Thought I had really jinxed us yesterday. It was 40°F when I checked in the morning. We got to the high 50s later. 30+ mph breezes made for an interesting day out there. 30°F this morning :) Pam, a neighbor told me I need to have a crew come in. Not a chance, Deb and I are the only ones that are allowed to work with our roses. The first thing I thought when I saw your post was you need a huge crew.... I imagine you wouldn't trust anyone else working around your roses either :) Hope you don't mind if I think "at least we don't have the task mendocino rose does" when I begin to feel overwhelmed. Kristin, I'll take our weather over yours any day :) Folks think I am joking when I say we have almost perfect rose growing conditions here. I'm not. Annececilia, we do get to see the sun a lot. Wind coming down off the 12 - 13,000 ft mountains just west of us eats the snow (compressional warming). That... or a chinook will blow through and wipe out the snow. Folks think I am crazy removing mounding this early. We will have cold weather before June. Our roses just do better when I get the mounding off early. Deb says she has plenty of jelly beans to share :) Kate, we have all kinds of flowers coming up too. That is another reason for getting the debris out of the beds. Glad we don't live close enough to Mr. Moore's place to visit. Didn't see a post listing what you brought home??? Debbie, Deb says hi and belated Happy Easter. Me too :) I'm having a great time playing out there. It looks like we could have the best year ever coming.... if Ma Nature cooperates. Oh no!! Knew I shouldn't have answered the phone! Gotta go do some digging. No playing out in the yard today *sigh*

That first photo is stunning...the dew, the way the sun is hitting it. Beautiful! And look at those big fat buds on your rose. Makes a person giddy waiting for the beauties to open up! CMK

I was so happy to see your picture of 'Early Days' since I just planted mine last week from Blue Ridge....I am now even more delighted that I got it! I hope mine will look as good as yours when & if it blooms this year. According to Bob Selman it is a very reliable bloomer. I love the bicolor bloomers and couldn't afford 'Clown Parade', so I opted for 'Early Days' as a much cheaper alternative. (under ten dollars versus close to a hundred!) Thanks for showing your pretty pictures.

Last night snuck up on me, to put it mildly. I had the four strings of Christmas tree lights strung out for the last 2 months, but were not lit up last night, - the forecasters early on lulled me into a belief it would be a warmish night,..no low temps for sure. Then as I got drowsy and prepared to turn off the TV at 11 PM, here comes the Fox 4 guy with a serious look on his face. " Things changing, now looks like 37 - 39 in Englewood. That woke me up, threw on a jacket and shot out to turn on the lights and then haul in the 4 potted babies. Still a bit edgy after nodding off, I instinctively popped awake at 05:25 AM, turned on the inside lights so I could see the outside thermometer, and saw a solid 39 degrees !f that would have hung around for 2 + hours, would have messed up 4 of my young mango trees and killed the 2 potted bananas for sure. Whew,..just another 3 + weeks,..c'mon Feb 20th,...know I'm not nearly as bad as most of youse guys,..but still more than ready to chill out and stop worrying about the overnight lows. lol Now can enjoy the two NFL games today in peace !!