June Roses

This has been an unusual spring, with plenty of moisture releasing us from a couple of years of drought. Having water in the lakes is a relief, but with off-on rain, plants don’t dry off fast enough to keep molds and fungal disease in check, and the bugs are going wild. Both Pam/Digging and MSS from Zanthan Gardens have experienced some problems with their roses and that's happened to our sprawling old dark red roses on the south fence.

But for the other roses? On their behalf I’m tempted to riff on Field of Dreams – “Is this Heaven”… “It's Austin…”... "Austin? I could have sworn this was heaven..."

Since the literature promised that Julia Child could rebloom, I was happy but not too surprised to see her developing a new set of butter-yellow flowers. There are about 10 buds on this 2-foot tall shrub rose which was just planted in March.

This 'Champagne' mini-rose arrived in a gift box in December. It was very unhappy inside the house so I hurriedly stuffed into a holding bed, hoping it would be alive when we returned from Christmas in Illinois. It froze but survived and was moved to the new side border in March. The little shrub has rebounded and is covered in buds - it's margarita weather, but we're also enjoying ‘Champagne’!

It was totally unexpected to see these buds when they began to develop on the tall pink rose on the trellis where walk meets gate.

Yes, that's the rose I described in April as 'once-blooming' pink rose. Each spring for 3 years it made long wands with roses at the tips. After the flowers faded, I pruned it back, gradually shaping it, trying to make the rose build a sturdy scaffold of branches, fed and watered it. Each May it shot out long wandlike branches, growing to 12-feet tall but there were no flowers until spring came again.

This year the spring show was fine- two dozen clear pink, nice-sized roses… and as they faded I once again cut the canes back & gave it a foliar feed. On June 1st we had an unprecedented rebloom.

As a gardener I can't just think "Wow, how nice that old pink rose rebloomed this year"... no, not me! I'm compelled to try to understand why it happened! Is it totally weather related? Instead of getting water from the garden hose, Mother Nature watered the rose this May, while the temperatures stayed under 90º F. Was that enough of a reason?

We've changed things in that bed - removing a 6-foot tall nandina from the center of the bed late last fall. Could it have cast enough shade on the rose to make this difference?

Until March the path next to the bed where the rose is planted was made from a wooden board, a hump of grass, and some inset stepping stones; Philo pulled out the wood and we got out the grass, made the bed wider, flattened the hump, and Philo made a proper walk. This could very well have had some effect.

When we moved here at the end of summer in 2004, this unnamed rose extended a couple of long canes over the shoulder-high nandinas and crepe myrtles that grew in front of it, and I fancifully imagined it asking me to free it, to feed it, to rescue it. Is it a once-blooming climber having an odd year? Is it a rebloomer that's taken three years to recover? What's the name of this rose? I don't know any of the answers yet, and will keep on wondering but in the meantime I'm enjoying the second flush of 20 roses.