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

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.

Woodie, improvement is gradual, but I could see a difference after the first day. My skin is red for the first several minutes when I first put it on--from the rubbing? I bought my cream at Long's Drug Store. It's called Nutra-E.

Kitchendetective, that wall by the table is the only full wall. Other than that I have a lot of cutting in above and below windows and doors, plus a small wall about 18" wide next to my oven. I'm afraid it would look too chopped up to have those little bits and pieces one color and the table wall a different color. What do you think? I'm really terrible at visualizing. I want to say thanks to all of you for your specific paint suggestions. I've got them all written down and I'm going tomorrow to my local awesome paint store with my bag of samples and see what I come up with. It helps me so much to have specific paints to look at because there are just too many choices and it overwhelms a girl! tkbalt, your kitchen is so pretty. What a transformation from those white slab doors! I'll be back Monday with narrowed down choices and photos of my favorites painted on the wall with my kitchen samples propped up. OR MAYBE WITH MY REAL CABINETS!!! I just realized, cabs are scheduled to go in tomorrow. WOO HOO!!! Anita