The black poop things look like caterpillar poop. Caterpillars are best controlled by hand picking (wear gloves) or by spraying BT, which won't harm anything except caterpillars. BT can be sprayed on food, so it's quite safe, and will not harm bees or beneficial insects. They look a little sunburnt to me, but relatively okay otherwise. Best to stick your fingers around in the soil and see if it is moist enough. If the soil feels cool to your fingers, then there is some moisture in the soil (not necessarily enough, but some). At the same time, don't drown them (soil is pure mud). Some of those seem planted a little close to the home. A rose can get 5 or 6 feet wide--my Belinda's Dreams are wider than that. If a plant gets 6 feet wide, then it needs to be planted at least 3 feet from the house--more being better, so a person can get between it and the house if necessary for maintenance to the home (or plant). I would hold off on fertilizer until the plants are a little more established, since they are a bit toasted. Your weather is already warm, which can be stressful for a small young plant trying to establish itself. If the temperatures really shoot up in the next few weeks, some temporary shade will reduce stress.

Well, I alternately love and hate this rose! When it blooms, it has very nice HT type blooms (no fragrance), but I don't care for the shrub shape.......and it BS's pretty badly (like most everything else here). It is also extremely thorny! Mine was planted in the yard and I was going to get rid of it so I dug it up - very rudely - and stuck it in a pot, mostly because I felt badly about digging it up. It then proceeded to put out beautiful new growth and a flush of blooms and it has been in the pot ever since. Here it is, in it's pot: (this is earlier in the year) Sorry for the mixed report! Lynn

Hello again, "Not all climbers are lax in habit; many are upright, as you describe your rose to be." Thank you for this; I have learned something new. It never occured to me that my rose could be a climber because I didn't know that some climbers were sturdy and upright as my rose is. "The clusters of flowers would make me look at the Floribunda category first." I believe you're correct. I posted pictures of a bunch of my flowers in the cottage garden forum gallery, including some of this rose, and a lady there immediately said it was a Eutin (without my having even asked for an ID), like her mother used to grow. I looked up Eutins, and while my specimen looks a bit bedraggled compared to the ones in the pictures I've seen, I do believe that to be my rose. It's certainly the closest I've gotten! Here is a link that might be useful: Eutin Roses

Ok Dawn....I checked over there but now you have me confused. Here you say it does quite well on a trellis but over there on the rose forum you say it doesn't climb a trellis. It would be important to know the growth pattern to be able to ID the rose. The colour also looks darker in the new pics. It's very full so it looks like an older type of rose. Really lovely and I can just imagine the beautiful perfume it has. If it was from your great grandmother then I imagine that would predate David Austin's English roses, such as Mary Rose since he was born in 1926. I'm sure someone over there will know as hopefully there are still some of the experts who were there some years ago when I hung around that forum. SharonCb