My sister called me from Michigan to tell about their temp. dropped 20 degrees, with 4 to 6 inches of snow. It's the same in our Chicagoland, we went from 40 degrees bliss to freezing weather down to below 10 tonight. Very little snow here, but brutal wind - my roof needs fixing in the spring.

Down here in Florida we haven't even had a frost yet...AND ITS JANUARY 2! Very strange weather for sure. Tonight is going to be our first frost at 30 degrees. I like this cool weather for a change (My family have lived in florida for 120ish years) from the impossibly hot and humid south, although my family sarts a fire when it drops below 60 and my parents 'freeze to death'... *piff* them and their old broken plumbing :)
Anyway, I really hope your roses survive the winter.
-Jason

Here in California it looks very much as though we're going to have a drought year. We're due, I'm sorry to say. During the good rain years (15" or more in my area), I'm in denial that the bad years will ever come back, but come back they do.

Not a great time to be planning a new rose bed.

Rosefolly

I went to Fruitful Yield Health Food Store today. I was sniffing their samples of essential oils (100% natural, nothing artificial). I miss my roses and was testing their rosy-sample. It stank - and nothing can match the real damask scent. The "Now" brand of lavender sample smells really good. So was the Frankinstein, I mean Frankincense scent. It wouldn't be right for the 3 wise men to bring "gold, myrrh, and Frankinstein to baby Jesus."

The "Now" brand of Frankincense smells almost like the scent from my Mary Magdalene rose. It's quite cozy for the cold weather.

The only thing predictable about the weather is that it will be UNPREDICTABLE! We've had no accumulation of snow yet at all. Just a dusting a couple of times that disappeared in hours. We have had tons of rain. So much so that we broke the annual precipitation record set in 1880 of 47.69 inches. We hit 47.70 on New Years Eve. Temps are constantly yo-yoing up and down too. The grass is still green out there and the ground has not frozen yet. We did get the wind yesterday and I lost a good size branch out of the maple tree. Now the temps are going to drop down into the teens for a couple of days but they're saying right back up to the mid to high 30s for later in the week. I'm glad I had all those extra bags of leaves from my neighbor and decided to use them to mulch ALL my roses instead of just the potted ones because Old Man Winter sure isn't giving us any protection!

I mulch my potted roses. It makes a noticeable difference in how frequently I need to water them. And I am convinced that the decomposing leaves are beneficial to the potting soil, which is created for lightness and good drainage, not for plant nutrition.

Rosefolly

Good for you, sunnysideuphill,for thinking about the young man that usually shovels the snow,too. I think that sometimes we gardeners can get too narrow-minded, seeing weather only in terms of what our own personal garden needs. Global warming is hurting everybody, I think. regards, bart

Thank you, Rosefolly, for mentioning the prospect of drought in 2012. I checked the Farmer's Almanac for my region - yes, it will be drier this spring. There are also forecast of drought getting worse for Texas, and drought for Iowa in 2012.

We had a drought in 2005 which I foolishly bought tons of perennials - they all died. I spent the summer with a hose, but could not save my new plants. Originally I planned on my roses shipped really late so bunnies won't eat them - now I'll move the shipping date earlier, since it's easier protect plants against frost and bunnies than drought.

Sunny, you could have described my Swedish weather. It's raining now, a quarter to midnight, 37F, but I'd rather have snow. We missed our usual white Christmas and the garden is full of debris after the last storm. I don't know how my roses will fare if we get some real cold now without snow cover.

Mariannese, that's exactly what just happened here - a day and evening of rain that melted the 2 or 3 inch (but better than nothing) layer of snow, and then yesterday, the temps plummeted to -20C. The wind chills are even colder. More of the same is forecasted for tonight and tomorrow, when it will finally 'warm' up a bit. All we can do is hope and keep our fingers crossed that the roses can endure this wild weather.
Judith

Crazy weather here too: no winter so far. We had summer through the first part of October, then went into early fall and have stayed there ever since. Sun, light frost in the morning, warming during the day. My roses are still trying to set buds. The chill factor is probably okay, but apart from one lucky deluge in early November we've gotten practically no rain, during what is normally the wettest time of the year, when the reservoir fills and the groundwater recharges. If it doesn't rain a lot sometime in the next few months we could have a very ugly summer.
We planted an unusually large number of plants this fall and I'm just hoping they're established enough by summer to be able to go without watering. We did have a lucky day of rain a couple of days ago, so the garden got watered. How weird to be thinking about that in January.
Melissa

I confess I haven't done any winter protection yet because the bunnies are still running amok. We'll have a day of freezing temps that's bookended by several days in the 40's and 50's. The lawn here at the office didn't start to turn yellow until yesterday; it's been brilliant green this entire time. Very odd. The grass usually goes dormant everywhere here in early November.

Yesterday was horribly frigid and tomorrow should be in the 50's again.