It looks as if I indeed should have used raised beds
for some of the roses I've put in the ground -- that, or gone
around the cleared parts of my land with a water level
or something more sophisticated and found the higher
ground. Many of the roses I've taken from their pots
and planted out...well, they've had to endure periods
of standing water, and many of them are dying. Not
enough swamp-rose ancestry there.

Interestingly, the rugosae in pots are growing beautifully,
but the rugosae in the wet seem to be among the less
tolerant to excessive water. My Hansa is just barely
growing and looks sickly, and the Sir Thomas Lipton
has about had it. I'm tempted to dig up the surviving
roses and re-pot them until I can make better arrangements.

My only consolation is that many of the roses I'm losing to
the wet are not own-root, and none are rare. It's an unusually
wet summer by the standards of the past 5 years here, but as
Florida has been in a chronic drought for decades, this may
be a return to what used to be considered normal weather.

Mark., learning my lessons the hard way in zone 8b