..I know what you mean Marianne... although I'm not affected quite so much, my roses are still the main focus but at this time of year, like you, we have lots of late summer perennials and grasses taking over the scene.... but lots of roses ready for another flush..so still much to come I think...

Yep. Between the heat and spider mites, all the roses look pretty bad. Except Mlle Cécile Brunner. That one is still green and perky for some reason.

My roses are also a mess from the hot spell we had and various villains munching on the leaves that aren't dead. Very little blooming and not enough other things to take up the slack. Waiting for El Nino....

It is about this time of the year when I reengage with my roses since they are preparing for their fall flush. Which goes to show....... that we live in different climates Mariannese (smiles)

I can relate, Mariannese. One dreary summer only a year or two after starting this garden, few of my roses bloomed. When fall arrived and the trees were ablaze in oranges and scarlet, a single bright pink poly decided it would finally bloom. The color clash set my teeth on edge. Not only was I disengaged but irritated. Bloom in season, wretch!

I must be changing though because since then I've purposely planted pink roses with orange perennials in an area of bright sun and find the jarring colors to my liking. No accounting for taste, eh?

Fields of daffodils, plant hundreds for the joy it will bring next year. Something to anticipate.

Gean

I could have written this myself, Mariannese - by now, I am already leaping ahead ( I just did my bulb order) and the roses are long gone...although there will be heps to look forward to. In the woods, we are cutting the grass now and will do so regularly until December (when the bulbs start to poke up) so flowers are also finishing apart from the hemp agrimony and fireweed. We have a party over the bank holiday (this weekend) so we are sorting out the field kitchen, the firepit, the music, water, lighting. We finally got the zipline up - a hugely scary business using the truck and ratchets, fastening a 50metre cable across the clearing - it has taken my boys most of the summer to fix the platforms 40feet high up the poplars - dropping down to 15ft off the ground. Of course, when my tiny order of bare root roses arrive, I will be galvanised back into action - the two largest will climb a poplar each, then close the gap with steel links like a giant catenary crossing a 20feet gap between trees, which will also frame the back 'garden' behind the horsebox.

Still planting more roses, just planted 6 Above and Beyond to climb on tree trunks. May be some new hobbies can help to stop feeling blue. I have roses and riding for the warm weather, hiking and snow shoeing for the cold weather. I tried cello for a couple of years, it didn't work out. I love snow, so winter is not too bad as long as we have snow, hiking in the fall/ in the snow is so beautiful and priceless. There are a lot hiking clubs out there, join your local club for a try out, you might like it. :-)

Disengaged emotionally....that's a term I've never considered with roses. Maybe because we also have a very cold zone and short summer. Roses bloom once, in June. Sometimes we get a little re-bloom in late summer/early fall, but that's it.

I love the roses, but they're all mixed in with other shrubs and perennials. And lots of herbs! The roses are their own show, after the bulbs, fruit trees, lilacs, peonies....then the roses. So pretty and then all the other flowers start blooming as the roses finish.

When you have a three month summer....a six week blooming Celsiana puts on quite a show!

So, no....I don't think I ever emotionally disengage from the garden or any part of it. Maybe because with our short summers, you just jump in and enjoy it while you can :)

I'm with Nik - this is the time of year I re-engage with the roses. They need tidying up, mulching (again), and feeding to get ready for the Fall flush. Also, many of my tea roses bloom all Winter, so they need encouragement too. In our Meditterranean climate, especially with the record breaking drought we are in the fourth year of, Fall is really our second Spring. After at least 6 months with NO rain, the rains come back, everything greens up, the roses wake up and start to bloom, and the Fall bulbs emerge. The huge deciduous oaks in our garden drop their leaves, making more light for the roses. This year the weather folks are insisting we are going to have a heavier than normal rainy winter - I would settle for "normal" (35 inches of rain). Above normal would be fantastic. Our roses get irrigated, but some of our large trees are showing signs of stress after 4 winters of way way less than normal rain. Keeping our fingers crossed.

In addition to the tea roses blooming all winter, my once blooming roses start to bloom in Jan/Feb here, so lots to look forward to. Fall is also our planting season for everything, so that plants can settle in and grow roots during the winter rainy season. It is when I have to ramp up my activities in the garden. Spring blooming bulbs get planted in Jan, as no matter when I plant them, they come up 4-6 weeks later!

