ha yes, but is it half full or half empty? I think you know this answer, Melissa, since this is exactly what good gardening achieves.

Hi, Suzy!
It was a comfort to me when I talked to my sister, who lives in Florida, yesterday and heard that her ginger lilies, hard hit during last year's exceptionally cold winter, also didn't recover during the following growing season. Not "Misery loves company", but rather being able to believe that the sorry state of my Teas this year is not due to my terrible gardening practices.
So much of gardening is hope. Right now I'm nourishing the belief that when our hedges and trees reach a respectable height and are growing well, their protection and leaf fall will allow the roses to flourish. Perhaps it won't work out that way, but thinking that provides me with peace of mind.
Melissa
P.S. Oh--half full, at least when I have the sense to be grateful for all the wonders I enjoy.

I'm reading that this winter here will be very cold and dark, unlike last winter which was mild.

Looking forward to 70 mile an hour windstorms, uprooted trees crushing my house and lots of snow. Wondering about the wisdom of getting a generator.

Beyond that, if we survive the winter, I am looking forward to seeing the daffodils and seedlings pop up next spring and roses in a second year garden. What will White Cap do this coming year??? Will Radiance ever bloom? Will Old Port live up to its reputation?

G. Nabonnand in particular of the warm weather roses is lovely now even in the dank cold. Will he survive? Will I get another couple of blooms next year from my heart throb Devoniensis?

Whether the winter is cold or warm, my spring dreams keep going, while I am not gardening. One big change is there is so much more indoor time here because of all the wet stuff coming down. Stay warm, Melissa!

Harborrose, I recommend knitting sweaters for rose-warriors during winter! You now live in a climate where wool sweaters are desirable, and they are far more exciting to make than cotton (although I shouldn't say that, having just discovered a truly wonderful cotton yarn - so much more use for that in California). If you don't knit, lots of yarn shops give classes and lots of help. WARNING: Buying yarn can be just as addictive as buying roses, and just as expensive, if not more so!!

Laura

Laura, I love looking at the exotic yarns at a knitting shop close to the library I frequent. So many colors and textures! But my talents lend themselves more to reading about knitting and enjoying the colors than knitting itself. I am thinking about taking up watercolors though and have gotten out my sketchbook several times.

I've seen the prices on those beautiful yarns and know what you're talking about, though! I take it you're a knitter? Melissa, how do you spend your indoor time? Suzy probably devours horticulture books!

Interesting topic Melissa. I, like you have grown roses in two very different climate zones. The place where I garden now has hot, humid summers and very cold winters. This is the birth place of the Canadian Explorer Rose series.

I think perhaps the differnce between a pure rose addict and a true Rosarian, is that a Rosarian is one who becomes educated enough to begin to grow the roses that please them, and yet that will thrive in the environment where they garden.

From your post, you are in a place where you can grow Teas and Noisettes as well as once blooming OGRs. Your Teas and Noisettes will do well in warm dry years and your OGRs do better under the cooler conditions you have experienced this year and last.

I too grew Teas and Noisettes, as well as Hybrid Musks on the Pacific Coast of Canada years ago. I loved them all. But none of them will thrive in my current garden. I learned that through hard experience. Neither, it so happens will the once blooming OGRs, because it is just cold enough here to damage most of them every winter without killing them, so they don't bloom though they survive. More hard experience because rose growing is a risk sport where I live.

So now I grow mainly Austins, Bucks, Brownells, a few repeat blooming HPs, Portland Damasks and Explorers. Even then, this past summer was extremely hot with temperatures of 39 C ( 100 F ) in July this year. I had a fabulous spring flush, then most of the roses went into heat dormancy over July and August. When the weather cooled in late August and September, most of them put on lush, vigorous new growth but with very few blooms. The fall flush was sparse to put it mildly. In past years most of my roses bloomed in flushes from late June to November. This year, prety much one good spring flush and sporadic bloom on some varieties thereafter.

Last week I cut them all back to about 30 cms and will cover them with straw when it freezes in the next couple of weeks. That is what I have had to learn in order to grow a good rose garden here. Select the varieties that thrive and learn which I need to protect and how to do it. I've become pretty good at it over the past decade or so in Eastern Canada. But every year conditions change and so do the results my roses give me.

This is one of the things that sets roses apart from other plants. Because they are so Hybridized, many of them are Divas. Each variety has its likes and dislikes with respect to weather, sun, soil, moisture and the list goes on. That is one of the things that makes them facinating to grow. Particularly in challenging conditions.

So we live, learn and adapt. That is as it should be. Rose growning is a passion, but it is also a life study and a learning experience.

