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

I don't count the plants, but I can tell you the size of the blocks I plant. For 6 people, I find that two or three 3'x8' blocks of bush beans -- each a different variety -- planted at a 4-6" spacing will provide 1-2 meals per week for the 4-6 week harvest period with enough for raw snacking by the handful and, perhaps, a little left over at the height of harvest for freezing. About 20 feet of State Half-Runners planted in a wide row on each side of a 2ft fence (5-6 total rows with beans spaced at 4 inches and rows at 6 inches), provided about two cooked meals per week and plenty of raw snacking with a bit left over to freeze again through its harvest period. I don't know how long that would have continued because it was cut short by frost. I'm not too familiar with regular pole beans, but 10 feet of yardlong beans last year gave us a month of meals 1-2 times/week and 2 gallon freezer bags. Yields will vary depending on variety and conditions and number of meals will vary based on how much you like beans and how many vanish after picking as raw snacks.

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.

I'm so happy you like the color! Thank you. Unfortunately, i don't have an answer for you. I got my can of touch-up by taking a little piece of the wall (a piece was cut out to put in an outlet) to Miller Paint. They did the little wiz-bang-boom color match thing, and that's what came up. They filled a can with the match. Admittedly, when this home was built, i was completely ignorant about the different character and quality to paint (if only i were a GardenWeb member then!). I'm guessing the builder cut corners and used an inexpensive paint, since they did cut many corners in other ways. I know that's no help at all. But thank you for the compliment. It's so nice to hear.