You have very nice garden, Roselee. I'm so happy to get rid of my big Austins ... Vicky in Chicagoland will take my Scepter'd Isle, Charles Darwin, and Queen of Sweden ... and I'll kill 3 more. I don't have chili thrips nor diseases here but my water bill for June and July was $79 each month.

Luckily I only have to water 3 months out of the year, due to our wet spring/fall and winter. My order of 10 roses for next year are drought-tolerant, small ones like polyanthas.

Wow, what a beautiful garden you have, Roselee: I enjoyed the photo tour! I hope you find good homes for your roses and can make the changes you need to in order to continue enjoying your garden.

Strawberryhill and Melissa, thank you for looking at my garden. I couldn't resist putting the link since it's not going to look like that much longer. I've enjoyed many years of growing roses, so it doesn't hurt too much to have to change directions. One has to go with the flow when conditions change.

If anyone living in the San Antonio area knows someone who lives in a non risk area that would want any of the roses they are welcome to come, collect them, and mail them semi bareroot while they are somewhat dormant. I just don't want to do it myself.

If you live in a risk area and are tempted to take them -- don't. It isn't worth it.

Here is a link that might be useful: Map of areas at risk for chilli thrips

Wish I lived closer.

Flordarosez, I also wish it were possible for you to take them.

Roselee, my sister aways puts free plants on Craig's List, and they're gone by the next day. You can post more secifically for your area than here, and would probably get lots of responses.

Floridarose, thank you for the tip. Someone locally that knows the situation with the chilli thrips and is willing to spray them with a variety of insecticies it going to take them. They'll be going to a good home. I'm keeping a few in hopes the the chilli thrips threat will lessen and will be redesigning the garden around those few.

Apparently there are "friendlies" that may help.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1049964409000073

Here is a link that might be useful: use of friendlies

Thanks Henry. With so much prey to feast on hopefully beneficial insects, "the friendlies" will increase enough in the open landscape to keep chilli thrips under control. Perhaps this is happening in Florida as I read some reports on the Florida Forum that folks had had chilli thrips in the past, but then the infestation abated.

A friend wrote this on the Texas Forum:

"I was living in Hawaii when whiteflies first made their appearance. It was an ugly thing. Their population exploded exponentially. Their were so many whiteflies that our ceilings were coated in them. They were absolutely everywhere. They smothered a lot of leaves in sheltered areas even though we had significant ocean breeze. It was disgusting.It took about 6 months and then they had a population implosion and it attained a balance. One never saw them. Perhaps bugs and geckos had learned to eat them. I don't know what happened. I hope some natural enemy to chilli thrips comes forth and something like this happens."

Now I'm find chilli thrips are on several other plants in the garden. After seeing suspicious leaves I've ID'd them on Coral vine, Henry Duelberg salvia and Texas smoke tree by tapping the affected leaf and looking at the tiny yellow dots moving around with a 10 power jewelers loop. And I do mean tiny. They are less than the size of a period and barely visible in bright light on white paper with my reading glasses on. They are much smaller than flower thips, and looked just like the photos. Also several pale colored tiny spiders quickly scurried off the paper. They were just a little larger than the chilli thrips. Hopefully they were eating them. This makes one reluctant to spray even with spinosad, but knocking them back before winter may significantly reduced their population next summer. I don't know. Right now I'm trying to reduce the number of the most susceptible plants.