I've been dying to let my color grow off and go natural. But the last time I got about 2" of new growth and saw that ton of grey, I chickened and went to buy a box of L'Oreal 7 1/2A. :) I have been known to tweak on some of my cuts when I get back from the hairdresser's, but I wouldn't know where to begin to cut my own all over. Maybe if I could take my head off and set it down in front of me. How in the world does anyone cut behind their head looking in a mirror. I'd lose an ear or something. LOL Pretty cut/color on a pretty lady Deb.

Maggy: No problem with the name confusion. I thought exactly that must be the reason. My porch has two sides attached to the house and half the ceiling is covered by the 2nd flr and so it it gets heat from the house. In the day time the supplemental lights (about 1000W total) provides quite a bit of heat. And it gains some heat from the sunlight through the windows. I have a 1000W electric heater that is set to turn on around 45F. But the porch rarely goes below 50F. I used to have my plants in the basement with more lights. But they are so much happier in the porch. I think daily variations in temperature keeps them healthier and relatively bug free. I get more bugs on the plants that are next to the 2nd flr south facing windows in a room with fairly constant temperature.

NJ, Deer eat rose buds, their choicest part of a rose bush, like Brussels Sprouts. They do not spit them out! You definitely are not dealing with deer....possibly ground hogs, but most likely squirrels. Squirrels or squirrel like critters are probably at work. Curiosity is at work rather than looking for a food source. They are attracted to green rosebuds because of their apple scent. Bitten off and dropped is what they do, maybe taking a nibble just to see what they taste like. Squirrels can do a lot of damage to apple trees, from the fruit just set size in June, to harvest size in the fall. Not much you can do short of killing them, a temporary fix. Do that and you just make room for more squirrels to move into the just vacated territories of the dead ones. Maybe the newcomers will not bother the roses, as the eliminated squirrel(s) did. Moses

Embothrium, I assumed the two cultivar names were interchangeable; I guess I can throw local nurseries under the bus for that as well. I’m not going down the subsurface root-issue .question hole...Im way too meticulous about roots now. If it checks out from a hidden root issue, so be it. I’ve lost trees before, and will lose them again... from new errors. Definitely the reason behind me only planting sub 10 gallon material now.