Thanks Henry. With so much prey to feast on hopefully beneficial insects, "the friendlies" will increase enough in the open landscape to keep chilli thrips under control. Perhaps this is happening in Florida as I read some reports on the Florida Forum that folks had had chilli thrips in the past, but then the infestation abated. A friend wrote this on the Texas Forum: "I was living in Hawaii when whiteflies first made their appearance. It was an ugly thing. Their population exploded exponentially. Their were so many whiteflies that our ceilings were coated in them. They were absolutely everywhere. They smothered a lot of leaves in sheltered areas even though we had significant ocean breeze. It was disgusting.It took about 6 months and then they had a population implosion and it attained a balance. One never saw them. Perhaps bugs and geckos had learned to eat them. I don't know what happened. I hope some natural enemy to chilli thrips comes forth and something like this happens." Now I'm find chilli thrips are on several other plants in the garden. After seeing suspicious leaves I've ID'd them on Coral vine, Henry Duelberg salvia and Texas smoke tree by tapping the affected leaf and looking at the tiny yellow dots moving around with a 10 power jewelers loop. And I do mean tiny. They are less than the size of a period and barely visible in bright light on white paper with my reading glasses on. They are much smaller than flower thips, and looked just like the photos. Also several pale colored tiny spiders quickly scurried off the paper. They were just a little larger than the chilli thrips. Hopefully they were eating them. This makes one reluctant to spray even with spinosad, but knocking them back before winter may significantly reduced their population next summer. I don't know. Right now I'm trying to reduce the number of the most susceptible plants.

Most of the Austins are going to defoliate in a hot and humid climate without a regular spray program. When we were dry earlier this year, mine were fine, but once we were hit with rain and high humidity all but 4 of mine are now defoliated. The 4 that still have leaves are The Prince, Tamora, Sharifa Asma, and Jude The Obscure. These are not flawless leaves, but at least they are not naked. The Prince and Tamora look the best out of the bunch, but they've quit blooming. Jude isn't too bad and is still producing some blooms. These are all on fortuniana, so it's not the rootstock that is causing any weakness in the plant. To my knowledge no one is currently producing any Austins on fortuniana. I'm going to pull most of mine out, because I do not want to be involved in a spray program, but will probably hang onto the few decent ones for now. Abraham Darby blackspots badly, and his blooms tend to turn a yuckky brown. If he were sprayed, he has magnificent flowers. Thrips love Abe Darby. I'm going to plant some more chinas, and try a few polyanthas. Not all the polyanthas are great here either, but some are. Sandy

Thanks rosesinny, Braveheart and Awakening are planted and I'm crossing my fingers that they will do well!! Thanks also for the nice conversation about roses with my husband & me - we really appreciated it. I think he's much more interested in roses now that he's met you! :) It was really nice of you. Thanks again.

CeresMer - thank you. I tried this technique this morning and will alternate days. I do spray them with my hose but not regularly. I was so afraid of getting the leaves too wet and getting black spot! Anyway, fingers crossed it works for me too. Diane - I was so happy this morning to see THREE buds on my Jude - they just popped up. There is also some new red growth so hopefully there will be more. It smells so wonderful. After the Spring flush I was ready to order like five more (no idea where I would put them - but I was totally enamored).