I checked out that site and it had a lot to say I tried to send the following email but it said they dont recieve from hotmail. So I decided to copy it just as I wrote it and post it here. My name is Ssmittee and I just ate my first piece of tamerind candy/fruit and found it so pleasing that I sucked on the seed like I did when I was a child with olive pits lol. I live in Polk County which is half way between Tampa Bay and Orlando. We are actually almost dead center of our state. I lived most of my life in Washington state and have been in love with the tropicals and am growing and eating everything they produce. [my papaya tree produced 47 3 to 4 lb fruits and I dried froze and ate and shared every one of them. I know the tree is huge so I guess a house plant is out, lol ..ok here is my questions: 1. Will it survive in my area? about once a year it drops to 25 2 or 3 days. This year it lasted about 2 weeks. 2. will they grow AND produce flowers and fruit in a large pot as in a 25 gallon planter. With the help of my 2-wheel dolly and my handicapped ramp, my living room sorta looked like a tropical forest. 3. Finally, Can you tell me how to prepare the seeds for propagation. I do appreciate anyone who is willing to take a few minutes to answer these questions for a stranger. Garden webbers rock any way I know I will eventually get the answer from all yall... hey I already got on answer Imagardener said they had theirs in a pot and brought it in during the chill. btw thanks

Since you will be planting that close to the house, perhaps a vine arbor with ( for example )roses and clematis might be more managable. An arbor would present fewer problems, in terms of root invasion and branches against the house. You could plan it so that it would shade the window, and yet still let some indirect light come through. There are many climbing roses that do well in Florida with little or no care, and there are many types of vines you could use as well. Many Golden Showers trees lose their leaves during the dry months. If the sun is hitting that wall during the winter, the GS tree won't meet your requirements. Also, in z10 the GS tree can obtain a height of 50 feet. happy gardening, Avalon

This may or may not be applicable. Dunno. My wife has a BM that has a, shall we say, hit-and-miss relationship with reality. Not dangerous per se, but she tends to be very selective about her memories, and is only occaisionally reliable in crises -- unless you count being unreliable as a strange form of reliability. My wife is 30 years old. She's known her mom for...well, 30 years. However, she gets suckered into trusting her mom on a semi-regular basis during critical situations, and nearly every time, she's burned all over again. Why? I think that my wife has confused the job description -- "Mommy" -- with the real person, let's call her "Ms. X". "Mommy" is supposed to be able to do the occaisional favor for her grandchildren -- say, be able to pick them up from a bus station on time. "Ms. X" on the other hand, runs out of gas on the freeway after misplacing luggage in the station. (I'm making this up, but you get the drift.) People shouldn't be forced into having to "handle" their parents. However, this is the situation your SS is in. Life has given him a BM that needs to be treated like a bank -- "it sure would be nice if my check was processed in the next 3 days, but I need to plan like they're not only going to take a week and a half, but also like they're going to lose it at least once in the process." He needs to be able to separate his expectations of the job description from the expectations he should have for his specific real mom. And he needs to learn the hard lesson that if people act the way we expect them to act, then any problems we have with that are our own lookout (to the extent that he as a 10 year old has control over his own actions, and his contact with his mom). All of the above are ways to help him understand his situation, and to protect himself from inflicting further probs on himself through selective memory or "maybe this time" kinds of thinking -- I really don't have any useful advice about "how to make him happy". Maybe he *needs* to be unhappy with it, in order to avoid repeating these behaviors with his own family sometime down the line. Maybe he should draw up a real description of the duties of the job "Mommy", and see if he'd hire his BM for that job. If not, see if someone is already doing the job. (Like, say, you.) If there's any lack, maybe you could offer to subcontract. Or see if there's any other available subcontractors.... I'm being facetious, but only a little. Your SS *knows* he can't trust his mom. He should be angry over it, but realize that life sometimes stinks. He needs to figure out how far she has allowed herself to be loved, love her just that much if he cares to, and no more -- or if more, to realize and accept the consequences he's buying in to. And he needs to realize that 'momhood' does not reside only with her. It can also reside with you, or with other folks in his life.

What a beautiful gnarly old tree. But I can easily see why you're worried. One other thing to consider is the fact that when a tree starts to decline the roots might be weakening too. How many times have we seen entire trees, roots and all, fallen over in a storm? That happens all the time at our place in the PA. mountains. I'm always worried I'll find some huge hemlock on top of my house. Apple wood makes great firewood and burns beautifully. So if you do have to remove it you might be able to negotiate a reasonable price. We just had 2 huge white pines and a Bradford pear removed from our home. The pear had a partially hollow crotch so every few years we had the tree cut back to remove any excess weight. We even considered cabling the tree but the arborist said it was hollow nearly down to the core. So we opted to have it removed. We paid $2100 which wasn't bad. They couldn't drop the trees so that meant having a climber go up and cut off individual branches. They used a pulley system so the the branches could be controlled while they lowered them to the ground. That price included grinding out the stumps too and hauling it all away. Maybe an arborist could take some cuttings and you could try to grow a new tree or perhaps even graft it. Or maybe you could keep a nice slice and make a table top out of it. Does your son think he could take it down or is it leaning too much toward the house?