Hi Guys- I live in North Berkeley and all the plants in one of my raised beds look exactly like Irene's. What stinks is that I had first planted two plants from Spiral Gardens Nursery, who grow their own starts, and those did great, even in all the rain we got. Then I planted three plants that I got from Forni-Brown Nursery in Calistoga, which I am almost certain they grow their own starts (they sell mostly to the local restaurants in Napa Valley), and those did great. Then two weeks after that I went to Berkeley Hort and bought more plants, including some sourced from Sweetwater Nursery. While at Berkeley Hort I came across a Mortgage Lifter from Sweetwater, noticed that it was spotted, and brought it to the attention of a sales guy at Berkeley Hort and asked him if there were problems. He very patiently explained the "cold damage" and I believed him. Normally I'm totally paranoid, but I have shopped at Berkeley Hort for five years and never had any problems with plants there, and I consider their staff to be top notch. I also have bought lots of stuff from Sweetwater without a problem in the past. So I thought I should get over my paranoia and went ahead and got some plants there, including that spotty Mortgage Lifter. Planted those, rains came, and a week later, EVERYTHING in that bed had spots on them. Obviously this is all just my observations, but the bottom line is, I should have gone with my instinct and just left that Mortgage Lifter alone. Now it's a waiting game. I finally got to the point of not stripping any more leaves, even if spotted. It's now an experiment. The new growth has been pretty normal, no spots. I've drenched with Serenade twice, but it's expensive, so I've been using a baking soda/oil/castile soap "natural fungicide)" concoction. I can't tell if it's helping or if it's the dry weather that has slowed the leaf spots. I imagine that if I get more fruit set, the plants will only stress and get worse, and who knows if anything will properly ripen. I'm just hoping to get even a small harvest. We'll see. Good luck to you guys and hoping for the best for everyone!

Orchid leaf

The brown spots appear to be common hydrangea leaf spots, sometimes a fungal infection called Cercospora Leaf Spot. See here for more info: http://www.aces.edu/pubs/docs/A/ANR-1212/ANR-1212.pdf Most of the time, this is caused by overhead watering. If you do this, try watering the soil instead and do it very early in the mornings. Clean up plant debris that may contain spores, discard leaves in the Fall on the trash and, if you can afford it and the problem is bad enough in your opinion, replace the mulch too. You can also apply fungicides and the article mentions some of them but they can be $$ expensive so I just follow those suggestions when it comes to the ones that I too have with leaf spot. I am not sure about the loss of leaves. Sounds mysterious since you have not mentioned anything that would account for that. Normally, this would require something like not watering it (the rootball dries out for example), winter damage or applying insecticides or fungicides to the plant or to nearby plants. Leaf spot can make the plant loose some of these leaves as they first appear to have the lesions and sometimes the leafs brown out and fall. But usually the infestation is not THAT bad. If Bluebird lost the leaves in this way then you may want to spray after all as that is kind of a big thing in my opinion. I normally see this issue on mine by late August or in September so this is kind of early. And I just live with the problem until the plant goes dormant in December. Then I carefully cut the leaves off without touching the stems (invisible 2016 Spring flower buds will usually be near the end of the stems).

Don't know why pics didn't post.. here they are again.