Spring of this year I had a Mary Rose. When she began to leaf out the growth could only be described as rrd [leaf nodes with as many as five stems growing from them, long thin leaves, so many thorns it barely had a cane, many buds all twisted and shriveled up. I took the rose out that night. Than the same thing on midnight blue and easy going, I carefully removed them. Several weeks passed before three more roses began showing the same growth usually on just one or two canes. I can't begin to tell you how sick I felt. Well against all wisdom I had to try some thing. I did not remove the rose or the cane. Believe me, I know this was not a good thing to do. Yet something wasn't right so I had to try. I thought things were so bad at this point I needed to know for sure. I cut the roses back to healthy growth and waited, knowing if it was rrd the returning growth wouldn't get better. A month has passed now and all the growth on Heritage, Perdita and Fragrant Masterpiece has been fine. Please, I'm not saying any one should do this. These roses all had three or more symtoms of rrd, they all looked like pictures of rrd. I know it wasn't herbicide damage. I have more questions then [Hines has pickles]. Maybe, if its your fist time seeing suspected rrd and it's only on one cane, removing that cane and observing new growth wouldn't be a bad idea. I'm certainly no expert but I have a feeling I'm not the only person who has had this problem and maybe it wasn't rrd. If I were to ask every question I have now it would read like a book. I really hope your rose is not sick. Don't know about you but my garden is my peace in life. Yet, hummmm aphids,rose slugs, jb's, pm, bs, rmv, rrd, ect ect. Did I say peace? Good luck to you. Pat

DANG you're good! *L* I guess these aren't really hard; I just love word puzzles and wordplay. I hope you folks enjoyed having a look at them. But it's confession time. I didn't grow up with these (Italian and french were my childhood languages), so it took some thinking to me to get them all. But either I've never HEARD of this proverb, or maybe I'm just being thickheaded (probably the latter): Observe yon ovine innocent When stripped of his integument! For him kind Providence ne'er fails To moderate hiemal gales. Let's se: an ovine innocent (lamb), stripped (shorn? sheared?), hemial means it has to do with winter. So the best I can do is "A shorm lamb means an easy winter." Am I close?

Does your plant show signs of having too much sun? Are the leaves damaged or burned, browned, is it wilting in the middle of the day or afternoons? Too much sun wouldn't affect flowering other than it could cause blossoms that did exist to fade more quickly. You're in a Z5. I wonder if your hydrangea is bud hardy for your climate, at 2x2' in its third year I would guess one of the big leaf, macrophylla types that bloom on 'old wood', or stems from the previous year. Do you know the name, or type? If you don't know, what color were the flowers when it did bloom - could help us to identify it. Expecting blooming from hydrangea macrophylla every season in your climate would most likely require winter protection measures, flower buds could easily be killed by your winter temps or lost to a Spring freeze after the plant has began to awaken from dormancy. Other reasons would be wrong pruning, or over fertilizing which can lead to more foliage, growth at expense of flowers.

Round-Up? Seriously, you can keep up with the soap solution solution (lol), but in heavy infestations it takes time. Oil is another "solution", but same deal. One thing you can try is mixing the soap and water in a bucket and simply turn the plant upside down and dip it for 5 seconds, wait a couple of minutes and dip again, then rinsing the plant off. Or you can do what I did at work when Knock Out roses were covered in aphids. We wrapped plastic around the pot tightly so soil was contained, then we dunked the plants in a water lily holding tank with fish and let the aphids float off and the fish ate them.