These look well on the way to being ex-trees. Regular watering, in the shade, in a big terracotta pot with 1 little drainage hole in what looks like a heavy soil = possible root rot. The red one atropurpureum? in particular looks like its got it. I have made the mistake this year of watering a deshojo red maple that has a large root ball in old soil containing some peat in an old pot to death probably as I made no allowance for lower demands due to it being trunk chopped. As they are this far gone, I'd be tempted to remove them from their pots and check if there is any healthy white roots there. You'd also get a chance to see how wet it is down there. You may find that there is not much root too speak of. You can try re-potting in new pots in a mix of 80% horticultural grit and soil conditioner (composted bark) making sure that there is plenty of gravel in the bottom of the pots to allow for drainage. Give them a little drink every few days when the pots feel light. Some people recommend watering with a fungicide. I have all sorts of other acers getting a good dose of full sun and wind all day that are thriving - loving it in fact. My back yard is a suntrap up into the 90s the last few weeks so I wouldn't say that was your problem. Once the leaves have lost their vitality the sun and wind will turn them brown and crispy in as little as a few hours which is why an overwatering or root problem is often mistaken for underwatering. You then apply more water and total collapse can ensue.

If you plant Thuja plicata 'Green Giant' trees where your schematic shows that you first intended to plant Leylands, you will end up with a more resitant tree to pests and disease. These trees used to be hard to find in my local nurseries back in Fall of 2004. In fact, only one local nursery in my area had this tree. A local cemetary had ordered one hundred of the T P 'GG' trees from this nursery, and at the time of order, it took this local nursery 2 years to find a grower who could ship them 200. In Fall of 2004 it blessed me to discover that this local nursery had the trees, when no other nursery in town carried them. Ever since then this and other local nurseries have continued to offer T P 'GG' for sale. The first Nursery to sell these trees locally has proven stock which has survived drought, late season freezes in the early Spring, and severly destructive freezing rain events, which all over the city caused the worst destruction to even mature trees. Yet both their's and my GGs have survived nicely. This part of northeastern OK also receives lots of gusting wind events. Today we are forecast to have high winds with gust speeds up to 35 mph. Still none of my well established Thuja's have ever blown over. GG trees do not suffer damage from snow load, and my established ones did not break or uproot even when we received four days of off and on rain which froze once the icing coated the GG's branches. These young 9 feet tall trees did not break. In fact even though the weight of the increasingly accumulating ice buildup caused the tops my GGs to bend all the way to the ground, none of them broke, and there was no branch failure. Not one of these trees were pulled up by the roots from the weight of the ice bending their tops to the ground. My Thuja plicata Green Giants performed that well, even when during this bad icing event, my two 20 feet tall Shumardi oak trees suffered just over 50% canopy branch failure. On the back boundry area of a 1/2 acre vacant lot I own, among a staggered row of Loblolly pine trees which were still young enough to have lower branching, but had also grown almost 15 feet tall, 4 of them that were more toward the middle of the planting had main leader trunks, which due to the destructive icing event, snapped about 5 - 6 feet up from the ground. Even so, my Thuja Plicata GGs did not snap off, suffer branch failure, or uproot. Of course, in windy conditons, 5-6 feet tall GGS do have to be staked when they are first planted, late Summer 2007, I planted two staggered rows of some 5-6 feet tall GGs as a north windbreak in the northerly back yard of a house which experiences almost a wind tunnel affect. These trees did not have to be staked until the icing event described above occured. Once they get the chance to become well established, by Spring 2009, I feel confident that their stakes can be removed and these GGS should do fine even during sever wind producing...

O.K., I'm a little frustrated now. I had unlinked the photos I have in PB but still can't keep photos from the viewing public. Next I opened an account with WinkFlash and loaded a few photos. I ran a test, copied a photo into an email and sent it. The person who received the email/photo clicked on the photo and was taken to WinkFlash and could go through the entire album (there were several photos I uploaded) b/c I was logged in at the same time. As soon as I logged out, it wouldn't let my friend back in. The problem is if I'm in the WinkFlash account any linked photos are then open and by turn the whole album is open. I didn't want my friend to see all the photos in the album and I sure don't want to worry when I'm in WinkFlash that anyone who had one linked photo can access all the photos in my albums. Also, I couldn't find any privacy control settings on WinkFlash. While I like being able to send copies of the photos to friends, I don't want them (or anyone else) to have that much access. Is there a site that actually secures your photos? Thanks

I am having the same problem Jo. And I'm on a Mac.... but don't know if that's the root of the cause. I have to highlight the code now and right click or press copy under the edit dropdown. I do get the "copied" thing popping up, but it doesn't actually work unless I do the copy myself. Grace