*Southeast Louisiana/Zone 9a/Very hot and humid here.*

I have this mystery rose I inherited when I purchased my home a couple years ago. It’s actually 1 of multiple mystery roses, but I’ll post those soon enough. I thought it was Etoile de Lyon, but recent rabbit hole internet dives now have me questioning if mine could be Perle des Jardins! EDL seems to get SO much praise, but PDJ gets many complaints for its balling tendencies, hence my questioning if I possibly have a PDJ!

Here are some pics:

^^These pictures were from February this year, and I couldn’t believe my eyes that I actually got to see BLOOMS on this thing!

I always assumed something was wrong and it was just a ”sickly” rose. What a sight to see after *2* years! It is now back to looking brown and gross per usual. Or maybe it just gets thrips every single year and that’s why it always looks like garbage. I don’t really know, and this is the first time I find myself eager to care for the numerous established roses we inherited around our home (still working on IDing all of them—I seem to have a solid ID on 3/9 so far!).

**Important to note that none of the plants on the property were cared for or maintained for 3 years before we purchased this home. Multiple roses had trees growing through them and are stuck that way unfortunately as too much time has passed and I can’t safely destroy the large stumps/roots without harming the roses in the process, so I just keep trimming off new shoots from the stumps. All of the roses were extremely overgrown. It took months of continuous hard labor to clear away the brush and sprouted trees (some were taller than the house!) in all the flower beds. By the time I got to this rose in the back, I was OVER IT. And it’s same each year…I get to this one and I’m too exhausted to do anything special. So each year, a little bit gets hacked away to keep it from growing too large, but this rose is a whole mess if I’m being honest…it has black spot, tons of old dead growth that needs to be cleaned out, grass and weeds growing in the soil…it is on my huge list of projects, I promise! Basically taking the property one rose bush and one flowerbed at a time—as much as having 3 young children and working full-time as a teacher allows me, LOL! Hoping to get IDs on the roses specifically before I do anything crazy on them.**

Here is how it looks today, back to its true self:

Here’s a pic from last year, the ”blooms” I usually get…gray-brown blobs. You can see about 10 or so if you look closely: