Bea, I'm so sorry to hear what has been going on with you. Mary, you are a wonderful daughter to be there for Mom. Got a deal for you Bea. I just had another spinal surgery 3 weeks ago, and, I'm having a tough time getting around now, even with a cane. So here's the deal, my friend. We are going to do this recovery together. Very slowly and very patiently, together we are going to rehab together and get back on our feet and into our gardens to work again. Is it a deal? you bet it is. We will do this together. Progress is slow and we are both impatient people wanting to get our lives back again. E-mail me any time and please e-mail me about MG seeds. Don't have any from this years growing yet. Slow to grow, slow to bloom, just a crazy growing season. But I have plenty that I collected from last year. E-mail me and I will send you some pics in info on what i have and let's get going on that deal. whose gonna get to the gardens to really garden again first? Your friend in MA Fran

I don't get it. Now you seem to be claiming that you shouldn't be faulted in any way since this all happened when your dogs were left in the backyard while you were at work. Yet in your first post you described the "fun game" Gus plays attacking the lawn co. sprayer similar to the way he does a hose pipe, as if you witnessed him turning into a "neon yellow highlighter" yourself. Which is it? Either way, it should have NEVER happened. Shelby Turf & Shrub was at fault for doing it the first time whether you were at home or not...and should be held responsible. But please tell me how you can possibly not feel guilty and not consider yourself at fault for allowing it to continue numerous times ("everytime he comes out")? I'm sorry if you're feeling "flamed", but whether intentional or not I don't much care for the somewhat whimsical way (with a smiley face, even?) in which you told of your poor dog being repeatedly exposed to potentially harmfull lawn chemicals. Believe it or not, I'm a pretty easy going guy but I really don't care if this a gardening forum or a pet owner's forum, I can't stand hearing about animal abuse WHEREVER it rears its ugly head. Would you have allowed a child to be sprayed down? Or is it ok as long as it's just a dog that can be put down before you have to incur expensive vet bills? Give me a break!

Some posters from your area will probably come along and give you some good advice, but in the meantime, let me get you started. If you are not going spray, then you are going to have to search out the roses that are very disease-resistant. That includes roses like Knock Out--which is why it is doing fine. I haven't grown most of the roses on your list, but I have seen roses like zephirine drouhin and abraham darby on blackspot magnet lists. In other words, don't even try to grow them if you aren't going to spray. Two things you can do now. 1)Check out the thread I started tonight about "Year-end Review: What are you Blackspotters" (or something like that). You don't want to grow any of those roses. 2) Go to the search box at top or bottom of the page and type in "disease resistant" or "blackspot"--that should call up dozens of threads talking about what roses you should or shouldn't be growing. And yes, there is hope for you. Since you are already becoming obsessed with roses (like the rest of us), just continue on learning more about roses, and you too can develop a lovely garden of roses--I promise you. Kate

Cindee, I don't have a photobucket account so I use tinypic.com I right click on a picture in my easy share album. Then choose edit. Once that picture comes up, go to image and click on that, from the drop down menu, choose stretch and skew. I use 45% 45% and hit enter, Then I go to my file menu and choose save as and save it in My Documents with an appropriate name. When you are trying to post here, minimize this screen, then go to google and type in "Tinypic.com" Once it comes up, go to browse and then go to your documents and choose the picture you saved. Click on the name of the picture. Tinypic will ask you to type in 2 words to load your picture. Once you have done that, choose the top address line, click on that and choose copy, then click on this site that you have minimized, and right click and choose paste. You can keep going back and forth between the sites to add more pictures to your post. It sounds more complicated than it is, and believe me, if I could learn how to do it, anybody can. I am not computer savvy in any way! Hope that helps, Candy