We got the deluge last month. So I know what you're going thru. Right now it's kinda cloudy, but yet sunny... but the air is like a jetstream from Alaska! Icy cold in the breeze, but warm under the sun. This is by far the weirdest spring I've ever seen. We're usually in the high 90s to low 100s by now, and I'm not even sure we hit much over 80 yet. The roses are full of BS. The irises are just now finishing up, and the lilies are about 2 weeks behind. It's just plain weird. I bet those lilacs smell wonderful!! I have one but it doesn't do well here.

We had that kind of crappy weather last season. Cooler & rainy up until August.
We did get alittle over 3" of rain yesterday, but, things are drying up today. But, weather is warmer and less rain this season.

Well Boxofrox even with your rain the rose/flower pics you took look great!
Really hope your weather improves!

Boxofrox, another set of absolutely gorgeous thrilling roses! Boxo I am having a horrible, horrible 2010!!!! Everyone complains of 2 weeks of solid rain, I've got 3 months of solid rain and as we speak we are entering that 4th month of ceaseless rain!!!!!when I get one day out of 10 days of no rain, usually that one day out of the ten it's overcast with no sunshine and if it's sunny for that one day, then it thunderstorms in the evening. Hard to have a pleasant thought in one's mind when all one can wake up to is more rain with rotting grass. Bless that most of my roses don't rot and decay except for nodding for the old blooms,except for Lady Emma Hamilton. Yuck, it is a total rain wuss, heat wuss, and fragrance wuss. I'd trade it in a heartbeat for your bold AD! Which by the way is looking absolutely spectacular! Demolished lilacs???? I only see fantastic lilacs! Outrageous is outrageously beautiful in your rain as well. I am also enjoying the sworls in the LDB and its wine red is very interesting too-like tapestry.

P.S. another reason why I am sooooo upset with the rains is because they have destroyed the ground-dwelling bumblebees. I have no bumblebees this year. It's been a horrible bee year for me as well. The honeybees that were regularly visiting my flowers, in particular the lavender and sage started to fatten up then pouff, one day they completely disappeared. Something is killing them in my neighborhood???????

Beth,
Go figger, you have to go to the upper reaches of the left coast to grow a California lilac. I know what you mean with the BS and the like, this is probably the worst year for foliage since I built my garden :-(

Hey Jim,
I posted them Easy shots for you. As bad as all my other foliage is, both the LE & EG are quite workable :-)

KG,

If this ain't the whackiest weather ever for a whole bunch of folks, I don't know what is. I sure wish you could have been here to sit on the swing between the two lilacs, you've never seen so many buzzers !!!!!!

Some of the roses are harder hit than others. LEH may not even bloom this year, Falstaff is struggling as well. AD has probably done the best and even though a lot of them were slimy messes, just the sheer volume from the three ADs has produced tons. I do have two more new ones I'm still waiting for.....Double Delight and Intrigue along with Ginger Sylabub which was new last year. It's climbing well on the back fence with Royal Gold and should be blooming by next week.

I think the disappointment with the weather just gets exacerbated when you can't get out and enjoy the garden with others. We've been trying to have a family multi birthday BBQ for like 6 weeks now and can't even do that. Here it is June and................:-(

But on the lighter side, thank God for little girls......:-)

Momma took this the other day whilst we were in the outdoor room dodging raindrops.

Aren't those dogs cute! Yep, thank god for pets Boxofrox!

Blaze of Glory and Easy Goin are my favorites of the roses. But I just love those blue lilacs. The last picture with the three handsome fellas ain't bad either LOL :-))

hahahaha! that is the ultimate cuteness! They are sooo POM-POM cute like fluffy round tumblers! And they have such happy smiles on their faces too!

I really needed a good laugh and huge smile for the day (which your photos brought :D) because the 4 months' of endless rain is seriously putting me in the insane asylum! I may have dead roses if this rain does not stop! Canker has finally started to rear its ugly head in my garden now! Also poor brave Distant Drums from Jim cannot be planted because my lawn is pure mud and in order to get the soil to its giant 4' long pot, I have to drag the soil through my lawn which would only kill more of my rotting grass. Poor Distant Drums!

Wow, a birthday celebration! Me, I get to eat my Mom's eggrolls as my birthday treat this Sunday! Thank goodness birthday eggrolls can't be rained on! I can just imagine in my mind's eye your multi-birthday barbecue with guests smelling all these wonderful roses, the Pom-poms charming everyone, and the bouquets set out on the balcony and the tables as centerpieces, the chimes rustling in the breeze and the hummers both bird and the bees! Whoo-hoo! may the skies clear soon, soon, soon for you so that everyone can celebrate!

Jim, what the heck would we do without them critters to put things in their proper perspective ?

