Summer really did end here. There was a minimal frostless frost to prove it more than two weeks ago. This climate just happens to lack the more apparent seasonal changes that others get to show off. Except for a bit of drizzle last Thursday, and a bit at the end of September, there has been no rain since last spring. It may seem to be boring, but such weather is normal here.
1. There is typically more foliar color by now. Sweetgums are only beginning to yellow. However, these dogwoods started to defoliate early without much color. This is about as good as it got.
2. Not all of the warm season annuals have been replaced with cool season annuals. These petunias are blooming too happily to be replaced with pansies or violas like we installed elsewhere.
3. Roses continue to bloom. This one looks like ‘Double Delight’ to me. I really do not know what it is. The flowers are rather small, so it must have noticed that nights are longer and cooler.
4. These two look silly to me because both are grafted together onto the same standard (tree rose). I believe they are ‘Iceberg’ and ‘Burgundy Iceberg’. I would not mind them individually.
5. Even by our local standards, roses should be finishing by now, with only a few that are still blooming when they get pruned in winter. I do not know what this one is, but it still looks great.
6. This is my favorite of these six pictures. I do not know what this rose is either. It is in a neighbor’s garden. It did not start to bloom until part was through summer, and is now at its best.
This is the link for Six on Saturday, for anyone else who would like to participate:
https://thepropagatorblog.wordpress.com/2017/09/18/six-on-saturday-a-participant-guide/
Tony Tomeo 
It’s been a good year for roses here too. Several of ours still blooming despite weeks of rain – I think they must like wet feet.
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Roses don’t like anything to stay wet for too long. That is why the Santa Clara Valley is one of the best places in the World fr most types. The weather is mild, but arid (with minimal humidity). They certainly appreciate a good watering as long as the soil drains. Even though they slow down as weather cools, they may not go completely dormant until frost. They may even wait for a sustained frost. However, even though they are slower and more susceptible to disease, the pathogens that cause such disease are also significantly less active during cooler weather.
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We are on chalk so water always drains!
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That really does look to be a perfect red rose.
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That is why I bothered to take pictures of roses. The others annoy me as it should really be nearly time to prune them. When I saw the red one, I got the picture, and then continued to get pictures of the others.
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I have a few roses hanging on, but looking fairly bedraggled and rained on. Yours look in much better shape!
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They typically do here. Even though they are no longer blooming, buds that developed a while ago take their time opening and deteriorating. I do not really need to prune them until the end of winter, so that can take their time. These roses are just over the Santa Cruz Mountains from the Santa Clara Valley, which is one of the best places in the World for roses. In Beverly Hills and the adjacent region of Los Angeles, I have pruned roses that are still blooming at the end of winter. They would continue all through winter if given the chance. Consequently, they are not as healthy as they are here with a bit more of a chill.
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These roses … spendid !
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Thank you. The red one is in a neighbor’s garden. No one knows how it got there. It is in a partly shaded spot, so it did not bloom much.
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Yeah, the roses look great, but I’m wowed by the Happy Petunia!
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Petunias do not do so well where we put them because it is so sheltered there. It does not get very sunny or warm. We do not mind though. We prefer that less refined look anyway. Those in the picture might stay until frost, since that spot will be getting renovated. There are zonal geraniums there that we will be pulling and relocating.
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A frostless frost? That’s novel. Your roses still look wonderful, unlike the ‘withered moths’ you find in our gardens now. I don’t know about the grafted standard though, oh dear, a bit of an aberration.
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The climate here is both naturally mild and naturally arid. When it is humid enough for frost, it is not often cold enough. When it is cold enough, it is not often humid enough. Consequently, we gets preliminary frosts only in regard to temperature, without much of the ice crystals to prove it. There will be frost later in the season, but it will not be the thick coating like other regions get. Nor will it be a ‘hard’ frost that freezes the soil. Roses that do not get pruned can actually produce a few wimpy flowers right through winter.
Those rose standards were certainly not my idea. I am none too keen on standards anyway. (Most of the roses that are grown as standards are grown for their flowers, not because they are pretty in landscapes.) Putting two roses together on the same standard, especially such contrasting colors, is just weird.
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Interesting you can grow Dogwoods – are they Kousa? Looks like an American Beauty Rose to me – the red one.
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Dogwoods do not do well at all in the Santa Clara Valley just a few miles from here, but can be quite happy in redwood forests. When we grew them at the farm, it sort of bothered me to know that most were installed by so-called ‘landscapers’ into regions where they would never be happy. I would not have minded growing them if I believed that they all went to appropriate places. Those that I got pictures of are actually Cornus florida. I have never worked with so many that are so healthy and happy.
‘American Beauty’ is probably what the red rose is. That is one of the most common red hybrid tea roses that can be found in big box ‘nurseries’. Although no one knows where it came from, we can sort of guess from where it was planted that whoever planted it was no expert, so was not likely very selective with cultivars.
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Amazing that the roses are still doing so well with so little rain. We seem to have had nothing but rain all of October. You must water them?
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Oh yes. They are irrigated automatically. Almost all of the refined landscapes are outfitted with automated irrigation.
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I am with you on the icebergs – how strange to graft them on the same tree. I do love a rose so your six – or should I say four are wonderful. The other two are pretty good too. What no rain! We have plenty – but still not enough in some places, I heard that our chalk streams are drying up because too much is being taken out of the landscape by the water companies.
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Multiple grafts annoy me. Some people think they are a means with which to fit more types fruit into limited space, but they are no better than multiple small trees. Because no one prunes them aggressively enough, there is always one cultivar that dominates, and one that gets crowded out. I might do it to get one branch of a pollinator on a fruit tree that needs it, such as a cherry, but only if I do not expect much fruit from the secondary pollinator.
For the first time since spring, the weather forecast show a 50% chance of rain about midnight between Tuesday and Wednesday. Weirdly, we got a few seconds of rain just after midnight this morning. That was really strange.
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