Sometimes You Have To Take A Chance

This past May while at my local discount store I saw that they had some "Knock Out Roses" at a very decent price. I've bought plants from this store before but you have to get them early before they have a chance to kill them off, and sometimes they still die after you get them home and planted. I looked at these roses and they looked pretty healthy so I decided to take a chance and buy 2 of them. Took them home and figured I'd wait until the next day to plant them.

Next morning I went outside, got my shovel, and was getting ready to dig when I really looked at these plants. I was going to have to dig a HUGE hole. I mean I knew they were in a large container and that's why they looked so healthy, but I hadn't really thought about the fact that I would have to dig a hole for this large container. TWO of them. In CLAY. Decided to have a few more cups of coffee instead but eventually got around to it and after much digging, huffing, puffing, setting them in, taking them out, digging, setting them in, I finally got them into the ground hopefully at the right depth.

They already had buds and soon these bloomed and I thought "pretty nice". Then nothing. All of June, nothing. Not dying that I could see, but not growing either. Was begining to think I had done all that digging for nothing. Then in the first week of July a few new red leaves were beginning to show. Then more leaves and finally some buds. And now..
.
I won't show the entire plant because it's not the shape I want right now, but I'm not going to prune it till next year. Not taking any chances.