Looks like it might be a leaf roller. Dig around in some of those tips and see if you can find a little worm eating the leaves and plastering them together with webbing. You can squash them or spray sevin or malathion.

Bump for an interesting question! I have the same issue on one of my apples. My guess is either the winter here in Milwaukee (which wasn't that cold IMHO) or something more strange to me. The only thing I could think of is quick increase of diameter where the bark couldn't keep up with the circumference. Like I said Milwaukee wasn't really that cold to cause damage like that and I did a very heavy pruning (70 percent off the tree). Perhaps the pruning kick started the growth and stretched the bark too much. In the end I have no idea though. Anyone care to comment that knows?

Well we do have some type of crickets or grasshoppers too. Btw, do lizards eat those? I've seen a lizard... 3 floors up! I was rather impressed. Yet I am also considering putting out boric acid and trying to get rid of a lot of these insects, since there seems to be no sure-fire way to keep them from coming inside. There is *one* loud cricket/grasshopper somewhere in the unit, near or in the fireplace (and the chimney is in the balcony area where the plants are). I can't deal with more following him/her. I dislike killing things but I can't deal with bugs inside. I don't think we get cicadas here, so no cicada killers. Thanks for the input!

I have a similar area where it's boggy. I'm currently digging many up the roses there as they suffered in the Spring. Mine is due to compacted clay and rain. My friend in KY has the same and I had him dig very deep narrow holes at the bottom of the rose holes with a pole digger which he then filled with gravel since he can't move his. This seems to have worked very well. He also replanted them raised above the ground level to for a sort of raised bed. Why do you think it's so wet?