It is interesting how living in different climates makes garden seasons so very different!

Jackie

I agree with Seil and Mariannese, though like LavenderLass I don't necessarily think of it as emotionally disengaging. I'm just tired of fussing with roses by this time of year, and I don't have the enthusiasm for rose projects like I did in the spring and early summer. Now that the weather is cooling back off and we still have 6 weeks of growing season left, it'd be a perfect time to try some cuttings using my handy cutting apparatus I bought from Lee Valley (during more enthusiastic times), but somehow I can't be bothered. Some of the hesitation is what I'd do with the cuttings once I make them anyway this late in the year, since I'm so done with fussing after planting 300 roses this spring. Similarly, I went out fully intending to tie up the long lanky limbs of my Veilchenblau against the oak tree like I'd wanted to all summer, but just ended up tucking the canes out of the way among some other plants and calling it good.

I still might do one round of liquid fertilizer that I saved all those milk jugs for all summer for the new plantings, but the roses really haven't been fertilized all year except for alfalfa in early summer. If I'm going to do all the work of planting and establishing the roses in spring/early summer, and sweltering over them to keep them happy in the burning hot temperatures of July & August, I'm jolly well going to take some time to simply enjoy them and not consider them work. I still do deadheading and taking pictures at least once a week, but I don't consider that work. I have the intensive bulb planting coming up in October and at least 3000 bulbs ordered, so this is my down time and the roses are on their own. Sink or swim, guys...

Cynthia

Cynthia, I was reduced to near-inertia by your description of what you have done and will be doing this year. I cannot wrap my head around 3000 bulbs, but the result has to be stupendous, not to mention 300 more roses. I will be putting in one new rose, or should I say my husband will. It's wonderful, though, that gardens can be so many different things to different people, and that even I with much less energy than you can maintain and take pleasure in a much smaller space with very simple plantings. I so enjoy seeing gardens that are larger and more spectacular than mine, but when I go outside and there is greenery and a few flowers and fresh air I still feel blessed that this is mine, and I also have a garden. Seeing the variety of gardens here is one of the most interesting and pleasurable aspects of this forum - you get to see some gorgeous things and haven't had to lift a finger to achieve them.

Ingrid - I experience the same near-inertia when I read YOUR posts, considering the drought and dilemmas you've been constantly facing. We're also blessed that you have a garden, and we appreciate the glimpses you give us. Remember I haven't had to do ANY watering this year - we've had amazingly regular rain and even in our 95-100 degree days the roses were pretty content. I believe in planting survivors as you do, and that means I can get by on bursts of energy when I feel like it. Planting bulbs in great loamy soil with plentiful rain is a piece of cake - trowel in/tilt/drop bulb/pull trowel out to cover. It's easy to do 100 bulbs in 15 minutes or less, so 3000 bulbs is the work of two busy or three relatively relaxed weekends. Planting even a few bulbs in your dry rock-hard soil where every shovel full needs a pickax, swear words, and an adult beverage is an entirely different prospect.

Besides, I get a burst of energy once the weather cools in the fall and I know I'll get so excited to see these blooms in the spring everywhere in the garden...it's definitely worth it, and it's the last hurrah of fall work for me.

Cynthia

here in south texas it gets too hot to work outside a couple of months a year (actually i spend very short amounts of time out in the yard july, august and a bit of september) by that i mean i'm out there 15 minutes or so several times a day. I'm arranging my garden so that most plants are visable from the great room and the master bedroom. if it's something purely decorative that i won't spend too much time on it's in the front or along the sides of the house.

I'm hoping this will keep me engaged year around......

Zippy, if your climate is anything like New Orleans in July I can understand you very well. It was like a steam bath. It's very different here. I spend some time outside every day in the year, if only to spray against deer in the middle of winter. They spend nights in a lie behind some tall and wide junipers where I can't see them from the house. From March to October I am outside for hours, perhaps all day in late spring. I have roses from early June to early October, later in a warm autumn. My favourites finished early in August so that's why I am disengaged from roses. I don't care so much for HT's and floribundas. I have plenty of them in flower now but I look at them more as a decoration in the garden, fitting in my colour schemes but I don't look at them individually the way I do with the big older roses. I am not disengaged from my garden but it's so much more than roses. A new chore the last three weeks is to water the vegetables and plants in pots, something I haven't had to do at all this rainy summer.