De-lurking here to say it's not just you! We had a strange spring with wild weather swings (up to 40F from daytime to night), and I have to say...this is the crappiest rose season I've had in 8 years. Very abundant number of buds--probably the most ever--but the quality of the individual flowers just stinks. Like the worst thrips damage ever, but each and every rose has it. Some roses had stunted/balled/withered buds, others had blackened petal edges, still others didn't bother with blooms. My Queen Elizabeths, easily the most prolific roses in my garden, haven't bloomed yet. There are some old, established bushes that hardly went beyond their pruned size and only spewed a few deformed buds. Thrips are normally a problem on my light colored roses, but this blight is affecting every color. The later developing buds are better--if on the small side. It's the roses that developed first (late April to early May, which is quite late for us) that were the worst. Surprisingly, the roses that seemed to shrug it off best were some of my David Austins--Jude, the Dark Lady, and a few others. But some of the DA's (Abraham Darby) and other shrub roses and climbers (like Sombreuil) were just horrific. My mom came over and said "you know, if you just look at the roses from the house, they're not so bad." Sigh. And we had such a lovely, rainy winter (for us) that I was sure the rose flush was going to be awesome. And the numbers were truly impressive--hundreds of buds on some of my small (3 ft) bushes, which is the best I've seen. But again, the actual quality of the buds was the worst I've ever seen. Some tried and true winners from my garden were hard pruned just because I couldn't bear to look at their browned/blackened/crinkly/balled horrible little blooms. These included: memorial Day, Queen Elizabeth, Sheer Bliss, Peace (sob), Marilyn Monroe, Daybreaker, New Zealand, Just Joey, blue Nile, Evelyn, Abe Darby, Charles Darwin, Autumn Sunset, Golden Something(normally gorgeous downturned sunny yellow blooms, but this time they didn't even open!),Chicago Peace, Tamora, Pink Peace, Mirandy, Mary Rose, Secret (double sob), McCartney Rose, Tiffany....I could go on, but I'm feeling kind of nauseous. To put it in different terms: I have over 160 rose bushes with few repeats, and this year I have only brought six cut blooms into the house. SIX. But who can really blame the poor roses? Last week we hit 100 degrees on Monday, and on Thursday the high was 54 with rain (snow in Flagstaff, poor buggers). What is a plant to do in these conditions? Apparently, they sulk. Now it's getting to be blistering hot again, with humidity in the single digits. Spider Mite season. I won't likely see a good bloom until September, and then the deer and javelinas will be moving in for their Autumn feast. I'm thinking of getting into daffodils. At least the lilies, Shasta daisies, coreopsis, and cannas are doing well. And the glads look like they might actually open this year (last year they were all duds). I'm off to sulk myself. Heather

If your African violets take too much of your time, then you are giving them way too much attention. Honestly, I barely acknowledge mine and they are gorgeous year round. I think too many people want African violets to seem like they need special care. They don't. I have dropped, crushed, over-watered, under-watered, drenched in hot sunlight, left in the dark, and failed to re-pot my African violets for years at a time. They still reward me with blooms whether or not I deserve it. I have heat intolerance from multiple sclerosis, so I keep my apartment cool (most would say COLD) year round. I drop everything, including the African violets. I might take the dust off their leaves once a year. In the winter I hardly ever turn on the heat, so it's normally at 45-55 degrees; I tell people I keep it warm enough in the winter so the African violets don't freeze. In the summer the temperature cannot go higher than 70 degrees or lose my right leg, right hand and most of my cognitive abilities; at times the air conditioner has the apartment down to 60 degrees all day. I don't provide them with any special lighting. I water them when I am physically able to lift the jug. I always add food to the water, because with my short-term memory loss can never worry about a feeding schedule. I have mine in pots with holes in the bottom sitting on top of a tray of aquarium stones. If the stones look dry, I water the stones. My African violets LOVE living here! They have healthy foliage and gorgeous flowers. In the wild, no one fusses over them. They get gnawed on and stepped on. African violets acclimate very well to many different conditions. They survived before people came along to take care of them. It's a shame to get rid of plants you have cared for. Just stick them somewhere and forget about them. If they look like they are wilted, water them.

Glo - Thanks for reassuring me! I hope your move is awesome! My husband has wanted to move us to Colorado for years and hasn't managed to quite convince me yet, although I think it's absolutely wonderful there. LOL So, Winter Solstice is the same everywhere? (LOL)... I guess you're seeing how little I know... Nancy - Thanks for the tip! I am gonna have to watch the lead hand myself as I way oversowed my cantaloupes this fall. The poor babies are fighting each other and giving me 2 to 5 inches fruits that don't look like they're EVER going to full ripen. I will be much more careful in the future. I'll try to not get TOO excited when I go to plant. LOL Carrie - Wow! That's some really good info. That's exactly the kind of thing I was worried about. I'm grateful for the heads up. Liz - LIZ!!! Hey, girl! Fancy meeting you here and there and now here! hee hee... The whole last paragraph of what you wrote is exactly what is concerning me. I know that I personally wear shorts through-out almost the whole winter except for those few crazy days that we see. 50's or what have you is not cold to me... We do get the occasional freeze, but then a week or two later at most you could have a 70+ degree high! All this in the same few days / weeks / months... it's SO crazy! Oh, and if they're having a plantswap around the 8th of December as well, I sure want to know as I'll be out that way. :-) Blessings, Angela

I would definitely wait until I came back. Brick suppliers are notorious for sending out multiple lot runs of brick for 1 job. There can be huge color variation between lots that you may not notice until you're looking at a giant expanse of wall. We had 3 different lot#s show up in our shipment--only 1 was the same as the brick they had already put down for the foundation. I noticed it and brought it to the GC's attention. The brick supplier apologized and brought out more brick in the correct lot. Our framer was working on a gorgeous house in the town I work in that had a brick lot problem--beautiful large Georgian-Federalist style house. There was a definite line that ran across the front of the house about 2/3 of the way up where you could clearly see a different lot of brick was used--the options were to tear down the wall and start over, live with it as-is, or paint the brick. They now have a beautiful very large Georgian-Federalist style home in a pale yellow color.