How's everything in the Rose City?

Wet and more wet and then some more. We got a couple of
days with some sunshine, and upon a recognizance mission
around the great rose conspiracy discovered, of course, that
the ones leafing are white with powdery mildew, so here is
a lesson for me: spray the ones that never went to sleep with
about 1/2, maybe 1/3 the recommended amount of dormant
spray dilution, and do it diligently. You will think that after
all the time I have been held prisoner by these plants I would
have figured how to escape, but not. So tomorrow BH will
suit and hopefully it will stay dry enough to give them a bath
with Polysul and hope for the best.

What is this about you hating pink roses? Compassion is one
of my favorite roses of all times and boy is she pink! Same
goes for Evelyn, at least here and for Belle Story, and don't
give me anything even related to "you are a woman" because
the "macho" types that come to our garden look at Celestial
and get weak knees, and always ask her name. Spill boy,
what is the scoop with this story? you got me intrigued here.

Back to work. Today we got one of the banes of my existence
out of it. A good arborist came with his crew -he had been
here before to do some much needed surgery - and removed
the top of a very sick, with anthracnose and cercospora both,
alder in the back. That tree shed leaves year around and with
it brought the pestilence everywhere. We sprayed, we tried to
use systemic help for it, we have this same fellow come two
years ago and prune the dickens out of it, zilch, niente, nada.
Sick, sick, sick and with no hope, I should have listened to the
inner wise one that said then, get rid of it, this thing is not
going to overcome what is killing it, and sure enough, one
bad wind storm and the east side of our home would have
had serious damage done to it as proven this morning
after they cut it. We wanted the main trunk left there, it
will be easier to drill holes and treat it that way and let
Mme. Cecile Brunner make a fool of herself and wrap her
ever growing arms around what is left there, which of
course was left there for that sole purpose.

This is one time I don't want their chipper's fruits anywhere
near the garden, so they are hauling away the mess.

I planted another Climbing Don Juan...

I had it once, it grew so thick and it was over an arch we
had to use every day and I got pinched too many times
so I guess it wouldn't make it in this garden. Altissimo has
the place under one of the kitchen windows and the most
gorgeous white clematis flirts with him so our red and
white classic scheme is already taken. I have Italian blood
in me, but I don't like to be pinched by any Don Juan...

You are going to love Iceberg, the fragrance is a killer and
it is fast to climb, at least it was here. After a couple of years
make sure to trim the canes to six or seven or it is going to
overwhelm your arch. It gets heavy, and it can really shade
the area underneath pretty fast otherwise and then you will
have fewer blooms towards the inside. I trained ours with two
nice canes on each side of the arch, and then ran the others
horizontally in a zig-zag pattern. The laterals were easy to
control that way, and it made a nice little white blanket on
top, while the ones on the outside sides of the arch were
literally a white line of roses falling over themselves. It
was a pretty sight.

I am out of here, but still want to know about the pink roses...

Allegra