Hi folks Thanks so much for all your encouragement and support! It's so nice to know that I'm not alone in this, and that there are friends out there who understand that roses are important to us when we've lavished love and attention on them - Bluegirl put that well. Part of the fun of growing roses for me is that they need me in a way that daylilies never would, but this year they've needed too much attention for too little return. And I am indeed a lazy rose gardener, at least as much as I can be with 700+ roses. I don't spray anything except very occasional Liquid Fence or insecticidal soap, and they've all built some resistance from "tough love" for years that will hopefully help them weather all this. RpR, that's one reason I am totally toast if I winter protect before the ground freezes - without the Serenade and more fussing than I'm willing to do, far more roses will die from winter canker in my climate than winter kill. For Nebraska, it's not the absolute low temperature but the constantly variable ups and downs of temperatures all winter that keep no reliable snow cover on the ground, and just enough warm spells to confuse the roses all winter (we've been alternating single digit weeks with 40's and 50's since Christmas). Thanks Hoovb for the sympathies that this is one of the toughest climates for roses! Statistically, Nebraska has wider temperature variations all year - hotter heat and colder cold - than any US state except South Dakota. A perennial breeder in Nebraska named Harlan Hamernik (who created Husker Red penstemon) says "if it'll grow in Nebraska, it'll grow anywhere". Not exactly true for roses, but we do make weather a challenge and a legitimate topic of conversation. Personally, I secretly think folks in zone 3-4 and below have it harder for roses, since I can get away with growing lots of hybrid teas if I winter protect a few inches at least, but the options are so much more limited further north. I totally agree with ehamel and intris and bluegirl that this was the year to hunker down and just concentrate on keeping everything alive. I always mulch well for long-term survival in a naturally dry climate anyway, and always plant new roses with the water crystals to help short-term survival. Yep, mori1 - I was watering even into December too, and my neighbors have long since stopped trying to figure me out in the garden. It's just that watering isn't fun, and a large part of why I don't spray is that it isn't fun either (though I like to believe health principles factor in as well as laziness). Harmonyp hit it right on the nose, in what I was getting across with all the wingeing. Gardening is one of my few "me" things, and the only one besides exercise I "have" to do enough to carve out time for it. I work more than full time and have kids and my husband and other responsibilities, so I rely on the garden for that extra boost of sanity and strength to balance me out with faith and family. This garden year was just plain depressing non-stop, and I didn't even want to sort pictures of better years to post since it so wasn't reality for now. It's reassuring though discouraging to hear the same from others like seil and bustopher and mori1 that have had the same kind of year in the midwest. Even though things sort of grew and stayed alive, nothing thrived - 25 tomato plants and maybe 25 tomatoes total for the summer, fewer potatoes out than I planted, well established blueberry bushes dying. Seil, I agree that roses are tougher than we fear they'll be and that if I can keep even the crowns alive they'll come back in the spring. We know that well in our zone 5-6 winters, and we're used to pruning the puppies down to little nubs in the spring. It's just that the poor things were so stressed already by the limited water, with the freeze added to it. Even with the mulch and crystals and weekly deep watering enough to keep them mostly green, their root systems were stressed. Still - it is what it is, and we'll see what happens in the spring. After all these years, I know that a rose dying is an opportunity to plant a different rose, and I certainly haven't stopped buying roses for spring. Lucille, Kitty, Melissa - I know you have your share of challenges in your year-round warm zone in different ways, so I appreciate your sympathies. And Jeri, don't you dare stop complaining about your drought or I'm going to feel like a real whiner. Tough conditions are tough, even if it could always be worse elsewhere. Thanks again Cynthia

Oh Kitty - the Chelsea Flower Show is right up there with animal cruelty and beating children in my list of 'bad things'. I start to get worked up by April and by May, am in full vitriolic flood. Not getting going early but here is a clue as to why I think this extravaganza of excess is so disgusting - Big Trees. The fad for instant gardening reaches its apotheosis in Chelsea - participants, aided by vast budgets (which seem in direct disproportion to a sense of responsibility) think nothing of importing gigantic, fully grown trees from around the world......along with the nasty little micro-life which tags along. Right now, we are gearing up for a spring of devastating tree loss as fraxinea chalara destroys our native ash trees - another dutch elm crisis - caused by the trade in mature plants which are hauled across continents to satisfy the massive egos of some sponsoring corporation and the must have desires of people with too much money and no patience or sense of ecological awareness. I HATE Chelsea and the excessive culture it supports. It is NOT gardening but gross spectacle. Very sorry to be a downer - the mere word 'Chelsea' is enough to make me foam at the mouth while flames pour from my nostrils in hyperventilating puffs of rage.

Perhaps the poster above needed a bit of sleep. We'll hope that very impolite post above is an anomaly for her. Henry, thank you for posting this information. I hope never to need it in my own garden, but I like to be educated about all things roses and I do read up on RRD as much as I can. Having some knowledge of it helped a fellow rosarian in the area identify Round Up damage, which was a relief. Forewarned is forearmed as they say. It is so helpful to the rose community when you post these research findings. Some may be dry reports, but all contain nuggets of information. Please don't ever stop posting! Anne

Beth, I noticed an outbreak of similarly coloured petunias appearing all over the UK (gold and maroon) which caused me to literally avert my eyes on walking past. As a rule, I am a lover of bright colours (no beige in my house or wardrobe) but am strictly old school when it comes to roses - white or pink (or palest yellow at a pinch). Course, that does not apply to the dahlia beds, nor the many rows of cutting gladioli or luridly coloured annuals (apart from said petunias) in my allotment. Particularly enjoying a combo of orange, purple, deep red and acid green.......just not in the roses. And yeah, striped roses, not even pink and white, really do it for me but I was agog at the variety available in the US.