Hi Brad, I hope you're wife gets better soon! I'm a microbiologist, but I don't have a 'for sure' answer for you, just some observations to toss around with the docs (and btw, if you can get the CDC to 'stop by', you guys rock!) - Toxin. I did the very same thing a few months ago. As a garden germ-o-phobe due to my profession, I got after it right away with mupiricin (bactroban). Hurt like a son of a gun a couple days later and was still swollen and somewhat red so I showed it to my boss when I got to work and who is an infectious disease physician. He didn't think it was infected and remarked that rose thorns and thorns in general also have a toxin and thought the residual swelling/pain was from that and it would gradually go away. Well, my boss is a nationally known ID doc, but mentally, I thought he was, to put it nicely, 'nuts', but *in my case* I think he was probably right and the problem was exacerbated by the fact that I think the thorn pricked the joint and thus inflamed the joint and that made the nerves in the joint terribly unhappy. Turned out, again in my case, that he was right and it gradually got better, although it did not help when I did the same thing on the same finger a week or so later - yes, I wear gloves religiously but had taken the glove off to tie up a cane. I hope your wife's problem is this simple, too. - Second thing, if you don't have a really good infectious disease doc on her case, you should. Surgeons are great at what they do but ideally infection should not be their bally-wick if they do their primary jobs correctly. - Sporotrichosis. *Generally* sporotrichosis and other fungal disease start more slowly than your wife's symptoms. Timing does not rule this diagnosis out, however, it seems less likely. You say they have ruled out common fungal diseases, how so? Sporotrichosis has an antibody test, which isn't very reliable, but in any case, I don't know that she'd have much of an antibody titer yet. Something for you to ask. -- As for culture to rule out, cultures could be false negative if they didn't grind the tissue, OR if the infection is in the joint and they didn't culture the fluid. --Not being an MD nor a psychic I can't be of more help, but if you look to the most simple cause for the problem and infection has been ruled out, I'd vote for the toxin causing a severe inflammation of the joint. I hope it's that simple. Best to you both, keep us posted, ok? Kerin

Carefree Sunshine or Lichtkonigin Lucia are solid choices for overall disease resistance. I have Golden Fairy Tale which is new to me this year, so too early to gauge disease resistance at this point, but if it performs like the rest of the Fairy Tale series, I'll be very happy.

Could be that they needed to be hardened off. They were grown in a greenhouse, and need time to get used to being outside in direct sunlight. In the future, before you plant them, gradually expose them to sunlight over a week or two. You can tell pretty quickly if the leaves are starting to burn. If the canes are still green, they should be fine.

I see earwigs in our blooms every year but never seen damage like that... Researching I found earwigs do eat blooms on occasion... Personally I've never seen it happen here though... Earwigs eat aphids so I let them be here... Our 3/4" curled rose slug can cause damage to blooms and damage looks similar to your bloom pic...Grasshopper also... Here are some things you can try in this link: http://gardening.about.com/od/insectpestid/qt/Earwigs-in-the-garden.htm