Blue Sky Day

After a dreary, rainy morning today, the sun came out at lunchtime and the sky cleared and it is absolutely a perfect fall day!  While I was outside playing with the dogs, I brought along my camera to capture a few of the things that caught my eye.
 
This is a view of our future studio/guesthouse/workshop building that I don't think I have shown you before.  I have such plans for this wonderful little building ... but I must wait till I get a few more things off my plate before I can even think of scheming its renovation.  In the meantime, it's great for storage.

 

 

Crepuscule is really showing off today!  I like this rose a lot, with its fragrant clusters of apricot-colored flowers.

 

 

 

We have already discussed my love affair with 'Mutabilis' many times.  It seems that the little flower bees concur ... they love it, too.

 

 

 

My "Yellow Seedling" keeps getting better and better.  It is four years old now, and about 4 feet high ... blooms all the time and is completely free of blackspot.  I have cuttings of it in my workshop propagation window, and I hope it will root so I have plants to share and test next spring. 

 

 

 

Not everything in the garden is sunshine and roses, though.  As I looked up from taking the photo of the Yellow Seedling, an errant patch of red growth caught my eye ... Rose Rosette Disease has come again this year.

 

It is perfectly normal for many roses to have bright red new growth.  Growth like this, which is rampant and abnormal for the variety, is a sign of a problem.  In this case, the problem is Rose Rosette Disease.

 

 

This is a cane on 'Marie Nabonnand'.  I also found disease symptoms on 'Alba Meideland', 'Climbing Pinkie' and "Puerto Rico".  Though I could remove the symptomatic canes and wait till next spring to see if the disease manifests itself on other parts of the affected plants, I won't do that in this case.  The roses that are affected are relatively common, and I will not risk any chance of transmission from them to the rest of the garden.

 

In 2011, I wrote about Rose Rosette Disease HERE.  The best online reference resource is Ann Peck's e-book, found HERE.  If you grow roses, read it and get educated.

 

Finding four roses in the garden in such dire straits put a definite damper on my fine fall mood.  I'm trying to be positive about this ... at least the affected roses aren't my rare ones.  I have to keep telling myself, RRD may mean the death of the infected rose, but it will not prevent me from growing and enjoying my roses.