Kathy's mention of moving to south or central Florida from a northern state is not the same as moving to a nearby county where your growing conditions won't be much if any different. But it does remind me, about fortuniana rootstock, Kathy, you might consider looking for vendors (or even fellow-rosarians in Florida) who do custom rooting. I understand Jim Mills in Buckatuna, MS will custom root roses. You can buy a rose (at least off-patent ones) and provide budwood to the person grafting, then you can get the variety you want on that rootstock. Probably somewhat pricey, but for old favorates that are otherwise hard to find, it could be worth it. I have a couple roses that are no longer commercially available as far as I know. So I would hate to just leave them behind. It is certainly some trouble moving roses, but when you consider the expense of replacing them, it may very well be worth it. Fortuniana is reportedly more challenging to graft onto than some other rootstocks. I've never even tried it. I tried to bud onto several Dr. Hueys many years ago, mostly out of curiosity. None of mine were successful, so I haven't even felt tempted to try fortuniana. Besides, after I moved from Mobile to New Orleans, I have since then grown roses exclusively in pots. Its easier for me living in a neighborhood with tremendously invasive tree roots. Plus, I'm limited to space for a maxiumum of about 40 roses, so I like to swap a few out each year as well as rearrange what I have from time to time. Keeps the garden interesting, and it is worlds easier with potted roses. I'm talking about 16-18 inch diameter pots for minis and 20-24in for the hybrid teas. Anyway, for potted roses, ownroot is just easier and seems to adapt to the confined space the best. Mike

Truly, San Jose would be rose heaven, if it just got an inch of rain every Tuesday morning. Most of your problems seem related to the shortage of moisture. Rouge Royale-- I agree that the black areas are puzzling, but the third pic with the dull brown area definitely looks like sunburn/spray burn, and that has the black smudge too. If you have used a foliar fertilizer, that might contribute. I see circular white deposits-- is that just salt from your irrigation water? Ebb Tide-- I agree that the brown edges are salt stress/ fertilizer burn. Flushing the soil with extra water might help. Even though it's not too hot in SJ, you may want to cut back on feeding in summer if you are not going to water abundantly. Mottled lower leaves-- could be Mg deficiency or possibly leafhopper damage. With a hand lens you might see whether the undersurface has been abraded by feeding or has a normal texture under the yellow spots. With leafhoppers, you may find small, long-legged, white molting shucks on the underside. I would be cautious about adding epsom salts, since some NoCal soils (Berndoodle's anyway) have an excess of Mg. Count the symptomatic leaves on a stem and monitor whether it is spreading upward systematically. Watch for the appearance of a defined green Christmas tree shape over the veins, which is fairly diagnostic of Mg deficiency. If you decide to use epsom salts, I wouldn't exceed 2 oz under these circumstances. Geoff Hamilton-- could be spider mites, but these are usually much worse on the oldest leaves rather than being distributed over the plant. Get a 6x hand lens and look. You can see the mites, their eggs, and webbing on the underside. If there is a problem level of mites, you see several on each leaflet. The picture clearly shows symptoms of salt stress/fertilizer burn as well as, perhaps, something else.

