I took some pictures because we always want to know, is it RRD. I was sure about this one. Here is a good picture of two RRD affected canes and in the middle a healthy one: You can see that the healthy one is smooth, straight, the buds are not distorted, the leaves are not curled, there is a normal amount of growth. The RRD canes have too much growth, distorted buds, curled leaves and the canes were very soft and weighed down by the amount of growth. These canes were so soft, I could pull them right off the main cane. There isn't that much of a color difference, which is why I probably didn't notice it sooner. Here is another picture: A tell-tale sign is too many new canes or laterals coming from one cane. Here there are three coming from the same bud eye. Not normal.

Scott and Jay, You cannot even imagine what it was like here. I couldn't tell y'all about it last night because some combination of wind, hail and rain took out our internet service provider's Ringling and Marietta towers and we lost service. THE STATS: 70 mph wind, small hail here but up to baseball sized elsewhere in the area, 2.5" of rain in 25 minutes THE DETAILS: THE STORM BEGINS BUILDING: I had watched the clouds begin building around 7 p.m. and they kept getting taller and taller and taller until it was too dark to see them. At the time I was watching them, they might have been 40,000 to 50,000 tall. I have seen at least one storm build up as tall as last night's, and that storm caused an F-3 tornado to our southeast about 20 miles from us in Texas that night a couple of years ago. As I watched the clouds begin building, our sky took on that grayish-green cast that often accompanies hail. I secured all the lawn furniture, made sure all the animals were inside their housing and the doors were securely closed so they couldn't blow open, etc. I even got out flashlights and candles in case we lost power. BETWEEN ABOUT 7-8 PM: To our northwest, in the Lone Grove-Ardmore area, one cell reportedly had golf ball and larger sized hail, winds of at least 70 mph, and heavy rain that caused flash flooding. That storm also had a mid-level, non-rotating wall cloud. When it hit Love County, we had winds around 70 mph, non-stop lightning that gave a strobe-light effect for 2 or 3 hours (the lightning preceded the rain by a couple of hours), zero visability that caused drivers to stop in their tracks and sit there, unmoving in roadways because they couldn't see the road, trees down, hail, etc. During this storm our internet service went out because they "lost" the use of their towers in Ringling and Marietta. BETWEEN 7-9 PM: To our southwest, just over the river in Montague County, Texas, we had two separate storms about 1 hour apart with rotation that did not, as far as I know, result in a tornado touchdown. That hail was in the tennis ball to baseball size category. BETWEEN 7 PM AND MIDNIGHT: Here in the middle we had ugly skies and almost total stillness for a long, long time in between those two storm cells....the kind of stillness that scares you because you know it precedes a very violent storm. We had that strobe-light lightning (horizontal, not vertical) for a couple of hours and sporadic thunder. The air was totally still. We had storm chasers from other areas come into our county and stage themselves in various places. Some of them were feeding their own weather info to our undersherriff and he was passing it on to us on the fire/police radio channel. When the storm arrived, it was like someone flipped a switch. The wind went from almost 0 to at least 70 in just a few minutes. The wind just roared. The rain poured. We got 2.5" of rain in about 25 minutes. It was the heaviest, most rapid rainfall I've ever seen in my life. Luckily for us, the big hail had stayed on either side of us and our hail was only about pea-sized. The rain was heaviest in the northern and eastern parts of the county and I have no idea how much they received. Here at our house, though, we had that 2.5" fall in less than 1/2 hour. The good news is that it fell so fast that most of it ran off and didn't soak into the ground. (The ground is so wet I don't think it can absorb much, if any, more.) The Mesonet Station at Burneyville, which is several miles northwest of us, recorded just over an inch. I am sure that the Greenville, Overbrook, Lake Murray, and Enville areas recorded much more rainfall, and maybe the town of Marietta as well. The Oswalt Rd. area (fairly close to the Love-Carter County line) had larger hail than most of the rest of the county, and they had it earlier than everyone else. EIGHTEEN INCHES OF RAINFALL IN ELEVEN DAYS: For anyone who is counting, we have had over 18" of rain here at our house since Wednesday, April 29th. I don't think my tomato plants are going to survive this much moisture in our heavy clay soil. Even in raised beds with heavily amended soil, the moisture level is outrageously high. For a while, I thought the corn would survive, but now I am beginning to think it won't. The squash, zukes and cukes are dead. The broccoli is deliriously happy, the onions are mostly happy, the potatoes less so. Most of the herbs seem alright. And, for what it is worth, a scientist from the Ardmore-based Noble Foundation told local media that our particular soil can only hold about three weeks worth of moisture and that everything above that amount either runs off into the creeks, rivers and lakes, or soaks down into the aquifer. So, the way he phrased it was that we are always "only two to three weeks away from drought conditions" if the rain stops falling for a prolonged time. His words backed up what I have observed since moving here, but hearing it from a scientist made it sound worse than just observing it for yourself. I am happy the ponds and creeks are full and that the pastures will grow for the cattle and horses. For us veggie gardeners, though, it is shaping up to be a poor year. Most of my flowers are looking OK so far, but the poppies are yellowing and dying. They can't handle too much moisture. The zinnias aren't looking too good either. The lawn, trees, shrubs, vines and weeds all are growing like weeds. I can't even plant beans, okra, black-eyed peas, pumpkins, winter squash and melons because it is far too wet. The peppers all most likely will go into containers beginning today because it is too wet for them to go into the ground. And that's the report from southern OK where more rain is in the forecast for tonight, tomorrow and the next day. And, actually, rain is falling a few miles to our south so we may get hit by rain any minute now. Jay, I wish you were getting some of this rain (and that we were not getting so much). The ground here is starting to get that sour, yucky smell you get when slowly-draining clay is totally saturated. Once you start smelling that, you begin to see plant death. Dawn

