{"id":83,"date":"2008-12-25T14:20:33","date_gmt":"2008-12-25T19:20:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/192.168.1.5\/gardens\/gardenlog\/?p=83"},"modified":"2017-07-20T15:11:32","modified_gmt":"2017-07-20T20:11:32","slug":"week-52-christmas-roses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/weekly-comparison\/week-52-christmas-roses\/","title":{"rendered":"Week 52: Christmas Day Roses"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dateline: 2008<\/strong>
\nTwo out of three of my ‘New Dawn’ roses have been flowering all December. The flower above is from a bud I didn’t see and pick before our last hard freeze. It survived and opened but you can see from the brown spots that it is frost damaged.<\/p>\n

After the droughts of 2006 and 2008, I don’t have very many roses left in my garden. The David Austin ‘Heritage’ rose which was blooming on Christmas Day 2007 died. However, ‘Blush Noisette’ is still going strong, blooming in what passes for cold in central Texas but also doing well in Austin’s summer heat. This Christmas Day her flowers are either bud or blown.
\n\"photo:
‘Blush Noisette’<\/i><\/p>\n

I’m bending the rules this year to show you my newest amaryllis, ‘Amoretta’. It opened about a week ago and has had to be protected from two hard freezes and then be immediately uncovered as temperatures soared into the 70s. As such it is a bit battered. I notice with roses that cold weather tends to intensify colors and I wonder if this is true with this amaryllis or whether this is its true color.
\n\"photo:
Amaryllis ‘Amoretta’<\/i><\/p>\n

Dateline: 2007<\/strong>
\n\"photo:
2007-12-25. Roses blooming on Christmas Day in Austin, TX. ‘Blush Noisette’<\/i>
\nThis has been a very good year for December roses throughout Austin. Two light freezes, last weekend and this, haven’t damaged the roses much especially those growing in a protected area along walls or privacy fences. The white flowered China rose, ‘Ducher’, is my only rose that is covered with flowers. Looking over my history below, I see that ‘Ducher’ and ‘Blush Noisette’ are my most reliable Christmas roses. Around town ‘Mutabilis’ also seems to do very well in this cooler weather.<\/p>\n

\"photo:
2007-12-25. ‘Ducher’ is the only rose in full bloom; the snowy white against the red of the nandina berries is about as close to Christmas colors as we get in Austin.<\/i><\/p>\n

The freezing night temperatures intensify the colors of ‘Heritage’. The flowers also opens more slowly last longer than in spring or summer.<\/p>\n

\"photo:
2007-12-25. Another flower opened on ‘Heritage’; this one is a little smaller and more ragged than the one that opened for GBBD.<\/i><\/p>\n

The downside to winter roses is that the buds are vulnerable.
\n\"photo:
2007-12-25. Freeze-dried buds on ‘Blush Noisette’.<\/i><\/p>\n

The ‘New Dawn’ rose that I started from a cutting has a bud.<\/p>\n

\"photo:
2007-12-25. A cane of ‘New Dawn’ has sprawled across the pinks; this bud didn’t quite make it open for Christmas Day…but we have 12 days left of Christmas.<\/i><\/p>\n


\nDateline: 2006<\/strong>
\nRain on Christmas Eve ushers in a cold front. One of the ‘New Dawn’ cuttings in the vegetable garden has a single flower. A few blooms on ‘Blush Noisette’ remain. ‘Souvenir de la Malmaison’ is putting out a lot of bud growth.<\/p>\n

Dateline: 2005<\/strong>
\nAlthough Christmas Day was sunny and warm (high 74F), no roses are blooming this year. The hard freeze we had the first week of December is partially to blame, but the biggest factor is the continuing drought.<\/p>\n

I’ve lost several roses this year: “Caldwell Pink<\/a>“, ‘Souvenir de St Anne’s<\/a>‘ and ‘Gruss an Aachen’<\/a>. The last two were among my latest additions to the garden and apparently not well enough established to handle the stress.<\/p>\n

Dateline: 2002<\/strong>
\nIt was in the 70s and muggy on the 23rd, then cold, cloudy and windy on the 24th. Christmas Eve was a midnight clear, the temperatures hovering at freezing. But Christmas Day dawned cold and sunny–a slight frost on the ground but nothing to harm the roses. Christmas Roses Photo Gallery<\/a><\/p>\n

Dateline: 2001<\/strong>
\nAlthough it was in the seventies this weekend, the forecast for last night and tonight was upper twenties, so we prepared for a hard freeze. We brought in the potted plants and covered what garden plants we could with floating row covers.<\/p>\n

I picked all the rose buds: ‘French Lace’, ‘Madam Joseph Schwartz’, ‘Caldwell Pink’, ‘Heritage’, and ‘Blush Noisette’. ‘French Lace’ steals the show with two perfect buds that opened into two perfect flowers. The cabbage rose is ‘Madam Joseph Schwartz’.
\n\"photo:
2001-12-25. Roses blooming on Christmas Day in Austin, TX.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"photo:
2008-12-25. Roses blooming on Christmas Day in Austin, TX. ‘New Dawn’<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[17],"tags":[55,114,411],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5615,"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83\/revisions\/5615"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}