Hot Hot Hot Weather Roses

For 3 days since last Saturday, my garden was experiencing the sizzling hot tropical weather. It was unbelievably warm for an alpine region especially for the month of May. Day temperature was 33 degrees celcius and that broke the record of July, from the summer of 2006.

It is very rare that I'm sweating so much unless working out on the cross trainer, but the last few days, suddenly my sweat glands decided to work extra hours that a new deo stick was called for and I found out by accident that deo sticks can also help keep sweaty palm dry. Question is; how often do you get that nervous until the palm of the hands get all sweaty and clammy?

We are currently enjoying a little over 15 hours of sunlight and the day will get longer and longer in the coming days. When the sun is exactly on top of the house, it is a bit like sitting inside a pizza oven. To be in a pizza oven during the weekend is a real torture. Being in an alpine country, the house is not equiped with fan or air-conditioning and a few days a year of over 28 degrees celcius is tolerable, but when it get over 30's and became too warm for comfort, I felt like a melting wax, soft and spilling all over the floor totally out of shape. The coolest part of the house is the wine cellar but this is not a place to chill out because there are no windows in there and the air is quite stale and musty.

So, the best place to be during such extreme warm days is out in the garden. Even though the air is hot outdoor, at least it is moving air with a plus of perfume in the air from the roses and other seasonal flowering shrubs. The only set back is that, during such warm days the pollen count in the air is also very high. After a train of 20 or more continuous sneezing, I ran back into the house until once again I'm spilling all over the place like a melting wax before running out into the garden once again seeking some cooling comfort under the trees.

Quite interesting in the last few days is that when the sun goes down, the night temperature did not drop below 20 degrees celcius. It remained warm the whole night through and very rare that I could sleep at night with all windows wide open, as if in a holiday chalet somewhere in the equator region minus the mosquito. That doesn't mean we don't have mosquito here. It is just too early for mosquito season but the night moths and other tiny little flying insects like the fruit flies are all over the lamps and constantly diving into our drinks. Those tiny flying insect will also fly straight into my eyes like a head on crash. I also noticed the fruit flies are very attracted to the wine glasses full or empty and then they float lifeless, probably drowned from the alcohol contents.

The extreme yo-yo difference between cold nights and warm days since early spring had caused a lot of confusion to the outdoor nature. The late emergence of predator bugs and other destructive pest are just one of the little signs of global climate changes, and when they did appeared, I saw the neighbour's cat had caught one of the blinchli as it is called here and brought the reptile home as a present to his people.

In other parts of the world this blinchli is also known as blind worm but actually it is not blind at all and it is not even a worm. It is a reptile; Anguis Fragilis, predators to the destructive slugs and other soft bodied insects. Whenever I'm working in the garden and saw one that's patrolling the garden, I usually dropped everything and ran into the house, close all doors and put on some music trying to erase their picture in my head. They are harmless animal but they look like a small snake. I have a phobia when snakes are concerned.

Some roses are very sensitive to the temperature changes especially during the time when they are forming their flower buds.

This year, there are so many roses in the garden that are showing the side effects of unstable temperatures. I’m seeing more and more vegetative centre or phyllode on the banksia Purezza blooms as they unfurl their petals. Phyllode means an expanded petiole taking on the function of a leaf bladeProliferation is not really a pretty sight but there is really no cure for it because this is what happened when the climate and temperatures rise and drop unpredictablably. Some roses are just too sensitive to such changes. You don't see such malformations on commercially sold roses from your local florist. This is because those florist roses are cultivated in a controlled green house environment to achieve the "cookie cutter" perfection uniform buds and flower formation.

Home grown garden roses on the other hand must learn to adapt to local climatic and temperature changes. Roses are basically very easy plant to grow and maintained. Once established roses are very draught tolerant and they don't really require much attention at all. The number one factor which roses required most is at least 6 hours of sun for them to really thrive. They are quite flexible about their other requirements, and most of them will still produce flowers even without fertilisers or deadheading. Of course a few minutes tending to their basic needs will boost and perk up their performance. Given the right amount of care and feeding, they without fail will reward you with abundance of awe.

All my roses are standing up well in such current heat basking in the hot sun except for the newcomer Madame Lombard who's showing some kind of heat stress and dropping petals before unfurling
This is probably because her bareroots are still not strong enough to support all the blooms she's making. By right I should remove all the flowers so the plant can concentrate on establishing roots first, but I am so curious to see how the flowers look like and which colour group it fall into before I decide her permanent position in the garden. This is not the fault of the rose but only me and myself to be blamed.
Souvenir de la Malmaison is definitely the number one rose that prefers hot sunny days instead of wet weather. It hasn't look so good like this for a long time because rain followed by sunny spells spoils the petals and make the plant look nightmarishly ugly with mumified balled up blooms. The extreme difference between warm and cool temperature since spring started had also made this rose very confused during buds formation. Actually there are so many roses in the garden looking a bit chaotic in their petals arrangements due to the weather phenomena.

With a fairly stable temperature, Souvenir de la Malmaison in my humble opinion is one of those most breathtaking roses to adorn the garden with a fragrance I can only describe as dreamy and sedating. The petals imperfection shown in the picture above clearly reflect the kind of weather in the last 2 months. Isn't that amazing? Roses not only speak the language of romance but they also record the weather pattern in their petals.
Similar to Souvenir de la Malmaison thin petals, Hermosa (picture above) is another one which cannot take the extreme weather changes in my garden's wet and rainy micro climate. With the last couple of days of really hot weather, the petals successfully unfurl and the blooms opened up beautifully. The thin petals, almost like tissue papers are easily saturated by rain, causing them to stick together. When the weather dries up, the wet and saturated outer petals stuck together, forming an outer shell or hard case and thus preventing the inner petals to open up. Further dampness after the hard case developed usually lead to central petals fouling and the whole flower just rot in waste.

This is just a tiny observation from my backyard which relate to bigger issues of global warming potential. My world is your world too. Help reduce carbon footprint. Recycle whenever you can.
Green up your world, colour it with flowers and enjoy your garden.

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