I don't know of any apartments with security cameras on the parking lots. Making a police report is a good idea but as you know it won't go anywhere. Filing a claim with the insurance company is probably not worthwhile either. With it being an older car, I would imagine you might not even have coverage and could have a deductible. It's maddening. It's frustrating. I have to go to parking lots a lot unfortunately and my nearly spotless vehicle is showing the results. But in the end, it's a piece of machinery that does a job and better it be scratched, dented and bruised than me. I wouldn't even consider moving. You like it there and shouldn't be bullied out. Hopefully *she* will move. It'd be great if you could set up a camera but there too, it's an expense, a hassle and what it would produce is dubious. If I did set one up though, I wouldn't do it secretly. I'd put up a big sign "YOU'RE ON CAMERA!" That in itself can be a deterrent. If you wanted to, you could mention you're seeing if others would join you in setting up cameras to watch the place, in front of or so it gets back to the suspect. Hope the vent helped! Take care my dear. You have so many good neighbors that the one bad apple shouldn't upset the whole cart. With her apparent temper and such, she's likely to get into trouble and get caught. In the meantime, cup of coffee, some Buster time and a comedy will lift your spirits! :)

"If it were mine, I'd wait about five days. For one thing, the temps are so hot that the mite reproduction is a lot lower and (I think) you and I have been having huge rain fall and that can mess up 'normal' growth." Ann--I'm glad to hear you say this. Several years ago my Hickory Hill Noisette produced a cane with a number of red shoots with tiny leaves that kept on appearing faster than any of them could grow to maturity. I waited a week or more, convinced it wasn't RRD, but the unusual growth made me nervous and I finally removed the entire cane and bagged it three times for disposal. This rose is quite healthy today and has never exhibited those symptoms again. This incident occurred after heavy rains from a hurricane that followed a drought. Yesterday I saw similar growth on Rosette Delizy and promptly removed it. While I am sure it wasn't RRD, I am uneasy after spotting what looks like RRD on some Knockouts at a nearby shopping center. I watched them from the car window for a couple of weeks and the small frilly green leaves at the top of several plants never grew to full size, nor did I ever see normal flowers on them--only a few petals here and there. I think I also saw large red leaves growing out of or above the small frilly growth on one of the plants. There are a number of these Knockouts in the median strip and most are still quite normal. I'm hoping the cause of the unusual growth may be Roundup, but I reported the problem to the State Highway Department and the owners of the shopping center. So far nothing has been done. I don't believe wet weather is the culprit in this case although we've had plenty of rain. The response was so different when I reported probable RRD at Hollywood Cemetery in 2008. The manager had an expert on the scene the very next day who confirmed RRD and recommended removal of six roses. Lindsey