Yes there's a crazy cold snap coming this week. -10F is really cold. Stay warm!

Even down here in the FL Panhandle we might get snow Tuesday all the way down to the Gulf Coast (Panama City Beach) and over to Tallahassee and south. My wimpy FL farm animals are not happy with all this cold. I saw lots of people at the grocery and hardware stores yesterday panick buying lol!

Stay warm, Moses! With temperatures this low, I’d keep the water running as a precaution.
We’re expecting three bitterly cold nights, with lows between 2–4°F. The non-climbers should be fine, snug under their blanket of snow, and some even have extra protection. But the climbers? They might be in trouble. I’ll do my best to shield them with additional coverings. Fingers crossed they make it through!

Stay warm, Moses!

Praying for you Moses ! And all my family back in pgh too . They are in oakmont and cheswick. Boy I do not miss the pgh weather that’s for sure . I hope you have a nice cozy couch blanket and slippers and you relax all week . It’s definitely soup weather ! I made a new recipe this week of sausage tortellini soup . It was so delicious. I can’t wait to have leftovers. Do you like to make any comfort foods when you are snowed in ?

Now we're expecting -4°F on Tuesday night. My backyard looks so strange right now—it's covered with snow, sheets, and swimming towels scattered all over.

Elena that made me laugh and remember my first real year into rose gardening in pgh , we had a very late freeze warning when I had buds forming ! I threw clothes and sheets all over the place trying to help my roses . My neighbor thought I was crazy. I can’t remember if it worked lol

I hope you staywarm too !

Lily, How well I remember your earlier, young family life years there in Eastern Tennessee, with your beautiful roses there also, before your family move to Murrieta, CA. Oakmont and Cheswick have remained just about the same over the years, aside from Oakmont Bakery which has become the go to bakery in all of SW Pennsylvania. Folks stand jn line even outside the doors to get their goodies. Only get there if driven by friends.

You didn't know that I taught English at Colfax School in Sprindale, PA, for a very short while in the mid-1970's, did you? Colfax School is in the final steps of being demolished now, all the kiddies being funneled to Acmetonia. Enrollment decline and building structure issues at Colfax led to its closure and demo. Acmetonia was redone to make it a model school in the area.

Why not share with us any photo updates you have of your daughter and son? I bet I couldn't recognize them. Have they turned into Californians by now? Definitely, their speech dialect is California by now, no way Appalachian, more specifically Allegheny Valley EEnglish..

Be glad you are not a native born Pittsburgher like me, still with my heels dug into my Yinzer' English dialect/vocabulary/usage, probably until I depart this "rose people enriched," world! 😁

Moses

Lily,

Above all,thank you for praying for me. It means a lot to me.

Moses

Yep, we've been down to -10 or so here in Nebraska, but only for a few nights at a time this round, plus another round in December. It's not as bad to dip into those low temps for a couple of nights (and rise to the balmy teens in the day) as it is to hover at those temperatures for a week or so. I've seen my roses do OK, but that's why I do the leaves around the roses and bags of leaves as "down coats" around my roses, just to hedge my bets.

Praying as always for your health Moses - don't venture out in this cold. Whatever errands you need will keep and it's not worth a fall or other mishap.

Cynthia

Thank you Cynthia! Always kind, uplifting words bless me from Cynthia!

Moses

Moses, I'm with you - definitely don't go outside. Dangerously cold temps. We are also experiencing cold weather with today's high of 0 degrees. It was minus 12 earlier in the day, and it felt like minus 21 with the very frigid wind chill. More of the same tomorrow. Another polar vortex. I hope that my roses will make it. I lose quite a few grafted roses - tall climbers, including John Davis and Rosanna, when we had a polar vortex a few years ago. I'm in Zone 5b, NW Illinois.

we allegedly had a windchill of -40 here the other day. there were a few days of bitter cold but it is hopefully going to stay just normally cold now. saw some winterkill out there and am hoping that the crowns will be okay under their thin blanket of 1" of snow.

Cold here is in teens. We have snow but won’t last long. For us it is the most beautiful time of the year with winter sweet and flowering apricot blooms sending all the fragrance in the snow

Flowering Apricot blooms around Chinese new year

Wintersweet has the sweetest and most pleasant fragrace of all flowers I know

It normally starts to bloom around Christmas and still in bloom

@sultry_jasmine_nights (Florida-9a-ish)， those are brave birds🐓! Amazing it snows in Florida

It doesn't usually snow here it was freak snowstorm that produced snow, even at the beaches in the FL Panhandle. We normally don't hardly even freeze in the winter. Just a few nights here and there but never snow. All the kids and adults get snow days with no school or work.

We shoveled snow off the roof a few days ago. Now there's a dense ice mound with a few roses underneath it.