Light pruning -- mostly deadheading and removal of dead growth.
Nothing done to Tea Roses in this season.

Removing roses permanently.
Planting roses which have been waiting for a spot.
Digging up roses to be moved to a different spot.
Trying to avoid too much exposure to bright sun and hot wind.

Jeri

Put out the second round of tomato seedlings (from Garden Webbers seeds).

Pricked out some seedlings into individual pots

Took out some lawn and enlarged beds-trying to decide whether roses can go there. (DH ended up with back spasms from using the electric edger so today we're off the the PT'ist. And I was the one digging with the shovel :-()

Mulch, mulch, mulch. Trying to prevent the weeds next year. Luckily I can buy truckbeds full of mulch for $8 at our local wastewater plant instead of paying $2 a bag at the big box stores.
We went from ice earlier in the week to shorts and a tank top weather this weekend! It was great! I'm sore and my back is lightly sunburned. I couldn't have asked for a better weekend.

I've been cleaning out the leaves that were left for "winter cover". Some of the self-seeding annuals (poppies, larkspur, bluebonnets) are all peeking thru and they need some sunlight. I've adopted a "prune if you must" routine with my roses so that has been a big time saver for me, which allows me time for a couple of projects, such as putting new edging in several of my flower beds.
Molly

It was a heat wave here at 38deg so I went outside looked at the 6" of snow cover,thought about the marketing of winter texture, shook my head and went back inside.

Stanc

Light pruning (to keep the roses out of paths & driveway, etc.). Weeding, especially the @#$%^&* sour grass (oxalis), which is beautiful, but is up everywhere 12-18", and is shading all of the bulbs & flower seedlings that are trying to come up. Mulching & feeding as I go along - drat, I used up the last of our home made compost - now have to go and buy some! Very warm sunny days - beds still too wet to plant new stuff, and I have little space anyway. Deciding that next Fall I must totally dig up some flower beds, separate overgrown Iris, etc.

Looking at my rooting Duchess de Brabant & other tea rose plants on my glassed in back porch, & trying to imagine where I will ever plant them! (Maybe I can get rid of one of my 3 bush Cecile Bruners along the house?).

Jackie

Jeri, what kind of pruning do you give your teas? I am planning on adding more of these beauties and want to make sure I treat them right. I'm also curious to know which roses you are removing and what new ones have won your favor and are about to be put in. :)

Imagardener2, planting tomatoes and roses, what a novel idea!!!

Cweathersby, how clever you are to get your mulch that way. Don't forget your sunscreen out in the garden:)

Jardineratx, poppies, larkspur and bluebonnets peeking out and roses too. Ah, the pleasures of spring are on the horizon. Good luck with your flower beds.

Stanc, spring is on it's way. Have hope! It is spring eternal or something like that.

Jaqueline3, pruning, weeding, mulching and feeding. I'm tired just typing those words! It's alot of work. Hope you find a good place for Duchess de Brabant. It's a beauty.

Chance

Temps are unseasonably warm in Sacramento, and it's dry. We only get 19 inches of rain a year, mostly Nov-Mar. We should have 11 inches so far, not the 6 inches we've logged. The roses are pushing new growth.So, we are pruning here with great urgency.

We had a pruning party in the Sacramento cemetery rose garden on Saturday, and had about 15 people working hard. We are never exactly "done" there, if "done" means touching every single rose, but we've got most of the top priorities completed. We get together a handful of volunteers every Wed and Sat, and I stop in and prune a few roses whenever I drive by, so things are in fairly good shape.

At home, things are more dire. I need to be doing ladder work to take care of my arches and espaliered roses. It's wonderful to have them bloom, but the work involved to keep overly vigorous roses in bounds is almost beyond me. I'm "only" 57 yrs old, but my hip's bursitis hurts badly enough to keep me awake at night, and getting up on a ladder is hard work, and hard on the joints. So is climbing underneath a rose. I've got the easy stuff done - but haven't quite completed Phyllis Bide, and have the monstrous Handel yet to conquer, and another arch and espaliered fence to deal with. I'm also still nibbling at the Teas and Chinas - don't really know how to deal with four-yr-old plants that are performing well but getting big for their spots.

It's supposed to rain again Thurs and Fri, so I'd better get out there and get up on the ladder. My goal is to be done with my climbers in the next few days. Wish me luck.

Wow - this is all a bit gloomy. The good news is that early daffodils are blooming, the birds are singing, the earliest fruit trees and daphne are starting to bloom, and it's wonderful to have a public and home garden to care for and enjoy. Life is good - and will be better when those !@#$%&* climbers are done!
Anita

Dear cemeteryrose Anita, I've read about the Sacramento Cemetery found roses through Jeri's postings here. What great work you do! It takes tremendous energy to take care of a public garden and your own garden of roses as well.

