Ever since I pulled out a rose with DEFINITE symptoms -- 'Yellow Sweetheart, Climbing' showing red new growth is fine, but when that new growth is suddenly STUDDED with prickles, you know something's terribly wrong, because this rose is "thornless" -- I examine my roses pretty much daily. When I see growth like this, I mentally imagine taking a picture in B&W -- does it still look weird? Are the leaves taking on normal shape? It still freaks me out, knowing RRD is in my area. I think it's inevitable that it'll hit me again. But when I see "not obviously RRD" new growth like this, I wait a few days to see if it greens up. So far this year, it all has, or is about to. Another thing I am noticing this year -- many cases of multiple shoots coming from the same area. Why am I not freaking out about this? Because what is coming out looks normal, albeit "enthusiastic". Generally, the first bud to emerge is the central bud -- the two side buds are "suppressed" by the central bud being in an active growth phase. But then we had that week of nights dipping into the mid 20s after over a month's worth of leafing out. Many of those central buds were damaged -- some growth even melted away entirely. That meant the side buds were no longer being 'suppressed", and they started to grow. In some cases, the central bud's growth recovered, and the resulting "three shoots from one point" looks scary now. But as I said, the shoots coming out look normal -- it's just that there are more than the "normal number" because of that late freeze. :-) ~Christopher

What bothers me the most is that the bud with pink petals looks normal, and yet NONE of the supporting leaves have turned green, nor do they appear to be going to turn green. I saw something like this in the now-lost garden at LMU. A rose with stems and leaves magenta red-mid summer- and it never turned green and then the buds opened normal color. Things just aren't supposed to happen that way, and where did the chlorophyll go- or is it totally overwhelmed by excessive anthocyanin production. Same picture with buds: damn. those buds are lacking receptacles- no place for ovules so something is really messing with the reproductive parts of that rose. I have seen that before with RRD symptoms. Your backgrounds on those last shots are lovely, and that bed has great plant spacing. If that were mine, I couldn't live with it in that bed. Ann

Nothing overly suspicious to me. But watch that the new leaves turn green. It should happen within the week. John

Kali, your DJ looks fine but unfortunately you will probably lose that lovely basal break over the winter. Unless it has several more weeks to harden off before you get hard freeze the soft tissue in that cane will freeze and die. Not to worry though, it looks like your DJ is ready to climb and will put out new canes next spring! Ken, I'm really surprised you haven't seen any bagged roses around there. They are every where here in Metro Detroit. All the big box stores (HD, Lowes, Menards and Tractor Supply) get them in in early March. Places like Walmart and Meijers have them too. I've even seen them in fruit markets and Krogers! They're very cheap, both in price and quality, but I have gotten some great roses out of them. Just go in knowing that at least half of the time they are mislabeled and you can end up with a lot of mystery roses on your hands.