My is 6 year old bush. I see here quite often lists with roses that are doing well in TX. Perle d'Or, Marie Pavie, Belind's Dream, many Teas (not HTs)vand Chinas, etc. They all defoliate here from BS and not in just my garden ,so it is not my cultural conditions or something like this. So I challenge you, I think our BS is worse :). This is all about optimal temp for BS spore development, especially at night when the leaves are wet. We have it from spring till fall, 65-70 deg at night are the areas with the worst BS. You are warmer and this helps. Contrary to commpon believe "very hot and huumid" is better then just hot and humid. You should have more BS in spring and fall then in summer. Michael, yes it gets Cercospora too, but BS is another story and it certainly gets it bad (naked) here. Olga

I actually kind of wondered if it weren't going to happen this way. Martha's got some great stuff, but she does tend to cling to a particular color scheme. I suspected a take-over might lead in fact to LESS choice... Sad. I like using these types of papers for decoupage projects. --Jenn

Well, she did call the police for a ride, but was most likely in panic mode. Police did not give her a ride, though (maybe they would've, I dunno): Her driver was ready to take her to the hospital. But if I were a TV personality, I would also be in panic mode about a cut so noticeably front-and-center. She wasn't in New York City at the time. She was at her home in Northern Westchester County -- a little less than an hour north of NYC, and I am familiar with the roads in that area, having lived in the Bedford/Mount Kisco area. They are winding and narrow (until you get to the main street in Mount Kisco, near the hospital), and if that snowstorm was getting heavy, I might've also called the police to ensure I could get to the hospital. (Not as bad as calling an ambulance, IMHO, and that's not a crime-filled area that it would've been a horrible thing to pull an officer off his/her patrol to take her there.) It also happened at night -- not during the day as someone else posted -- which makes driving on some of those roads a bit more treacherous. I'm sure that her house is off a winding one-lane road, for privacy's sake, much like other celebrities' homes there. I remember a shortcut I used to take that ran past a house (mansion, more like it) owned by Mariah Carey at the time; it's not one I took unless the weather and road was clear. Facial cuts? Yeah, I would want a plastic surgeon, too. They're not there just to do nose jobs and eyelifts. (The 40-something photos taken by Martha's stables manager, tho? That one of the wallpaper border cracked me up! I'll bet that person will soon be on Martha's PR team--altho I wonder if Martha herself hollered at her to grab the camera on the way out and "Photograph everything you see! I'll use it for my blog!") Bottom line? If there was a time to act like a diva, in her public-life circumstances, that was it.

Moonshadow, I use the Valspar (American Traditions) Skid-Not porch & floor enamel (latex) on the steps leading out to the garage and it provides good service for at least 3 years. There is daily traffic on it and it holds up very well. It's also available w/o the anti-skid additive. Michael