Be careful with those climbers! It can be tough preparing them for spring and be careful on those ladders as well. I hope to see the roses at the Sacramento Cemetery some day.

Best Wishes,

Chance

Ah, I remember Texas bluebonnets. Have not been able to grow them here so far. We do have lots of wildflowers in roadside plantings but no bluebonnets.

I have been digging up forsythia plants that rooted from the tips of branches. Also weeding, and transplanting perennials. Planted one rose.
Linda

Like Anita, I was at the Sacramento Cemetery Rose Garden Pruning Party, this last weekend. I'm afraid I was not much help, as I'm still so new to pruning and very aware of my lack of knowledge/experience. But I had a GREAT time!!! Anita suggested that I tag along with "Berndoodle" of this forum (who came to help out), as I would learn so much from her. And did I ever! So, although I didn't contribute much to the pruning, I will be able to later on, as I continue to watch, listen, and learn (I also was able to help out with "stripping" and hauling clippings). There was a great lunch on hand, and it was a lot of fun socializing over food. A great day. And I'll be out there again on Wednesday. Today I went to a nursery and bought a hat to protect me from the sun - there is only one word to describe this hat: adorable.
In my own little garden, I'm not doing much except obsessing over leaves (looking puny), aphids (where are you, ladybugs?), and roots coming out of the pot bottoms (need to find out the best time to repot).
Laura

It was warm and beautiful here over the weekend.
I transplanted a 'Pretty Jessica' into a prime & highly visable garden spot off of the back patio.
Threw away my rooted cuttings that recently died ('Renae' & 'Ducher').
Put down cotton bur compost as mulch around a bed that contains a 'Pink Gruss an Aachen' and a 'Bloodgood' Japanese maple.
Pulled a million weeds out of the garden areas in the back yard.
Yanked up some dead, supposedly perennials.
Cleaned up the old foliage from a large evergreen daylily.
Chopped last year's growth from the Southern Wood Ferns (the new sesson's fronds are already beginning to come up out of the ground).
Pampered my three baby 'Nur Mahals' that have successfully rooted directly in the ground after being "stuck" last fall (the momma plant is already pushing out new growth all along its canes - YIKES, it's only early February and this thing has laughed off every freeze we've had so far).

Randy

Moved the McCartney Rose to the sunny garden (from the not so sunny garden at my house). Planted Sweetness next to it. Emptied an old wheelbarrow of herbs from last summer and planted them around the newly placed roses. Mulched both gardens. Picked a big bag of swiss chard. Planted Julie Link in my veggie/rose garden.
Went home and sat on the ice and saw the chiropractor today! This ol' girl ain't what she used to be...

We finally finished cleaning up the shade garden. A big oak with a gigantic poison oak vine growing up it fell in the garden a couple of months ago. When tons of poison oak is involved one works slowly and carefully. We still have to fix the fence. I called this weekend the end of pruning. Sunday I tossed alfalfa pellets under roses. Soon we'll get a load of compost and top them with it. Michael has very nearly finished the fence for our big rambler project. Then we will be very busy digging holes.

We're having a very wintry winter. Sunday it snowed, a thin icy snow; Monday the snow continued, reaching 6-8 inches in all, making about five feet for the winter so far; not to mention all the rain. What a mess. So we stayed inside.

Saturday we got out a bit--what did we do? Mulching, mainly: it's definitely too early to get going on pruning the warm climate roses, while the ultra-sodden ground is nasty to dig in. I've been cooking a lot and spending plenty of time on the computer. We're in the depths of winter, and can't wait for spring.

Melissa

My garden was buried under snow and ice this past weekend :(. I'm a little envious of you warm-zoners who could garden.

I've ordered more perennials from Bluestone, and I'm going to start some seeds this weekend for perennials, vegetables, and herbs. I have some seed which I got from England of some interesting varieties that I am especially looking forward to trying. I guess this is all computer and window-sill gardening only!

Jeri, what kind of pruning do you give your teas? I am planning on adding more of these beauties and want to make sure I treat them right. I'm also curious to know which roses you are removing and what new ones have won your favor and are about to be put in. :)

*** Hi, Chance.
In this season, the only attention Tea Roses get is the removal of any dead canes.
No large canes are shortened -- in this or any season.
Deadheading, for the most part is a matter of "bend and snap," -- snapping deadheads off at the abcission point.
Any real size reduction can be done in July or August, by "nibbling" at laterals during regular deadheading.
We don't really make any push to reduce the size of our Teas.

As for removal. With water-rationing a dead cert, we are hoping to reduce the numbers of roses.
Teas, Chinas, and Noisettes have more drought-tolerance than most, so anything NOT in those families is on Review.
Few Austins will remain. The last few Bourbons will go. Anything we're not in love with is outta here.
Every rose that is removed leaves more water for those that stay, so THIS time, we are being fairly ruthless.

Jeri