Mike----When I lived in Fl I always had that problem. What I did to slow things down was stop feeding them the middle of Oct. Water the crap out of them Nov & Dec. Usually by Jan I had a lot of blind growth with just a few blooms on all the bushs. Didn't bother me to prune & strip all my bushs come Feb. One year I didn't prune or strip my bushs and they looked ugly and the blooms were pathetic all year. I never did that again. Now when I pruned, I NEVER pruned hard. Just cleaned and shaped the bushs. Even the ones I had on Dr. Huey responded very well.

Hi - I'm not a Minnesotan, I just thought I'd take a peek, but I have the same problem with the little green beasties devouring columbines. I've discovered that there is a nonchemical way to thwart them. As soon as the plants leaf out in Spring I inspect the leaves daily, paying particular attention to the underside of the leaves. If I see any of the larva, I squish them. The infestation lasts about 3 weeks, then all larva mature into flies, & there is no problem with them for the rest of the season. The crisis has passed this year, & I have not lost any buds and had minimal foliage loss. Last year, before I figured this out, I lost all buds & nearly all leaves on several plants.

I was on earlier this morning and everything was fine. Now, the da*^#@ highlighted words links are back again! They're on other GW forums, as well. What's going on, GardenWeb?!? I hate these things and refuse to click on any of them! Lynn

June, yes it's so cute. But I hope you haven't tried to touch or pet it? There is a disease that wild rabbits carry called "rabbit fever", Tularemia - you don't want to get that. As long as you don't touch it or handle anything that it touches you're fine so don't freak out completely but if you look up that disease you'll learn more about it. If it gets into the lungs it can actually kill you. There are several different ways that the disease can attack, so I think the pneumonia one is the worst and most dangerous. I suspect that I got it from handling a wounded baby rabbit a few years back. I woke up about 3 nights later and I was having a hard time breathing, very rapid and shallow, to the point where I couldn't even get up, I had a fever and bad headache and I was shivering so hard and strong that my whole body hurt. I actually thought that I was about to die but I couldn't even get the strength to get up and do anything, finally I guess I passed out and when I woke up everything was back to normal again. It was very scary. I found out about rabbit fever from a neighbor who said a friend of hers wound up in the emergency room with it - same thing - she was handling a wounded baby.