Roses
Roses do well in Nevada.  Floribundas, Shrub and Rugosas all do well.  
I have not had much luck with climbers or ramblers but we are still experimenting.
      

	Thanks to Debbie for this one - getting pretty good with the camera.

This is Mr Lincoln.  The rose is about eight years old and over six feet tall.  The rose is quite fragrant and thorny.
 It was originally purchased for $2.00 in February and sealed with wax - all the things they recommend against.
 We're starting to have a little problem with suckers coming up below the graft but it is manageable.


Tropicana is the same age as Mr Lincoln.  Profuse blooms in the summer and the fragrance is kind of fruity.  
This is another $2.00  special from the local hardware store.


Darlow's Enigma is something of an enigma.  No one knows for sure who bred it.  It is a hybrid musk rose and was
purchased in Oregon bare root and about eight inches tall.  That was about three years ago.

This one cost me a little more - $12.95.

The rose is now about seven feet in diameter and about four feet tall.  It is very fragrant and a repeat bloomer.  
It competes with Johnson's Honeysuckle when it is in bloom as to who is  most fragrant.

    
Jan's Wedding was recently added about two years ago.  It is a shrub rose and rumor has it that it is not very hardy.

Seems quite robust here.  

No particular reason for buying it except that a friend by the name of Jan had recently gotten married.  

The rose was purchased bare root from Oregon.  

A nice grouping of Peace Roses	Thanks to Debbie for this one

Peace has been a pain in the #$!@ to grow.  

We must have tried four or five peace roses, including Chicago Peace and they all croaked.

Then one day I got a circular saying  the reason Peace roses did so badly was that the original strain was somewhat
corrupted and if I bought a Peace rose from this  company that I would have one as close to theoriginal as was
possible.  

Two years later the rose is still alive.  It is not as robust as other roses but it is hanging in there.  

If it makes it past the standard three years for this climate, I'd say we have a winner.

         

I originally envisioned a hedge or rugosas as a wind barrier and I didn't want to spend much money.

     

I ordered fifty sticks from one of the cheap catalog companies and eight years later have a hedge - sort of.

Some of the original rugosas have been replaced with Hansa, Grottendorst and a few other hardier species.

There was some problems with water in that I was not watering nearly enough and consistently so I actually
lost some rugosas. 



This half of the rugosa patch I have had trouble with.  Generally lack of water is the
culprit so I am going to do a little drip irrigation modification.



This is the other half, which is doing quite well.  Same roses, different results.

A hard earned rule of thumb is that if something is dying, check the water supply, particularly if it is
drip fed and on a timer.


           
Iceberg, otherwise known as Big Mama is one of the oldest roses in the back yard. 
One of the twins wanted to plant a rose garden for mother's day so we picked out
a number of $2.00 roses and this was one of them.  I am guessing it is about ten
years old.

The rose is a floribunda and blooms during all but the hottest part of the summer.
It is about six feet tall and gets over eight feet wide. It has to be pruned back
every year or so or it takes over.

                   

This rose is not Lowell Thomas. 


This is Lowell Thomas - a Floribunda with Yellow Flowers

It was sold as Lowell Thomas from one of the discount catalogs and
I labored under that illusion for at least seven years. The rose is a once-bloomer and got so big
I moved it over near the wild flowers last fall.

There are several indian burial ground sections where nothing grows and that's where I put it.  It
grew.  I couldn't believe it. I took no special precautions when moving it; just hacked the roots,
yanked it out and shoved it into another hole.

The picture here is the rose in recovery mode after six months - even has some new canes.

Amazing.  If anyone has any ideas what this is, I would be most interested.


                   

These two roses are Playboy and Betty Boop. They made it through one winter. 

On the Oregon coast there is a nice park on Seven Devils Road, or close to there along the ocean.

We went there one year and there was a circular flora presentation made of nothing but Playboy roses.

It was a truly impressive sight.

This makes the fourth Playboy I've tried to get through a season.

So far it has.  I am not holding my breath.

Betty Boop is a very nice, smaller rose and these are the first blooms we've seen.

I'm not holding my breath with this one either.




These are Blaze Roses - more two dollar specials. They are climbers (I think) although the canes rarley
grow longer that six or eight feet. They have put out a profusion of blooms this year. The roses are
about eight years old and we haven't lost any of them.




This is a red rambler.  It has had a rough three years but finally seems to be doing pretty well.

Once again, water was the issue and it took a while to figure that out. 

It is located right at the perimeter of the yard sprinklers, which come on twice a day.

 I thought it was getting water.

Well, I had to dig out some weeds and was trenching around the rose and kept coming up with dry sand.

Fortunately all it took was a minor sprinkler adjustment and it is now doing fine.

And there's more but it's currently in the 90's and some are not blooming.  I'll include them later.

July first of 2006 I ordered two rugosa roses (Rosa Rugosa) from Heirloom Roses up in Oregon.   They were supposed to arrive  ten days later and never showed up. September seventh,  I was in the post office picking up a couple books I ordered  and the post master came out with a box from Heirloom Roses that was post marked July seventh.   They mixed up the shipping address with the billing address. I naturally expected to see some long dead plants but one actually had  a pink stem and a couple yellow leaves. This is the rose several days later, getting some water and sun. Survives a month in a box with no light and no water - Now that's my kind of rose!