I'm so sorry for your tsuris, Harmony! Having dealt with precisely what you describe off and on since 1989, I felt the pain you expressed. I believe you were correct in just letting the roses recover on their own with copious water. In many cases, water really is the best "fertilizer", "fungicide" and "insecticide". As long as the plants can be kept sufficiently hydrated, their will to live is amazing! Nature truly has provided them with everything they need to survive, if given half a chance. In this climate, I have found mounding soil over the bud union after replanting from a gopher attack, as you would a new bare root, has helped greatly in preventing the plant from drying out as quickly. It apparently also helps keep it cooler and darker, which are the conditions conducive to root formation rather than top growth. As long as you pay attention, catch the problem before the plant is too far gone and keep it wet, most can be salvaged. But, it is a bear and definitely NOT fun. Congratulations on your successful recovery! I know it wasn't the way you wanted to make the decision, but at least the whole situation worked to help you cull those roses which really didn't speak to you. Now, you should be happier with the garden. It's often difficult to make the transition from quantity to quality. Kim

Alisande, I know. I don't care, but DH does. This is the credit card company that allowed an old canceled card to be used and the purchases were put on our new card! They are the ones who canceled the old card in the first place because of "suspicious activity". So it's cancel the card or keep it and maybe get more fraudulent charges? I don't know. I think I'd rather have a lowered credit score instead of having to deal with getting charges removed off my account.

Averil, hi there, yes there are certainly bad days at the moment, hopefully I will learn how to cope better. Here is the product I like to use, in fact I just checked out some crassula on the kitchen windowsill and found an infestation of pesky mealy bugs. They have just had a good squirt of it..... I would be lost without the g/h, it's one that John and I built ourselves a few years ago after our aluminium one blew away, literally, in a storm. We live in a very windy spot and suffer badly. I like to grow unusual things, for example some of my palms are tender and live inside the g/h during winter. I have grown lots of them from seed collected on holidays with John so they are very precious to me. I seem to be attracted to the unusual, hence my interest in Adeniums. John used to laugh (in an nice way of course!) at my efforts to grow things that were completely out of our zone. I wish he could see my DR's in bud now. I definitely have flowers to come on one of my own plants :)))) I have not seen Brian around for quite some time. I will have to fire the laptop up and see if his email address is still on it. I hope he is OK. Lidl is not in my immediate area, there is one but I don't travel that way very often so have only called in once several years ago. I will have to check out Aldi as I have found they can often have similar products around the same time. Thanks for the heads up. I have never used it before but have read about its merits on the forums lately. Regards, Gill UK

More learned: It took 27 days for my smaller 4 1/2 ft C. e. 'Black Magic' corm to dry. It is 8" long. I trimmed it about 3-4x during that time. Now it looks more like a typical EE bulb. Today I noticed the bottom of the corm was chopped or broken off. Which made me look at my other EE corm bottoms. They all have chopped or broken tips as well. All my EEs concentrate some energy on growing their corm downward like a tap root. I'm not sure if this is for stability or vigor or both. What I'm curious about if their bottom tips are chopped: * Do the corms continue to lengthen downward if their bottom tips are chopped? * How do chopped corms differ from non-chopped corms? * If the corm tip was not chopped, would this significantly increase the health and size of the plant? * Do the corms grow upward and begin an above ground trunk? My largest C. e. 'Black Magic' which is potted now seems to display this. Its corm bottom tip was chopped. It also has new roots that are growing from the above ground parts of its base where past petioles used to grow from. Botanical literature I've read on Colocasias doesn't mention an above ground trunk. It does however state above ground trunks for Alocasias. Regardless, one conclusion I've reached is that while transplanting, utmost care will be put into not cutting off or breaking off the bottom of their corms. When potted, a pot that is twice as tall as it is wide is ideal for accommodating/encouraging downward corm growth. I might build some out of 10" o 12" wide PVC pipe. My 2nd largest C. e. 'Black Magic' (and 4 other EE bulbs) after 27 days of drying: These are 2 pics of when the above 8" corm it was in the ground. It began as a pup in fall 2016: TRUNKED COLOCASIA: My other EE below, which in Oct was over 6ft tall, had its corm bottom broken or rotted off in the past. When dug up I saw that the corm seemed to have stopped growing downward. It is obvious in the 3-photo collage below that it is now growing upward as a trunk. I haven't yet confirmed the reason this trunk exists. One commercial web source I found states Black Magic corms eventually raise up over time. You can also see 1/8” white worm-like roots growing from it. They appear like they are growing upward but they are all growing downward. These root locations tell me that I could safely add about 4 more inches of soil or re-position it 4 inches deeper. More roots in the soil could only be good for this plant's or tree's(?) health and size: