Oh, Connie, thank you so much for a touch of spring here in the dreary days of fall. I am, too, beginning to see the garden go dormant for winter, and I'm unusually sad about it.

I can't take my eyes off of Paul Transon! What a beautiful picture. Congrats on the laptop. I got mine last year for Christmas. Thought DH was out of his mind when I got it, but I love it! :)

there wasn't a single rose out there worth cutting

I know exactly what you mean! For weeks I've been watching a very slowly developing final Fragrant Cloud blossom I intended to cut & bring in for this weekend, but early last week we had a very light frost, followed by relatively warm weather, and then rain.

Now it's blown............. :(

Connie, as a follow up thought, if you have photos, especially whole shrub photos, that you're willing to add to HelpMeFind, I'm sure they'd appreciate them! For instance, I just checked Henri Barruet and there are only three photos at HelpMeFind for that rose, and they're all closeups of one or a few open flowers.

Henri Barruet is a real charmer - I'd love to find a place for him in my garden. I know how you feel about the last blooms of the season, just looking out the window now Awakening is having its last hurrah with maybe a dozen or so blooms - no leaves mind you - but dark pink blooms unlike the blush white of summer. Darlow's Enigma has a flurry of white blooms still, looking snow-like next to the faded tan of Limelight hydrangea flowers next to it. The Generous Gardener still has a few fragrant flowers on it as well, but my poor new Austins have those freeze-dried buds that tried to bloom until we dipped below freezing at night and put them in suspended animation. Blushing and Sunny Knockouts are still covered in bloom, and will probably continue until we get consistant freezes.

These last fall flowers are special and remind us of why we love to garden and keep us going, and dreaming, until next spring.

We've had some frosts and the tips of neighbors' cannas are frozen up, but green down. Likewise kudzu still is putting up new growth, although in some huge stands, there is a mix of dead and alive.

So...you should be growing Armada...still full of blooms.
Dortmund still has vibrant sprays. R. bracteata has buds with the sepals folding back.

Safrano remains magnificent as does Duch. du Brabant and that chugging old workhorse, The Fairy, is still pushing out vibrant sprays.

Not all frosts are the same. Nor are all roses. Growing an assortment of kinds will make the late season rose roulette a better chance for very late season roses.

Cheers.

No no - it is the start of the season! new bulbs, sweet peas and garlic sown, broad beans in and seed potatoes and bare-root roses ordered. Anyway, I think the current trend for having winter gardens is a weird modern fad. You know the sort of thing - lots of dogwoods and willows, maybe a rubus, a few snowdrops and listless heathers, evergreens! Winter means bare branches against grey skies, space to walk in my garden without being attacked by greenery and what's more,me, my plants and my family all enjoy a period of well-earned dormancy.

There are still rose blooms here in Southern California, since our dormant season is usually from somewhere in January to somewhere in March. Of course there isn't the abundance of spring but it's not hot either so the roses aren't stressed and look quite nice. Quite a few of the roses still have buds, such as Madame Charles, Le Vesuve, Mme. Cornelissen, Cottage Rose, Wife of Bath, Mutabilis, Aunt Margie's Rose, Mme. Joseph Schwartz, Our Lady of Guadalupe, Spice and Lavender Dream, among others, in addition to blooms. It's wonderful to come home from work and see the rose blooms welcoming me, their colors glowing against the green foliage in the dusk. I know dormancy is going to come soon, at least for many of the roses, but right now I'm still savoring the lovely blooms, for as long as they choose to be with me.

Ingrid

We've had an unusually warm but wet November, so the roses are still growing but the blooms are all a sodden mess. I'm glad for the long fall growing season, as the roses had a hard summer and have a lot of catching up to do. We don't have a consistent down time here. We'll continue planting until Christmas, by which time I hope to have all our orders arrived and in the ground (I'm still making them up!). I've taken my cuttings; we just finished planting our bulbs. We still have to cover the tender plants in their winter greenhouse. I've anticipated part of our winter work, weeding and mulching the beds, taking pleasure in the order rising out of the chaos. After New Year's I'll spend the rest of the winter and early spring continuing cleaning up the garden, in the intervals when the weather permits, and pruning the roses. The climbers are a mess, but it's been too warm to begin pruning and tying them.
We're beginning a new section of garden. I'm looking forward to watching the big garden develop now that it's more or less fully planted, though of course we'll continue adding and removing plants. The shade garden needs an urgent intervention that I can't bring myself to undertake, but if we don't it will soon be a pure brushy waste, with old roses peeking through the weeds.
Melissa

As my roses are ending their season, my camellias are coming into their glory. I'm seeing the beauty of gardening for all the seasons. I have a more natural woodland setting on the back of my pond that I avoid during the summer (because of the pesky deer flies), but during the cooler months, it is my favorite part of the yard...I'm gradually adding camellias, hellebores, cyclamens, etc. to this area to provide autumn/winter interest.

I'm also looking forward to pruning my roses. I don't hard prune, but, instead, I use the David Stone method. This gives me an opportunity to get really up close and personal with each rose. I've got lots of roses, but I don't agonize over pruning.

Robert

I still have lots of buds on the roses. I keep hoping they will open, I cut a few and brought them in, one or two opened. It's going to be warm this week so I'll see if any open outside.

But now starts all the 'work'. I've already dug up a few beds of iris and I want to spread them around. Lots to do before spring pruning!!

Our brief period of roselessness is stuffed full of camellia, clivia, freesia, and aloe flowers. (That, and a lot of praying for rain.)

I'm okay that the flowers are pretty much finished (there's still some out there, they're just not good enough to cut and take to someone), and the leaves are continuing to fall. It's much easier now to see the structure of each rose. I can see exactly which canes to remove on the overgrown roses. Banshee and Shailer's Provence have each made a thicket of suckers that will soon threaten my path ... I can see exactly where they are and which ones to remove.

Winter pruning will come later. The Gallicas and Hybrid Chinas will benefit from being shortened ... I'll wait till the deer have finished their part of the job, tho. The ramblers? Those few nice days in January are perfect for cleaning these up and reattaching them to their fence.

I have also discovered camellias. I visited a garden earlier this month that had THE most lovely camellias. After that, I have started noticing them more and more. I have places in the gardens that are too shady for roses to thrive ... camellias fit the bill. I was in Richmond yesterday afternoon, and I just happened to go past a nursery that I know, and there's now 5 new camellias in the back of my Expedition. My husband calls them roses without thorns. :)

When I am really pining for the garden, I work in the greenhouse. There is always at least one flower out there. Right now, off the top of my head, I know there's a flower on Dixieland Linda and Fresh Pink.

York, one of my winter jobs is to add photos to HMF. There are a number of roses that I grow that have no photo on HMF at all ... I intend to fix this if I can. This is part of a goal for me to create an album of all of my roses (bush and portrait shots) to share. I'll get all organized with what I have so far as winter progresses, so I'll be ready to jump into action and photograph the once-bloomers when spring comes.

and, if I have the time, I want to learn to weld. I have a lot of metal garden structures in my imagination, I just have to learn to weld so I can make them.

Winter is a time to dream of spring.

Connie

Here is a link that might be useful: garden blog