cheryl, Yeah, and look at those average temperatures, combined with a more intense sun due to a lower sun angle. Also note that it is very common for July/August to be nearly rainless, or occur on one or two days for this location. For example I got 5.25" here last July.......... all on one day. Was almost 8 weeks before I got significant rain again, and it had been almost a month before the 5.25". Averages don't tell the whole story. Also click the link below for a more complete story of the averages. Note the 90 average high for weeks in July/August, and the very low "average" daily precipitation, but when it does rain it's often heavy, raising the "average". Plus that does not preclude that last summer was VERY hot and VERY dry, and my paperbark did fabulously in FULL sun which is what I am basing my POV on. I was dryer than the Fayetteville reporting station last summer. Check out last July: http://www.srh.noaa.gov/tsa/f6/f6.php?siteName=Drake_Field_Fayetteville_Arkansas&month=Jul&year=2010 And August: http://www.srh.noaa.gov/tsa/f6/f6.php?siteName=Drake_Field_Fayetteville_Arkansas&month=Aug&year=2010 Again north Virginia is cooler, lower sun angle, and regular precipitation with OP saying they water when dry. End result more friendly to a paperbark in direct sun that where I'm sitting. I was not trying to start and argument, however, the reality is what it is. Arktrees Here is a link that might be useful: Fayetteville Ar

Thanks for the ID, Joe. I knew it wasn't moonflower, but I was very curious as to what it was. Heathen, I think you have to take Botany or horticulture, and then you learn how to key out plants by family or genus. I took a biology class that devoted part of the class to plant ID, but it focused on CA natives with a leaning towards conifers...how boring!

Underbrush: Cut it down to the base, drill anything with a stump with a few holes about an inch deep. Fill with Rosie's greenlight killer as directed, cover with some tin foil so the wildlife doesn't drink from the stump. Sometimes the tree of heaven takes a few go-arounds. You can do more drilling and filling in a month or so, or even the end of august to be sure it's gone. The mimosa is pretty easy to take care of. Pull what you can if you can do it without damaging the ties or the vegetation you want to keep. The key is to use as little weed killer as possible to get the job done. No use in overdoing it, it really just wastes your $$$. I like Fertilome's total kill too as a vegetation killer only when necessary. I use these on kudzu, some kind of weedy cherry, hackberry (I think that's what it is), wisteria, tree of heaven, privit and mulberry stumps and they do quite well with very little product needed.

You can definitely grow kiwis in Portland. I live in NoPo and planted two kiwi plants about 15 years ago. They grew quite vigorously. However, I got no fruit. A friend was cutting back her male at the time it was flowering, and I took some cuttings and simply dragged the flowers over the flowers on my kiwis, and - voila! - that fall I had a bunch of kiwi fruit. So - the Hayward kiwis that I bought from Freddies were not one female and one male, but were both females. I bought another - very scrawny - male from Portland Nursery, and have had lots and lots of fruit. I have a 16 foot tall by 5 foot wide trellis/arbor that I built on the south side of my garage. The kiwi took that over with-in a couple of years. Now they have taken over the garage roof and the neighbor's trees. Good luck!