Oh, the weather outside's been frightful! (BUT....)

The image atop this entry was taken by Juan V when he was here eleven days ago on May 9th, on his third visit for the 2017 growing season. I featured it in an entry on TLLG's FB page at that time; and I discussed certain attributes of the H.F. Young Clematis vine. This particular vine climbs up a pole which in the northwest corner of my rooftop garden. It produces strikingly beautiful purple flowers which can be seen in Juan's image. Moreover, I have a number of close-ups of this vine's blooms within my May 9th entry here on Blogger. Unfortunately, only four days after Juan worked with me in my garden, and after my publishing posts re the flowers of my H.F. Young clematis, a Nor'Easter struck NYC and surrounding areas.

Last Saturday, May 13th 2016, "a moisture-packed coastal storm that hit the New Jersey region on Saturday dumped almost a month's worth of rain in just one day in parts of the area." I've been try to find out how much rain fell in the NYC area.

This particular rainstorm lasted that entire day and throughout that night. It continued for a time on the following Sunday. Then, a few days later, the temperatures reached into the nineties and were accompanied by high humidity. This circumstance lasted for three days! The combination of heavy rainfall and hot sticky temperatures was not good for my vine. The rain knocked off most of the blooms on my thriving H.F. Young and the subsequent heat faded the colors of the flowers which remained, as seen in the next pictures.

I urge you to compare the pictures above to the ones included in my FB and/or blog post and see for yourself what a difference a few days can make.

But, even though the weather wreaked on my H.F. Young Clematis, my climbing roses seem to be thriving. They are situated in a box between my Continus Coggygria AKA Smoke Bush (left), and my Avellana corylus AKA Contorted Hazelnut contorted (right).

These roses have just started to bloom and make their way up my trellis; as evidenced in the photos posted below.

The latter of the photos posted directly above is featured in an entry on TLLG's (me) FB Page.

As you can, it has circles affixed to it. The rose stems furthest to the left pretended to be a music conductor (as evidenced by their stance) reminding me that with "the sun's love, a seed becomes a rose." And the roses to the right of the conductor appeared to give each other the high-five re the wisdom of these lyrics, which as you may know, are lines from the song, "The Rose," made famous by Bette Midler; but written by Amanda McBroome who gives a haunting rendition!

In any event, here (below) are a couple of close-up photos of what's been indicated by the circles in the image directly above.

Additionally, the following photographs feature different aspects of my climbing roses.

And there you have it dear reader, while the weather outside might've been frightful, everything's coming up roses! I can even hear Ethel Merman singing!