"And I have newfound hope for the garden." Sherry, that says it all. Your post perfectly expresses my own thoughts about gardening and sums up what it can teach us: that we must both struggle and adapt; that life is change; that while there is always loss there is always also renewal; that living organisms struggle mightily to survive, and succeed more often than we might have expected. You've been through hard and frightening times lately, and I wonder if your experiences in gardening turned out to have any meaning when you were so worried about your husband? Applying lessons in philosophy to life is terribly difficult. I don't know whether I would be able to do so, but I do know that, in the garden at least, I've learned to accept the idea of change. Plants grow, and crowd other plants; a tree blows over, and sun bakes a part of the garden it never reached before; I mulch and mulch, the grass grows for years, the earth becomes softer and earthworms arrive; cane girdler shows up and devastates the roses; a wet winter comes and provokes a major slide; I plan a romantic ravine on the site of said slide. And so on and on. Gardening is life, really. I hope I'll never reach the point where I don't want to grow things any more, because I fear it would mean I had spiritually died. About all the plants I talk about that you don't know. North and Central Florida have a soil and climate that don't have many equivalents in other parts of the world, at least, not ones well published in the annals of horticulture. Florida's too hot and humid for many temperate climate plants; too wet in summer for those adapted to Mediterranean conditions; too cold, with its occasional sharp freezes, for tropicals. So the plants belonging to the great gardening traditions of continental Europe, of Great Britain, and of the Mediterranean basin, of the various tropical zones of the world, much of the time don't work. There are nurserymen (and -women), horticulturalists, and gardeners who do a lot of research looking for plants adapted to Florida conditions, and find them, but the plants aren't handed to them on a plate. My sisters' coastal north Florida gardens, with their gingers, cycads, hardy citrus, huge agaves, Sabal palms and live oaks and hickories, contain hardly a plant I could grow here. But their gardens are beautiful. Congratulations on your getting back to your garden, and on finding out that it was still there! And on having a daughter-in-law who helps you. I live next door to dairy farmers. In my experience they rely on lots of big machines, government price supports and subsidies, a reasonable amount of technical expertise, and a great deal of steady, ongoing, hard physical labor. Lavender Lass, I wholeheartedly agree. I wish I could find words to express my delight in gardening in cooperation with Nature, my intelligence spreading its wings as I attempt to read and understand the conditions of my land. Gean, the Hugelkultur sounds interesting--I'd never heard of it--but my heart faints within me at the thought of digging out an entire bed to fill the bottom of it with rotting wood, even if we had much of that material. We don't have anything like enough decomposing organic matter available. We amend our propagating beds with bagged coarse sand and bagged compost, since we NEVER have enough organic matter from our own supplies. As the previous year's crop of plants matures we dig them out and plant them, and then we add the amendments to the beds, dig them in, and start the new cuttings. Last year I left the digging to my husband and suspect he didn't dig deep and thoroughly enough. The exceptionally wet winter may also have made a difference. This year's yield was terrible. I always amend my planting holes abundantly with old hay. Sometimes I have to dig and amend a hole two years running before it can support a rose. You're right that I have a garden: and thanks for saying so in the face of my sometime expressions of discouragement. However, I do wonder if you realize how dead my sunny garden looks in August, with no trees, hardly any large shrubs, after it hasn't rained nor been watered for two months, the sun blazing down the entire time, and nothing growing but the weeds. I don't know how many people dry garden in a dry summer climate as I do (though, unlike much of California, we do have good average annual rainfall). I believe the garden will look far more prosperous in summer once our many infant and young trees and shrubs start to get some size on them. Shade and leafage are precious allies. Jeannie, thanks for saying so. I care about my writing; and I love it when others respond. That's beautiful. Kitty, I want to answer your post but must put it off. My assistant is coming to help in the garden and I need to change. It's supposed to start raining this afternoon; I believe fall, as in gloom and chill, has finally come. The garden has greened up amazingly in the last month and has been a pleasure to see and work in. Melissa

Me? A procrastinator? Just because I put off until now reading this? I started to read it on Thursday, but after just a few words I saw a bad word! EXERCISE! So I didn't read any more. So here I am. So far today I have: read the paper, had my oatmeal and tea, made the bed, fussed at the cat for getting on the new chair, checked on Eagle Cam, Africam, Gorilla Cam, and lucked out on Djuma Cam and spent a lot of time there, had a banana and more tea, watched a few minutes of 20/20 that I taped last night (will finish that later) played around on photoshop, started a letter to a friend (I'll finish that later) and now here I am back at the KT. And it is time to fix some dinner, or I could do that later. Oh, well, guilty as charged. Think I'll watch the news. Sue