u/Dependent-Outcome-57

Basic background: the community I live in has probably about 100 Knockout roses that are poorly maintained. If they have RRD, I assume there's no point in me trying to grow roses. Here's a quick timeline of things I'm trying to understand.

• I bought a rose for my balcony garden and read up on rose diseases and learned about RRD.
• By late spring, one of the local Knockouts had a large, deformed witch's broom growth, and by summer many of them were seriously deformed. Red leaves that never opened fully, messed up flowers, etc. Looking at the photos I took, I did see one very thorny cane on the original rose with the huge, strange branch, but that's it.
• We have an extremely brutal winter here in Maryland and the Knockouts, as happens every year, are ruthlessly whacked down to stumps. I also tossed the rose I bought in a fit of hopelessly, which may have been a mistake.
• Spring comes, and while some of the Knockouts are dead or dying, the rest are putting out perfectly normal looking growth.

Summary: I know RRD is in Maryland, but I don't understand why the plants would seem perfectly normal now when they looked hideous by the end of the season last year. Is RRD seasonal in some way? Does it normally not affect the first growth of the season? Or was this something else entirely? I know there's no way to be sure without having the plant tested, but any insights would help. Thanks.