Could you do an on-line search for something like yellow leaves on roses, and maybe find images of something that looks like what you're seeing?

Here, Bart, dryness would cause every problem. It sounds different for you there. I'm glad you get better rain there. I have a Ivor's Rose (Flamenco Rosita) that has some old yellow leaves that haven't fallen off. I am headed over to it with a water meter to attempt to asses the situation. It looked bad it's first year, then better, then worse now. Another thing here is a few roses just turn into weaklings that no doubt had roots partially eaten by gophers. They are not dead, but I wonder if they will recover. 5 out of 6 of the roses that had the roots totally eaten are doing well in pots and have leafed out and at least 4 are going to have a Spring flush. I will replant those in wire gopher cages, but the roses that did not get potted but have problems the gopher damage is another possible problem. We did kill 33 gophers 2020 and 20 so far in 2021 so we are thinning them out.

I also see our explosion of tree growth having a negative impact on any rose close by. We are having 20 trees removed this Summer that were either Leyland Cypress or volunteer Arizona Cypress. The later are great but we have too many volunteers.

I hope someone can help you here, Bart.

What Sheila said. Yellow leaves can be caused by excess shading (the rose is the perfect commune: every part plays its part supporting the whole. If one doesn't provide more food than it consumes, its resources are reabsorbed by the plant, turning it yellow, then it is ejected, falling off, dead.); Too much water, too little water; normal end of life; too much fertilizer.... If you are providing all you can provide, just watch the plant to see what it tells you it requires. Hopefully, it will become more direct in its communication with you.

Bart, I don’t have much to add to the perceptive comments above, but I can add that in my experience, Ebb Tide on its own roots is slow and weak out of the starting gate. Is yours own root? Maybe the other youngsters are similar slow starters? I keep own root ET in upsized pots for several years before planting out. (Much foot tapping.) Maybe if your roses don’t seem to perk up, you could put them back in pots and baby them for awhile? I like Jeri’s idea of linking to similar foliage photos. Weather is SO crazy now! We are going to swing to 95 in a day or two. July temps in May. Hang in there, Bart! Carol

Thank you all so much-you have been of great help. Jeri, I took your advice and just Googled it; from the pictures that I saw the yellowing on the established Purple Skyliners probably just is bs,even though it happened so suddenly. But I also saw a comment on how stress can cause yellowing,and this does make sense. As I wrote, the weather has been weird-March was the way May is "supposed" to be, and vice-versa ,and the wild temperature swings stress all of us out, people and plants. Add onto that the fact that I've done a lot of work on soil improvement in this past year,so I think it is possible, too, that certain plants, finding better soil, got to work on improving their root systems. But then blooming time comes around,and they feel they have to bloom, and they do,but working on roots and blooms at the same time causes the leaves to suffer.

As for the new implants that aren't thriving, I went and dug around them and, no, I had not amended the soil enough. It was like slicing through thick, dense chocolate fudge. This soil is clay, so sticky that it would be more adapted to sculpting figurines than it is for gardening, lol. Adding organic matter alone just does nothing-the finer stuff decomposes fast, leaving behind the larger sticks and their ilk. So I mixed up some potting soil with expanded clay and a bit of alfalfa hay,a bucket full for each plant, dug it in around the bases of the plants, trying to get it in deep without disturbing the roots,mixing this lighter stuff in with the clay. I cut off the yellowing canes and leaves of Purple Lodge; the bases of the main canes look fairly ok, one showed some blackening but when I scraped at it I did get to some whitish-green (I think; didn't have me glasses and besides it was a hard spot to see easily. Violette Parfumée,planted also last fall, and right next to P Lodge, seems to be doing great,so I guess I just didn't mix in enough of the expanded clay in PL's spot...Lavender FC didn't look that bad really: no blackening at the base,so I just added my lightener mix and cut off the yellowing. I also did this treatment on one of my Audacieuse climbers; both are in their second year, but one seems to be growing backwards. I think this is being caused by a lack of oxygen to the roots; with all this rain that dense, sticky clay winds up being soffocating perhaps. It's hard to achieve the setting for the "perfect comune" ,to use Kim's phrase, when you have to "make your own soil", as I do .

I didn't water any of them. The potting soil was already pretty damp.

Ah, Ebb Tide! I wish I didn't find this rose so beautiful-it's not just the flower, it's that dark foliage as well,but it does seem hard to grow. Though this plant is (was?) not own-root,it looks bad, because the base of it's one small cane is black. I did scrape at the bud union, and saw whitish-green, so there may be a chance for it-wish us luck! I dug it up and plan to try treating it with Hydrogen peroxide and return it to a pot. Carol, how many years to you wait before planting out an ET ? I have another own-root one, that's been in a pot a couple of years and finally seems to be growing, thanks , probably, to the fact that I've been trying to do Kim's "weakly, weekly" liquid fert on it (but already messed up by forgetting to do ot last week-end).

Lastly, I want to mention a weird thing I noticed when I dug up ETide. There were a lot of earthworms (yay) but also billions of tiny white flecks that I think are microscopically tiny insects in the soil ; they seemed to move a bit, and also seemed to disappear quickly once exposed to light. Fact is, in the area a little below the ET spot, I had a Blue Eden, which I had already dug out due to the fact that it, too, was dying back, with black at the base of the canes,and there were these tiny white specks there, too. I saw none in Lavender FC's spot, which is right next to the ET/Blue Eden area. What could they be?There's a noisette that remains in this area ;it's been in there a couple of years ,but is still small. Yesterday, I saw that the older growth with the flowers looked wilty,though the plant is putting out two nice-looking basals; I'll wait until these basals mature and then pot that up , too, and will try re-working the whole area.

I'm not sure how tiny these white flecks are, about 1mm or smaller? If about 1mm, these could be springtails (collembola). They are harmless for the plants and beneficial for the soil.

Jeri, I am not sure, but I think my soil is on the alkaline side of neutral; according to the "red cabbage soil test", it resulted https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1HLygnUFEY as a bluish-purple in colour, though I did the test years ago and should re-do it. My general impression is that there's no real problem in general with purple roses or really multifloras; most years P Skyliner is fine, one of my top favourites-I have six or seven of them,likewise many other purples. My older Purple Lodge is doing great. One of my Blue for Yous is taking off; the other two are stil small but seem to be steady,etc, etc, etc. My obsession with amuves an purples is relatively recent.

As I said, the soil in some places of my garden just has an awful modelling clay texture,and floribundas just are not as vigorous by nature as are climbers and old roses. Actually I do hope some day to get to the point where I can actively acidify my soil a bit, since that does supposedly tend to accentuate the violet tones. I already have found that RdV, for example, loves cracked corn.

Magda, thank you so much! The critters are indeed 1mm or less in size. Now I'm sorry I didn't leave them alone...