Good post.

Cheers, RRL aka Rick

harborrose: WATERCOLORS!!! Even better!!! Portable, inexpensive (once you get your initial supplies), and every bit as frustrating as knitting or gardening!

Laura

Gean,
This is the second place I've lived that has dark wet winters, but conditions are different. When I lived in Olympia I was in town and I had an office job. I often walked the two miles to work, which ensured that I got plenty of exercise, the office environment was well lit, and there were coffeeshops and plenty of available activities for evenings and weekends. I was more active, I was exposed to more artificial light, and so was less susceptible to the seasonal depression which I have to fight here every winter. One particularly rainy and dark winter in Olympia I did succumb to depression, though I didn't realize it at the time. But in that period I quit the job I'd held for seven years, and had a quarrel with my brother that didn't heal completely for two or three years. So the effects were drastic.
Here at the farm I get sleepy. Exercise and light are important, company, and mental and physical activity matter. I always read, but especially in the wintertime. We've developed a home DVD habit the last couple of years. I go on long walks when the weather permits (and sometimes when it doesn't). And I take off occasionally and enjoy some culture.
Melissa

Last year we had an extended cold period (for us), and our spring bloom was the best I can remember.

Having lived in Oregon, Washington, Montana, California, Michigan and Texas I can say that we ended up in the right place! If it rains more than a couple of days at a time everyone gets depressed and irritable as if it had been raining for a month. Like Melissa I get the winter blahs and living down here has helped a lot, even though I sure miss the natural beauty you all have.

Hasn't the "warm winter/cold winter" dilemma been the central challenge of rose breeding for just about as long as European breeders have been aware of the repeat blooming roses of the Asian semi-tropics?

:)

Melissa, I'm sorry to read about the effect the winter weather can have on you. It's so easy for someone like myself, living in California, to be flip about beating the winter blues, but I do know (at least second-hand: a sister living in Britain) that they can be grim. I so enjoyed the photos last year of the visit of your Italian Rose Forum friends to your garden, and the wonderful setup for lunch al fresco - could there be a winter equivalent? Maybe a warm and cozy get-together with those friends, featuring great soups, delicious warm breads, wine, and (of course) garden talk. I know it's a very temporary fix, and not at all the same as sunshine, but maybe it would help a little.

Here's to a short winter and a long summer,
Laura

Well, normally we have short winters, but last winter seemed endless and slow to leave, making us wonder whatever happened to spring. Winter here isn't dismal beyond words like up north (black snow, black silouetted bare trees against a white, freezing sky). No, we have blue skies and sunny days with mostly drier (droughty) weather, but there's a similar but less dire dreary feeling when I see the deciduous trees with no leaves and grass that is no longer green. I didn't post on this thread for a while because I don't want to think about winter. I don't want to think about what's going to turn to straw after the first freeze and have to stay that way for the duration because to cut it back will result in new growth and the risk of death from the next freeze. Except for one thing. I can't wait for the first freeze so I can dig out that orange hibiscus with the too-tropical green leaves that has gotten too huge. Go Mother Nature! Zap that thing!!

Sherry

HI, Melissa,
I can see how the grey and seemingly endless drizzle can cause problems. Probably those of us with a melancholy streak are particularly susceptible, anyway. Light really helps me too. Those mornings I awake to a blue sky and sun really cheer me up.

And only 120 plus or minus a few days until spring! In the meantime hooray for funny threads on the Antique Forum, interesting books, hobbies and friends. And the kindness of those around us. Gean

Winter is a wonderful time of the year. I can imagine living places where perhaps I wouldn't think so, but I like winter hugely. If you bundle up some, you can go outside and enjoy its beauty looking at it directly. If you're living in a vegetation-scalped kind of housing development, then perhaps you could take some nice long walks in a park, whatever park near you has some naturalized areas.

A large part of the joy of winter is in having hardwood trees around, lots of them. If you don't have hardwood trees in your yard, then plant some if you possibly can. This might make a difference to you. Seriously. Hardwood trees are very interesting, the year around. Get some ash trees and look at the bark, and notice how the leaves are dangling pink, still hanging on in winter, and made that color because their Designer must have wanted them to look perfect with their interesting light bark. Look way up at the tips of the oak trees bare of leaves in winter, and see the beautiful patterns of all those high dark branches. Watch the sunlight glowing from low on the horizon as it makes each branch into a fine outline. Look at the places the squirrels have to stay nested up inside a tree in all that bark. Make sure you have some trees like shagbark hickories or river birches that look as if an Artist were texturizing their trunks. Look up at the balls still left hanging from the sweetgums, those dangling little gifts decorating the Artist's trees.

