On Tue, 13 Jan 2004 15:42:02 GMT, torgo
wrote:

I'm outside of Atlanta, zone 7b. We typically have frost until early
March, sometimes with one late bout of snow or freezing rain.

It's way too early for things to be breaking out - the daffodils were
the warning sign. They're already growing strong and about to form
blooms, when they normally don't pop up out of the ground until very
late in the month.

The roses can handle the normal winter here, even with the new buds.
The real threat is precipitation. This far south, we get freezing
rain instead of snow, and it just seems like we're overdue for a
really nasty ice storm.

Don't freak out.

First of all, Mother Nature has you covered. Each of those buds has
auxillary buds for just such an occasion.

Second of all, this is exactly the reason why you prune at the end of
winter. In most parts of the rose-growing world, the weather is just
this unpredictable. If your roses break dormancy early and frost kills
most of the bids, you simply prune them away. Living in Atlanta, you'd
have to really get a killer winter storm to endanger your roses. I
find that early breaking of dormancy happens several times during the
average winter even here in Nashville. And we *always* get a late
frost in late March/earlyApril which knocks down the daffodils. Right
now, I've got all sorts of swelling buds, *and* I actually had growth
during our mild December.

This is precisely the reason that I don't bother to prune very much at
the beginning of winter. Knowing that I'm going to have to prune in
the spring, I just wait and see how much winter kill I get.

So don't freak. Living there in Atlanta, I wouldn't be surprised if
some of those breaking buds might grow large enough to survive some
rough weather. I wouldn't say the same thing to Theo in Kansas City
though. It all depends on where you live.