Beth.......... You have my greatest sympathies. Gardening on multiple levels has felt totally impossible from the beginning. When I am working on one level, the weeds are thriving on the other levels. Argggggggh. Hauling mulch up from the street level to the gardening levels is hard labor, too. I thought it was my time management that was the problem. The problem is that it is incredibly difficult for one person to manage all of that work. Then add the heat we both experience and it just gets overwhelming. I did check with the lady who runs our local garden center and she did say that Preen will not harm the roses. I may not like using chemicals to control weeds, but I have had to give up and use some. You have so many beautiful roses, I know this must be very distressing for you. All you can do is keep at it one day at a time. Smiles, Lyn

If I'm doing major cleaning, I always start out making a huge mess first. But I do make sure to finish it up, and try to stay on task rather than running around in circles. I'm glad (?) to know I'm not the only one with boxes of Holiday decorations out. I tasked SO with putting away that stuff, since I'm busy renovating a bathroom. It's actually been sort of funny to watch his progress. He gathered a large portion of it and piled it onto the dining room table, where it has sat all this time. Some of the big stuff (the tree and ornaments) did make it to the storage room (I think?). I've been trying to ignore the stuff all over the table, but finally had to break down and inquire. He said he keeps forgetting to bring home more boxes. Huh? That stuff came out of boxes, that went back into the store room when I finished. He says it doesn't all fit. I'm staying out of it!

Oh Lord, I agree with both Jackie and Jeri! I think it would basically come down to how assertive I was feeling on the day (well, and how physically and cognitively functional, but that's cos of my ME/CFS and hopefully you're reasonably functional on both scores, most days). :-) I have had a time when a council gardener/supervisor and volunteer came to help me by 'tidying up' my just needing a bit of a trim back garden, only to look out of the window and see the last of my thick layer of beautiful, rich, nicely rotting leaf mulch being scraped off the ground and loaded into their trailer, bound for the tip. When I protested, they said, 'Well you said you wanted it tidy...' They'd also, as I discovered later, without checking with me first, dug up my lovely little patch of sweet violets which to my delight had been naturalising in the shade of the pink trumpet vine (Podranea ricasoliana), and also removed a jasmine plant I'd been nurturing for a couple of years, trying to get it to grow up the verandah post. I did have a little weep, after they'd gone, since I really was too unwell to replace these plants and start again with the soil improvement. Their 'help' had moved me back from, not forwards to having a nurturing outdoor space to turn to for respite and healing. I had made the mistake of presuming people employed and volunteering as gardeners would know something about plants, and have some understanding of environmentally friendly gardening practices, so I wouldn't need to be there to supervise a so-called 'supervisor'. Wrong! I suppose it's safest and most realistic to just assume the worst, then anything better than that is a bonus. Incidentally, I believe it's different in the UK, where from what I've heard and observed, some real professional gardeners who love plants and tending the soil do actually still exist. But I'm afraid, as many of us on this forum have found, to the mow-blow-and-chop-it-down sort of 'gardener', almost any plant, insect, natural mulch and so on is fundamentally suspect - nasty, messy, and fundamentally incompatible with a respectable, 'tidy' garden! :-/

If the squirrel-planted ones that pop up in my garden are any example, I'd rate them as very fast growers when young but moderating a bit as they age - 13-24 inches annually. This is not one I'd plant in a horse pasture, though, as consumption of any part of the tree can be harmful to horses, causing tremors and convulsions as well as gastric upset.