Pre-storm.

For piedmont NC in Sept. the air is dry and cool and gusty, really
lovely tonight.

I gathered the loose things up and put them inside the shed and other
storage areas, cut the nice blooms from the roses and brought them
inside, deadheaded the rest, noted more distressing canker and hacked
it off along with borer-bored canes.

The roses are showing those clear, bright colors they only show in
cool weather here in NC--that I suspect some of you in cooler climates
see year-round. While the "carnage" from rain and insects and fungus
has been pretty bad this year, I am tempted to say that Royal Amethyst
prevents the new roses from being a total loss. Great rose. Mauve, not
purple. But good vigor and nice substance and a very pleasant, ruffley
bloom. Only the strong survived this summer in my garden.

Mutabilis is in its last big gorgeous flush. A perpetual joy is this
rose, even young and even though it has only five petals. If you hate
singles, this is the single for you.

Don Juan--flexing its muscles, big red fresh looking blooms, canes so
supple and fresh and strong I could just ...

Suzanne's own-root Jude the Obscure is blooming its heart out--and has
not cankered. In fact--it has some HIPS. Pretty neat. Neither White
Lightnin' nor Tiffany is dead, though I thought for sure they were
goners.

Many hacked-to-the-ground canker cases are rallying with lovely
fringey new shoots. I cut them back way too late in the year, out of
frustration with all the canker and blackspot and cercospora and
god-knows-what this wet season and my neglect brought.

New Dawn chugs on, doing everything but bloom. It's a living thing,
very green, very strong.

All the side bed Austins and Hybrid Perpetuals and Hybrid Musks are
doing well, young and spindly but poems all their own on the backdrop
of the dead bareroot grafted hts I still have not dug out from last
spring.

We'll see what the winds do.