Hi All, Dale, thanks for asking these questions, because I am in a similar situation, and the answers are very helpful. I'm hoping you all can help me too. I live just South of Boston, and 20 miles inland. Zone 6 I planted 20 roses last year, and have chosen to keep a natural (chemicle free) garden. That being said, I was out admiring (inspecting) all the new leaf growth when I saw that somebody has been eating it all. I found many a little green worm, that looks and acts like an inch worm. He lives in new leaves and creates a make shift cocoon looking thing inbetween a folded leaf. I would love to know exactly how to kill him! hee hee My beautiful rose bushes are very bare right now, because they have been almost completely eaten. Any idea of who this bug is and how to get rid of him? Please advise. Also, just to confirm, the Bayer Disease Prevention you mention above, is a natural product and not a harmful chemicle? I haven't done any BS prevention and just learned here that I should be doing so! Thanks for your help.

garden, I used to use the Bayer drench. It will help against black spot, but you may still need a spray if the BS pressure is high and conditions are right. If you have active BS now, I'd also spray with the Bayer disease control spray. As far as JBs go, it will kill them after then eat the leaves or flowers. It probably will not stop your buds from getting damaged a bit. I never saw the bees affected by using the drench, but I can't be sure. If there are no open flowers, then they will not come in contact with it. I have to be honest that when I used the drench, I did not have a thrip problem. I thought it was a coincidence that I started having the thrips after I stopped using the Bayer. I stopped using the drench because it became too expensive to use once I had 100+ roses. I also preferred to use the spray for disease because it works so well and I wanted to use organic fertilizers. However, since my thrip problems are SO BAD, I did decide to use the Bayer drench on a few roses that have bad problems with thrips. I don't get a lot of JBs. I did put down Milky Spore a few years ago. I'm not sure if it's that or other things, but I only get a few. And the few that I saw were dead. Not sure if that was from the drench, but I can't really think of anything else. I know you are like me, you want to be organic and do all the right things, but sometimes it's not possible. I also wish there was just a drench for bugs or BS, but there isn't. I think judicial use of the drench is fine. When I used it, I still had many bees, butterflies and other bugs. Just not thrips :)

We don't really celebrate Valentine's Day. I don't care for the overly sentimental cards and it's hard to enjoy roses or other flowers if you know they've jacked the price up. We didn't even celebrate it when we were newlyweds. But...my DH's car died and after calculating the cost of repair combined with the 150,000 miles on it we opted to buy a new car. So yesterday we decided to take a nice drive into the country and made reservations at a great little pub, restaurant and brewery. It was thoroughly enjoyable and neither of us mentioned the 'Valentine' word.

When my sons were little, we used to do a Valentine hunt. I'm pretty sure I've posted about it before. When they were done eating, I'd have them turn their plates over and taped to the bottom was a heart with a clue. That would lead to another and another. When I started, the younger boy couldn't read yet, so his clues were pictures not words. The final valentine led to a small gift, such as a pack of character underwear. I don't remember how old they were when we stopped. They each got only one thing and like I said, it wasn't something expensive or extravagant. It was just for the fun of it.