I just posted to the Neptune thread a few minutes ago about mounding in pots. Take a piece of card board box and cut it to the height of the canes of your plants, plus two or three inches. Create a cylinder from it, remove a couple of inches of soil from your potted roses and slip the cylinder into the pots, allowing it to expand to fit the pot opening. Staple the ends together with overlap so they don't open to allow water and soil to spill out. Fill the cylinder to the level required so only the top one to two inches of canes stick up out of the soil. The goal is to fully encase your rose plants in damp soil to rehydrate and insulate them until they replace the leaves they had begun to form and which you have removed when planting. Water the soil in to firm it in place right from the top of the plant and continue to add soil until the canes remain exposed only an inch or two. They are now set to sit until they have grown enough roots to support the plant, which the increasing top growth will indicate to you. Once they are leafing out, you'll have to get advice from those who live in colder climates as you do. "Winter protection" to those of us who live in Southern California usually means continue watering if it doesn't rain. The cold and preventing the heat and light from the sun from stimulating them to break dormancy is probably going to be enough to prevent them from leafing out too early, I'd imagine. If your soil outside wasn't frozen solid and you had a place where you knew you could bury the entire plant without it sitting in mud and rotting, you could also dig a trench large enough to hold all of the plants a little under the soil level. Use a length of rope at the top and bottom of them to indicate where they are so you don't lose them when the time comes to dig them for planting. Bury the plants fully, leaving a mound over them of soil, firmed in place only enough to prevent it from washing away in rains, but not compacted so it remains too soggy and rots the plants. Leave the loose rope ends sticking out of the soil so they may be brought together over the mound and tied together so when the weather is appropriate, you can easily find where they are and remove them from their holding trench for planting. The soil mustn't get and remain soggy, so decent drainage is required. I've used both methods here in Southern California to hold plants until I wanted to plant them as well as to gently rehydrate dried out bare roots and transplants. It works.

Norma, I was told the same thing and for years I wouldn't move my Oxy until after it bloomed, guess what I moved last year with buds and it still bloomed, I moved it onto my inclose porch safe from the frost,so I think some times plants know best and if there going to bloom it will happen,I would give up some blooms to save a large Oxy that's over 15 yr old, but then that's just me and the way I do things Bear

If it is thrips, you will be able to see damage in the white part of the rose. That is where it shows up most clearly. You will see brown streaks or tiny brown spots. In your case I would be tempted to leave it for a few days just to find out for sure which one is causing it. Once you know you can remove any damaged roses promptly. This may reduce (but not eliminate) the spread of the thrips. You'll probably take the proliferating ones off as well but it's not so important in that case. Rosefolly

Rachel and Buford - thank you so much for replying - I have been so worried. Buford - I think you hit the nail on the head. While my roses were forming we had a pretty bad cold snap - a frost(some think it was a hard frost) as this group was forming buds. It is so widespread, and some are perfect - the newest ones forming. The leaves are completely undamaged as well. Rachel - I have heard of your thrip problem and it makes me sick to think of 300 roses being eaten by thrips. Do they run their course and then your roses recover? I cannot imagine what I would do. Florida has it's problems with so many invaders. Thank you two again - I could not find anything online about this problem last night - must be looking in the wrong places! Denise