted around 2007. It was fine for about fours years, when one early summer, it started to spontaneously die back. There was no cane canker or obvious other problem. By the end of summer, about 1/3 of the plant had died back. I decided to see what would happen the following spring and make my decision whether to keep this rose then. So, Heaven on Earth lived all winter, went dormant, woke up the following spring, and started the die back again. I've never had another rose do this, and I removed it that spring. I noticed that Heaven on Earth was not being sold by anyone at that time, and wondered if others had reported similar problems. I wish I had some photos to share, but this was quite a while back, and I don't. I googled rose dieback, and found only info on things like can canker, which I researched quite a bit years ago, and this was nothing like that. I hope others will chime in about this problem. Diane

Ah..the joys of Spring! It's the season of renewal of both the plants and our hopes and dreams for our gardens.

bkay

@Kristine LeGault 8a pnw I had the mysterious die back leading to eventual death of my extremely vigorous Savannah, also princess Margareta, Lincoln and now belinda dream and madame anisette...dont have voles, no canker...dont know what it is as other roses next to it are fine This in addition to RRD infestation..have been wanting to give up on Roses completely. With the intermittent warm + freeze in spring, the spring flush was very lackadaisical. Now they are all burnt crisps with temps 90+

@Diane Brakefield I got my heaven on earth from Roses unlimited just last year, it did well considering the horrible weather with intermittent freeze and warm up...but I am in zone 7. The blooms are beyond lovely - keep going back to look at it. with only one con- the blooms are so big that it's always facing the ground.

My Heaven on Earth also has incredibly lovely and fragrant blooms. I’m hoping that with age the stems will get stronger

I think I noted that a few years ago, Heaven on Earth reappeared on the market. Kind of odd. Mine was about 4 years old before the dieback started. I removed it the next year, as I mentioned. I saw no point in waiting around for it to completely die back. I was disgusted with the thing by then, and it's never happened again to any rose I've grown. It was a beautiful rose, I agree, and I liked it in bouquets with Evelyn. We have had a terrible spring here. I am zone 7 also, and the roses are about three weeks late. They are just starting to bloom now. My peonies refuse to open and my penstemon is barely beginning to bloom. Early spring things bloomed normally and are still blooming. Snapdragons are on time, too. I didn't have freeze damage, but wind and pounding rain damage mainly to my two giant Julia Child roses, and Memorial Day tied for lowest high temp on record. Strangely, the roses are huge and look wonderful, loaded with buds. They are just taking their time. Diane

Diane - so there's probably nothing that Kristine can do to help her MW if that's the problem. That's a shame.

Bkay - so true...I have high hopes for my garden (as opposed to last year). Hope we all have our garden needs met. :)

111plisa - oh darn. Last year made me want to give up on roses too. I hope that your garden gets better. Those hot temperatures are hard to deal with. Maybe you need to plant a lot of trees?

Diane - the beauty of buds is not to be denied. :) :)

Carol, I agree about buds, and they are cautiously opening. We got up to 84F today, and that got things going. My theory is the colder temps allowed the roses to grow ever larger without having to use energy to open buds. As far as Kristine's MW goes, I would make no predictions that she can't do anything about the dieback, but I don't think it's cane borers. I deal with them all the time. They are easily spotted during pruning and I just cut the cane back until there is no borer damage showing in the cane. What's funny is when you slice a borer in half in the cane with the pruners. I love doing that to those awful things. I've been known to chase grasshoppers with scissors. Good thing we rarely have grasshoppers. Who is it that goes after slugs with scissors at night? Gory and off topic. Happy summer to all. Diane

Diane - I'm chuckling thinking about you chasing grasshoppers with scissors!! Oh, you always make me laugh. :) :) I used to have a dog that would eat them when I pointed them out to him. :)

Stunning pics Oursteelers!!

Never quit. Go down fighting!

Easier said than done. The deer struck night before last, and ate off the buds of many of my roses along the back, including every bud on a favorite of mine, Rouge Royale. That rose is a complete mess because of deer. Today, we had more storms (can't spray deer repellent when it rains) that included rain, hail, wind, thunder, and lightening all in about 15 minutes time. This spring has been just horrible. Diane

How rude!

Diane I'm sorry it's been such a rotten start to the season. Those pesky deer. Is there anything that is still in good shape?

Diane , well that just stinks!! Horrible deer for decimating your Rouge Royal. How frustrating!

Things were looking so good until we had 2 days of rain which pretty much wiped out Gruss Gruss and now I have bucket loads of deadheading to do

Oh well, we need the water so it is tough to complain when it is so needed

I cut the dead cane from Munstead and no red flags. No borers. So I will keep my eyes on it

I have my first blooms opening on my Charles DeGaulle , Rosematic fuschia and Bernstein

So there is the good the bad and the ugly.

Diane - I'm really sorry about the weather and the deer. It's so not fair.

Carol, are you sending us your weather? We had hail twice today, and I thought of you-heehee. There are still some things looking good, and I will try to take some photos. I've got to focus on the positive. Elaine is having a bad spring, too. Misery loves company.

Kristine, I hate the deer more than the weather. I wish we could solve the mysterious dieback on your Munstead Wood. I didn't think it was cane borers. But I can't think of anything else, except spontaneous dieback, which does happen. And on Munstead, of all roses. Such a wonderful, beautiful rose. I hope your Bernstein works out well for your. Mine are looking good. They are in front where the deer do little damage. Diane

Diane, I feel for you. This season of gardening has not been any fun. It’s been all work with little reward. Really, really sorry about the deer :(

Thank you, oursteelers. I hope your garden is finally giving you some reward for the hard work. Diane

Not so much but it is what it is right now🤷🏻‍♀️

Diane - Kitty in the seasonal thread said something (can't remember now LOL) to get me out of my rose angst/depression...we just have to reframe our thoughts. :) Yes, that's why we don't have hail...we shipped it (air mail) to Idaho. Sorry about that. :) We're getting rain now for a few days...and after that I'm hoping that my roses will get better (most of them are good) and start to bloom. :)