So here's how they look from further back... which is why I mistakenly said they looked fine. It's been chilly here (to me... not to anyone else) for the past couple days, so I've stayed in the house and done "house things." Today, I went out there and took these pics: And here we have close-ups of some examples of what I'm seeing happening. Also, I've noticed the new leaves seem stunted. They don't grow very big before they either stop growing or fall off. Misshapen leaves, 'browning out'... Hard to really tell in this picture, but the leaf in the center is sorta 'browning out.' If this was a fancy goldfish, I'd say this one has 'dropsy.' Some weird new-growth habit, among other things. More brown spots, plus white spots. At the edge of the pot, you can see the leaves are dying here and there. This is an attempt at a close-up of one of the worst ones. Small leaves that fall off if you even touch them. Another particularly affected plant. The first sign of a problem on a previously robust plant. I don't know what the problem is, but it's obviously contagious. I'm going to have to pull all of this out, dump the brand new potting media into the trash, wash and sterilize the pots, wait for some undetermined length of time, then replace it all. Super bummer. I only hope that whatever it is doesn't spread to things that AREN'T Coleus.

I agree. Its hard to know what the rose is going to do when you see it sitting there at the nursery. All the tags tell you that each one is wonderful and so forth. Even a great rose will not grow well in a bad spot or may have a bad year due to weather or pests. Maybe you happened to get a bad plant. What can you do except try? Colors will be a little different than described and for me the plants are always larger than the book or label says. Some plants poke along for a few years and then magically take off once established. Then there is the matter of rootstocks which change the way the plant grows. Huey roots grow well for me in so cal but I have to worry about virus and larger sized plants than if they were own root plants. What I do these days is grow the mail ordered own root plants when I can. I like the shapes of the plants and they seem to give more new shoots each year. I try to get a virus free plant whenever I can. The small "twiglets" require patience to get going but in my garden, they surpass the grafted ones I can get at the nursery after only a few years. That being said, I still buy the random rose at the nursery just to try it. If I love it, I will usually try to get a virus free one from the mail order later. Getting advice here is the best thing I ever did. Years before I came here, I read a book, got all excited about once blooming antique roses, spent a small fortune mail ordering a bunch of them, waited 4 years and never got one flower. They don't bloom here. It's not cold enough. They are now happily living next to a pretty cabin in Big Bear. You will always have roses that did not meet your expectations and hopefully there will be a growing number of ones that are favorites.

DON'T TRUST Comfortis. I had 2 dogs of different breeds that developed a small flee problem. One dog (golden retreiver/labador mix) was 11 years old and the other 10 1/2 years old (doberman/german shephard mix). Both dogs in very good health other than a newly developed small flee problem. In fact, other than the newly developed flee problem the vet said verbally that these dogs are healthy and will live forever. My vet suggested a new flee product called Comfortis. The flee problem did seem to go away quickly HOWEVER this is when many other health problems developed in both dogs. The first signs from both dogs was a lack in appetite. Then one dog developed a very bad salivation problem. I was just into the 3rd dose for each dog when the problems became worse in both dogs. Both dogs had a very significant weight loss and became very lethargic, vomiting, excessive salivation. I looked for answers from every direction, the dog food manufacturer to see if any change was made in their recipe to something that could have gotten into the yard to any new medications. This is where I discovered that Comfortis could have been the major problem in their rapid declining health. Both dogs, of different breeds, developed 7 of the possible 10 listed side affects listed on the Comfortis warning. I was told by the vet that I had to let the dose run its course as there was no way of getting Comfortis out of their systems. All I could do was just watch their health decline as the vet told me they could do nothing. I called the 800 number for Comfortis and was also told that the medicine just had to run its course. 2 different dogs developed the exact same symptoms listed on the Comfortis warning list at the same time. The vet actually still did not admit that Comfortis could even be a possible reason for their declining health and said they must have gotten hold of something in the yard like a squirrel or a rabbit or something. One dog developed what Ill call seizures near the end and died just after the 3rd dose of Comfortis. The other dog died just 4 days later. The day before the 2nd dog died I took him to the vet where they ran blood and urine test. IÂm not a medical person and donÂt remember the exact terms but they compared his blood work from just 3 months earlier and the decline in the blood cell numbers were unbelievable to even the vet. In my opinion, Comfortis is a POISON. Be very careful about this product. If your dog has flees, give your dog a good old fashion flee dip. Flees are on the outside of your dog, NOT on the inside of them. pbloom@northgeorgiaauto.com

Hi Cindy In zone 4, you do want to protect the rose but some of the strategies you mention may do more harm than good. In no zone should you put plastic around a rose (at least not on the first layer), as it would trap moisture and cause a lot of mildew and other damage to the rose beyond the cold. The idea is that whatever you put around the rose has to have good air circulation, so the styrofoam rose cones are also not recommended. If you want to wrap it, I'd recommend something like burlap that can breathe. I've seen some experienced rose people put bubble wrap around the edge of their rose beds but not around each individual rose. As a new rose grower, I wouldn't recommend that. You also should leave whatever canes you have on the rose and not cut them down in fall, even though you'll see some rose guides say you're supposed to do that. The reason you don't is that the winter is going to kill off a lot of the growing parts on the end of the canes no matter what you do, so if you have longer canes there's a better chance of some of the rose cane surviving. If you wrap the rose, you can take down the supports and lay the canes down on the ground to make it less affected by the wind. As climbers get bigger over the years I don't bother with that, but you could try it. I use the leaf bags you mention, but I don't put them on top of the rose but stand them around the edges of the rose, like creating a mini down coat. The idea is to protect the canes from the worst of the winter winds and provide some insulation so it doesn't have wild temperature swings from cold to warm till it's ready to wake up in the spring. You can fill the inside of the leaf bag circle around the roses with something natural that stays dry over the winter, like OAK leaves (other leaves get mushy and won't work) or pine needles. You probably have what is called a grafted rose, which means that Joseph's Coat is attached to the roots of another rose that you don't want to grow. There is a knobby bit at the bottom of the rose where all the canes grow from that is the graft, and that's the most important thing to protect over the winter. The rest of the canes can die and the rose you want will regrow if the graft is still alive in spring. If the rose mysteriously turns into a red rose, then it's the rootstock that is growing, and the Joseph's Coat rose would then have died. After all that, Joseph's Coat isn't really all that hardy even in my zone, and it has died several times even in zone 5 with a lot of protection, so don't consider it a failure if it dies. Go ahead and stand some leaf bags around it and wrap it in burlap maybe, and see how it goes. Do this AFTER the ground freezes (around here no earlier than Thanksgiving) or the mice may move in and chew on your rose all winter. You want the rose to get good and cold so it goes to sleep first. Snow is excellent protection for roses so a good layer of snow cover is the best strategy to protect a rose if you can get it. If this rose doesn't survive well for you, log back on here for a question about climbing roses that will do better for you in zone 4. Cynthia