Then look at all your trees and your shrubbery with snow, dripping with dots of sunlight as it melts into ice crystals and twinkles its sunshine at you. Look at the red berries still hanging on some of your plants, and think how they might look nice with some of your mistletoe high up in a tree, brought down into a wreath on your front door. Look around your yard for all the beautiful evergreen foliage that might look nice made into a wreath for the door. Look at the last of the blooming camellia sasanquas, let your eyes measure the swelling of the buds of the camellia japonicas, and count the days until the first one erupts in blooms so perfect and so showy that they look as if a Master Painter has produced them just to see the delight in your eyes.

Leave some bird food embedded in suet out in the hanging bird feeder and watch to see that there are still some birds around, even when it's very cold outside. You'll be reminded that spring is just around the corner, so enjoy the sights of winter while they last!

Winter is a short season here, but so very beautiful.

Best wishes,
Mary

P.S. I've never hugged a tree (or a rose) but those ideas doesn't seem so far-out to me when I really think about how much they have to give to all of us.

It's called Climate Change. Something that will be with us for years to come and is likely to get even worse. We will be finding out which roses do better with sudden changes in weather, if there are any.

Meanwhile there continues to be a debate on whether CC is real delaying needed changes to combat this really serious threat to humanity. After all the earth can live through these changes it is only us that will be eliminanted.

I should have put in a plug for the documentary. the 11th Hour, which is about Climate Change. It is documentary narrated by Leonardo Dicaprio, which was bought by Paramount and premiered at the Cannes film festival. I have a strong interest in mentioning it as it was produced by my two daughters, You can see a trailer on their website, Tree Media.com or rent the DVD from Netflix or from other places.

We will be finding out which roses do better with sudden changes in weather, if there are any.

I won't be surprised to learn that many roses will manage just fine. (Don't forget that roses such as the Chinas & Teas come from semi-tropical Asian roses, and that the Noisette hybrids come from the American Deep South.)

Having said that, there's no guarantee that many other plants human civilization relies upon without thinking about it will also fare well in a warmer climate.

Nothing like rolling the dice on human civilization as we have always known it, is there?

:(

Global Warming was a bad term for this phenomenon. That may be part of what is happening but it is really about drastic changes in weather that threaten us and the plants we live on. Shortages of water, etc. Climate Change covers this threat so much better

My roses did poorly this season because of unusual changes in rains. Even an indestructible rose like Rugosa Alba suffered. Others as well.

I agree, Jim. Lots of folk in the UK were actually looking forward to growing olives and basking in some meditteranean climate - how badly wrong did we get it?

Polish meteorologists have predicted the coldest winter in thousand years. Hopefully they are wrong but we may have the coldest winter yet which is bad enough. Last winter was the coldest since 1986 and it is already colder than any November I can remember with -9 F predicted for Wednesday. But it is beautiful outside with a bleak sun shining on a cover of white and fluffy snow.

It is colder here now than usual - we have been breaking "low temps for this date" records all week. However, since we are in zone 9 what this means is that we just had our first light frost last night - from the looks of my garden it did not stay below freezing very long, either. This has lead all of the local news headlines on TV and in the papers - we are SOO..... spoiled here re weather!

What it has done for me is made the atmosphere nice for Thanksgiving - at least there is a little chill in the air (10 days ago it was in the 90s, and I was running around watering pots. Now I am also watering pots, but so that they don't freeze!).

Happy Thanksgiving to you all -

Jackie

Mariannese,
Well, how nice: another furiously cold winter. We seem to get the same basic weather, so your news is discouraging. I have a notion I'm going to be protecting some tender roses.
The rain has continued since I first wrote this post a week and a half ago. I guess we've gotten an average year's rainfall since the end of October. Last night came the first light snow.
Melissa

The present weather is due to the negative North Atlantic oscillation which will give the eastern US and most of Europe just south of the Alps a winter like the last. The Mediterranean will be drier than normal while northern Canada and Greenland will be warmer than usual. NCAR gives all the sad facts.

Hi, everybody. Here in the Appenines between Prato and Bologna,it's basically rained(with a bit of snow) for almost all the past month. After 10 years of drought (during which time I remember myself actually saying something like "you can't have too much rain"),I've vowed I wouldn't ever complain about rain,like the Hopi indians who, living out in the desert, so treasured the rain that it was un-heard-of to speak ill of it. Well, it's getting a bit hard to stick to my vow at this point! but I am trying. I just hope it won't get super cold....Knock on wood!!! regards, bart