The Chronicles of "Moondance."

A few crispies, but no thrips?, a photo by Leenechan on Flickr.

My problem child. The outer petals of this bloom are burnt by the sun, but I'm not seeing any thrips inside. I don't know if our treatment has been successful or not. Maybe last year was just a bad year for thrips? It's good to see some improvement with the flowers, because in spite of its problems with blackspot and thrips "Moondance" is a very generous plant. And the flowers have an awesome fake raspberry smell, like a scratch-and-sniff sticker.

Boy do I miss those...child of the '80s that I am!

As far as the other roses go, "Prairie Star," our other problem child, seems to be entering a growth cycle. Finally! "Chapeau de Napoleon" has grown lots. "Honeysweet" has bloomed lots but the flowers aren't very long lasting. We're starting to recognize which roses are heat-lovers and which roses are bothered by excessive heat.

The Austin roses wilt in the heat. "Silver Shadows", "Winter Sunset" and "Enchanted Autumn" also wilt. "Prairie Harvest" (which is looking quite good right now) seems to be a heat lover. "Julia Child", "Rook" and "Chapeau de Napoleon" don't seem to care. I suppose I could make a list but I don't have the energy right now! At least this might give people an idea of which roses might tolerate shade, and which prefer more sun.

Rose Growth.

( Which Ones Have Grown Since Last Time? )

Such a strange rose...

Little "Silver.", a photo by Leenechan on Flickr.

It's "Silver Shadows" again.

Only this flower is from the plant in our front yard we got as a mislabeled "Quietness." And it's definitely "Silver Shadows!" Unlike the flat rosette flower it gave us at the beginning of the month, this time it's a proper hybrid tea shape. And very close to silver. It's an interesting rose..

Of all the roses we grow it probably has one of the worst ARS ratings: 7.2. Yet it grows faster and gives us more flowers than any of our other roses. It's allegedly not very cold-hardy but survived a CT winter with no snow cover. We did winter-protect it, but in the end it suffered about as much dieback as "Julia Child."

The strange thing is that as of now, "Silver Shadows" is probably the best rose we have in our garden. The only rose we have that outblooms it is "Moondance," and "Moondance" is a bug-eaten, blackspot magnet. Not bad for a rose that we got as an oddity. We never thought it'd wind up being part of the backbone of our rose garden.

Maybe "Evelyn" will surprise us as well?