Rita, me thinks you need one of them lilacs :-) I like them for 3 reasons. 1) Even when they're not in bloom they give me a color and structure I don't have. They are evergreen with small, dark green leaves. 2) They are substantial enough and take to pruning so I can make them any shape I want. 3) The blue fragrant flowers are unlike anything else in my garden.
BTW, Thanks on the handsome fella thang but the ones with all the hair are the little girls I was thankin God for ;-)

KG,
Happy, happy, happy, happy B-Day!!!!!!!!!!!!!!I am so happy to oblige you with a good laugh and a huge smile. My girls have a way of doing just that very thing :-) If not for their perspective putting, I could certainly join you in the loonie bin ;-)

My wife would love your birthday feast. She is an eggrollaholic ;-) Me, not so much. You might have enjoyed my expertly BBQed cuisine from last night. I created a recipe for Copper River sockeye salmon. It is a recipe that includes terryaki, sesame ginger, and honey pineapple glaze that is cooked over a mixture of alder/cherry/ and mesquite chips. Really, really gooooooooooooooooooood :-)

You are really good at picturing the BBQ thang too. Each family does go home with a bouquet ;-(

This has been a difficult season for a lot of people both weatherwise and economy wise . If the sun would just come out and all the roses bloom to their potential, it would certainly go a long way towards making it all seem better, eh?

Nice pics Boxofrox.

Perhaps it is just all the rain marking the petals and doing strange things, but are you sure that is actually Tamora? From what I can see of the leaves and the blooms, it doesn't look at all like Tamora.

Thanks tmm,

Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's Tamora. The leaves in the pic are from a clematis. Here's a couple of newer pics......

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Boxofrox, thanks for the photos of Tamora. She is one of my favorites. Mine goes from being peachy, with touches of pink, to ivory, with peach and beige tones. Tamora seems to have a mother-of-pearl quality to it. It has an interesting fragrance too. Also love the photo of you in the outdoor room. You cutie, you. Wish I knew your real name though. :)

Juliet

Hi Juliet, How is ya ?

I agree with that mother of pearl description, in fact that quality makes it different than say an Abe Darby which has many of the same tones. The more it opens the more it looks like Tamora.....

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BTW, my real name is sackofhammers. I just chose boxofrox because it sounded a tiny bit more intelligent but oh my gorsh at your cutie compliment :-)

Boxo, your barbecue sounds soooo delicious! Cherry and alder mesquite smokin' Sockey Salmon with that sesame ginger and pineapple sounds absolutely WONDERFUL and so DELICIOUS! I wish I could visit this very moment and sit by the lilacs with those wonderful honeybees! What a treat that'd be! and it'd outbeat any Bobby Flay Throwdown too, hahaha! But I'm sure if any cameramen were to visit your garden, they'd forget to film Bobby Flay and would be busy filming your garden instead, lol!

Tamera is looking so beautiful Boxo, I'm just thrilled with her addition to your thread! an absolutely breathtaking rose!

Boxo, my garden is bringing pain to my eyes with all the canker coming up. It's very sad when one has enough stress already lifewise then to go outside to 4 months of unending rains and gross damp humidity is just misery. So thank goodness for our pets, lol! Bless on the Pom-poms and Eluane! and my Mom's DELICIOUS eggrolls! I can't wait for Sunday!

Boxo, I'm sure you would love my Mom's egg rolls because it doesn't taste at all like restaurant egg rolls which are very yucky and flavorless and have hard lumpy exteriors. Her egg roll shells are very, very thin wrappers when they are deep fried and when you bite in, it flakes delicately. The interior is filled with ground pork that has been steeped with vegetable flavorings of the best Chinese mushrooms that my mom's friends will ship all the way from Taiwan as gifts--and it is filled with beansprouts, water chestnuts, bamboo shoots, carrots,Chinese parsley all very finely chopped. Then on top of the mixture are very thin strips of raw shrimp and thin strips of eggs that are laid on top then rolled and placed into the deep fryer. It's those carefully steeped vegetable juices that give the meat so much flavor. The shrimp are actually jumbo-sized prawn that have been sliced very, very thinly! Boxo, the times when we get those delicious egg rolls are as a Christmas Eve dinner and on my birthday. They are very, very time-consuming to make so we get egg rolls only on those occasions. So yes, I am one lucky girl when it comes to my birthday, lol! The egg rolls are hands down, my mom's very best dish and she is a very good cook on other dishes, but those egg rolls are beyond description on how good they are! I wish I could share some with your wife too! She would love those egg rolls!

I understand you have had way too much rain but these pictures of Tamora with the raindrops are gorgeous

Florence

Boxo, I too loves the pics with the rain drops.

It must be all the rain marking the petals as I had never seen tinges of red on Tamora before and I grow four of them. The more opened pics look much more like Tamora though.

In any case, beautiful pics and i hope you have a reprieve from all the wet weather soon. Thanks for sharing.

Thanks Florence and t m m ! We are actually "supposed to" have a fairly nice weekend for a change. I need to get in my koi pond and do a little cleanup so I hope that's true.

KG, No way Bobby Flay could touch my salmon recipe :-) Your mommas eggrolls sound way beyond Flay as well !