i love the water droplets on some of the roses. lol
your late season blooms look really awesome!

GORGEOUS!

Special Occasion looks wonderful. Does she keep well in a bouquet?

Love the 2nd pic of America.

WOW !!! your Special Occasion Look soooo Beautiful and just look at your Mr. lincoln in its' classic form no less and America is looking Great also. I'm impressed with the amount of Beautiful blooms you have for this time of year.
Next year I'm going to use some of that special fertilize that you are using because I can see what wonderful results you are having with it.
Harold

So Serena, I don't understand what the "lopsided and lumpy" thing is all about?! Your roses are beautiful. Nothing lumpy about them! I wish mine looked as clean as yours. No thrips damage. I know you don't like to spray chemicals, but what do you do to keep the thrips away? Or maybe you just don't have that problem where you are?

Serena, I also can not detect anything lumpy or lopsided in your roses! They are just plain beautiful!

I have a question about Mr. Lincoln. I noticed that the color of your Mr. Lincoln is a more bright, warm, red than I thought this rose is supposed to be. My understanding is that Mr. Lincoln has dark, cool, blue, red flowers. Would you say that your camera picked up his color correctly? I am asking, because I got an own-root Mr. Lincoln last year from an online vendor, which flowers are also more on the warm, bright, red side and I was wondering if I got a mislabeled rose and if it is maybe Oklahoma?! Long story short my Mr. Lincoln looks color-wise basically like the photos that you have posted of yours. So maybe I got the right deal?

I am also interested in the answer to Beth question: How do you keep the thrips away?

Thanks for posting!

Christina

I miss my Mr. Lincoln, esp after seeing yours.

where's the lumps? lol

Serena

Here are some of Ms Adele's lemon pies she made today. We had over 40 lemons on our two myers lemon trees this year, that's enough to make 20 pies. Now you know why they call me Phatboy. HA HA LOL
Harold

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LEMON PIE is one of my favs! yummmmmmmmmmmm!
i tried to cut a piece, but, ended up scratching my computer monitor screen. lol

Lana (Markiz) your GORGEOUS ROSES we miss so much! What I must absolutely mention! is that when Jim got his first snow way back in mid-October, I thought oh, no! no more of Lanas gorgeous jewels of roses because of the snow! Whenever anything happens to Jim, I know you are also in Pennsylvania and are facing some very serious snowstorms! And now hail and ice-- I am crossing my fingers that you both are safe and sound with running electricity and heat and for Jim that he doesnÂt do crazy one-armed Olympics with that snow shovel! And that the roses are sleeping safe and sound! I have long noticed that you both are in Pennsylvania and I just had to mention this that IÂve been thinking of your roses way back when the Pennsylvania snows first hit! Also itÂs because of your lovely roses that Harold and I got Folklore, and how Violon dÂIngres and those jeweled rose hips are permanently embedded in my memory!

Harold, oh, my goodness, those pies look so delicious and YUMM YUMM, MY STOMACH IS LIVINÂ THE DREAM and I can just imagine that heavenly smell of pie crust that overcomes the stench of my house in my imagination about how delicious those pies must be and how thrilled IÂd be to smell them. Harold, my house was filled with the stench of burning microwave popcornÂlong ago, my Mom had given me some microwave popcorn (I donÂt eat microwave "fast food"), but I didnÂt want it to get stale either, so I decided o.k. I better do the nuke job but literally nuked them into a billowing smoke bomb! LOL! Those pies are perfect to overcome the nasty vision of greasy burnt popcorn singeing my eyeballs when I opened that bag, LOL! And that meringue is DIVINE!! So all I have to do is set YOUR photos up and say, ahhhhhhh, mmmmm, yummmm! Ahhh, the comfort of imagination and AdeleÂs wonder-cooking I am taking slices of delight with me each time I view them!

Beth, everyone is so glad that you are in the warmer zone so that we can enjoy your spectacular collection of beautiful roses. Yours is one of the expert rose-growing I was specifically talking about (smiley face). Christina and Beth, I do have thrips. Hot pepper wax spray from Bonide keeps blooms 75%-100% damage-free , but I leave the leaves unsprayed, so that thrips feed elsewhere instead of my blooms. Fall, the thrips are not a problem, but cucumber beetles replace them so you have to keep re-applying the pepper spray and beetles are not as afraid of the pepper. I only spray Bonide wax pepper when the buds are forming. Once they actually open up, I stop spraying pepper so that the bees wonÂt get scared off. Christina, youÂve got the right rose. Lincoln is a very nice warm red (as the camera shows) in cool weather, but it turns a cool (garish, lol) magenta in hot Kansas summers. Iris-Gal, Dennis, thanks so much! Iris-Gal, my roses are first year roses, and Special Occasion are baby bands; all my roses except for Tiffany have very short stems that run into bunches of major stem sprays and clustered leaves so if you try to cut any of my flowers for a bouquet you end up hacking/pruning the plant, whoops! So either my gardening care is wacked out or the roses are just too young and immature.

Confession: not only am I a Lopsided Gardener but a LOONY, Lopsided Gardener. Like seriously insane! The week before Thanksgiving my tree rose Gemini sent up 16 fat buds in 28-42 degree weather (Gemini has about as much common sense and wisdom as I have), but our weather did not crash into the low teens and low 20s until November 27. So on November 29, I brought in Gemini because I hated to see all those wonderful buds die! Plus itÂs a tree rose, and its exposed crown I feared would get damaged by the freezing temps. All buds were closed when I brought Gemini inside my home. 10 days later, it looks like all 16 buds really will bloom. Here are the first 3 opened blooms. More are definitely on their way to the camera, LOL. Drastic color change: pale clamshell pink instead of deep coral and cream mix, is it because of indoor lighting? or was it because of the icy cold weather while the buds were forming? Indoors: same sized blooms but lost 2/3rds of fragrance (light instead of strong-fruity).

that's funny that they are blooming in your house. lol
the blooms look really good!

whoops, posted too soon, because now even more prettier blooms...

Serena, thanks for your reply to my questions. In my own garden my Mr. Lincoln kept the warm red color (I would prefer a cool blue red color) even in hot weather, but maybe one reason is also that the rose is grown own roots and I got him as a band last year, so he is still a baby. The color might change as the rose matures. But he looked exactly like yours so it is very likely that I may have gotten the correct variety.

Regarding the Bonide hot pepper wax spray I have to look into that. It is amazing how well it protects your roses from thrips damage.

Your indoor Gemini rose flowers are very pretty, I love the soft pale coloration. It is so nice to have rose flowers indoors in December. Enjoy!

Christina

Serena
I love your Gemini rose the pictures of your Gemini is what sold me on having to have this rose. Your has such a classic look to it.No sign lopsided rose here.HA HA LOL
Harold

PS I was moving somethings around in potobucket and deleted Adele's lemon pies. Sorry about that. LOL LOL

i came back to get another piece of lemon pie and someone ate them both. lol
very nice serenasyh, but, where's the lumps? lol

Serena, I really love each of your photos. You have got some beautiful roses. I think you should keep your Gemini in your house all year round, as the blooms as so very beautiful. No that won't do, as the outside blooms are so beautiful too, you better buy another Gemini standard. In Winter you can have a pair of standards in your house. Then again you could just go back to having the one and just waiting six or eight months for your delicate shell coloured blooms, you wouldn't ever get too use to them then.

Serena,

The first pic is of Precious Platinum (larger on the left) and Loves Magic/ Liebeszauber (smaller on the right). The
second pic is of Loves Magic/ Liebeszauber.
Notice the blooms are really close in form and color.

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