A Little Too Early?

It was pretty cool until late afternoon today so this tired gardener decided to take the day off and catch up on some ILL DVDs that are due next week. The warm sun called me out to the garden around 5 to walk around and see what was new. It seems like everyday there's something new showing up in the garden. Inspecting the roses I was shocked to find rose buds already. It's not even April yet! I don't recall the roses have buds before April before but then we've had a lot of warm days in the last three weeks. Albeit not consistently warm days but obviously enough to cause the plants to grow like their on drugs.

The rose bush above had 5 little buds on it. It's a creamy yellow rose that I planted last year. Must find the tag to identify it.

This bush had three buds on it. Another one I need to find the tag on. I had planned to put in plant stakes next to the roses last year and never got around to it. This one is a very soft yellow, different from the one above. 

This bud is on the one of the three Climbing America rose bushes. I highly recommend this rose if you want a large gorgeous pink rose that grows well. My friends planted three of these on a three legged metal arbor. One side is well over 7 feet tall and I have to use a ladder to clip off expired buds. The other two are around 5 feet or so. Not only is are the flower's a gorgeous color of pink, they are so very fragrant. And all three also are "two-fers" in that they were apparently grafted onto the root stem of a red rose. Last year both red and pink blooms covered the branches. It was incredible. The red did not have as much fragrance as the pink but it made up for it in vigor. Entire branches is covered in red like they were on fire. It was so incredible.

Above is a photo from last year showing the two different roses growing together on the same plant. It's truly a blessing to have your rose bush offer two gorgeous blooms at the same time. My only concern right now is that it's not yet April and we're having another cold front coming in on Tuesday. A cold front last year froze the top half of my lilies and while they still bloomed they did look a little off with shriveled brown leaves on the upper half of the stalks. Hopefully this year's cold blast won't harm the tender growth popping up all over my strolling garden.

[FYI - Blogger is not working right tonight. The photos are not showing up but if you scroll over the blank spot between the text you can click on the image to see it. I don't know why it's doing this but I've been having some problems with Blogger lately. Sometimes I have to publish my post between uploading photos to get it to allow me to upload a new image. So annoying!]