It's a unique spot and the plan has been to preserve the majority of the woods but the landscape around the house was just to overgrown. Yews and Euonymus gone wild and scrub trees and brush throughout. It was overgrown landscape up close, scrub trees throughtout. I removed all of these and then indeed there were some 60+ yo pines that were felled.. I didn't let them touch the Norway Spruce I've planted around the house with paperbark maple, stewartia, JM's, Rhodies and dwarf conifers..no its not completely natural but IMO its an improvement. Around the perimeter of the yard there are some redbuds and dogwoods. My hope is also to get more Tsuga growing among pines and Spruce. Thats also why I'm interested in the acer rubrum...more species. Some may say leave it alone ..this is a forest. But its not really a "natural forest" when it was planted with one species of pine as part of the roosevelt project. I fear one day that something will wipe the pine out..although with the other species I think it will be fine. My hope is to live here the next 40 years... I need the house to last that long (the cedar siding likely would not of..lol) but i also want a nice woodlands surrounding the home. I appreciate your thoughts

When wanting to plant so many trees on a small half acre lot which is also taken up by a house footprint, it is best to consider planting more like what would be seen in the forest. First, planting the upper story trees planted in consideration of how they will cast their shade. Dappled shade is wonderful to create with the right overstory trees. Then, wait until those trees grow large enough to have a canopy that spreads far enough to shelter the ornamental dappled shade loving, understory trees along with the part-sun loving understory trees that like to grow along the outside edges of forested areas. It never ceases to amaze me how beautiful, forests can be. Many of them seem like a master designer, skillfully, planned their tree, shrub and brush, spacings, positions, and species. Yet, I know you must have more ability, compared to nature, for planning a viable forest environment? Just take the time to consider what arrangement a forest needs to survive, and to provide a forest floor which is compatable for human occupancy. Above all, stay mindful, of the difference between wild areas that keep wanting to invade human settlement areas, compared to the forests which retain their own eco space, and advance outward slow enough; that it takes little effort from human settlement, situated within the forest, to keep the wild outside the settlement's boundries.

Except in rare circumstances, I don't prune peppers unless I am planning on bringing them inside to over winter since my climate won't support perennial growing outdoors. If you have a temperate climate year round, then you probably don't want to do much pruning. I am not sure what the climate in the Philippines is like though. Bruce

Jess: The ideal time to prune roses is when they go dormant, at the COLDEST time of the year. I prune roses right after a hard frost which zaps out the leaves. Then I prune roses again in spring time, since we have more dead branches from -20 below zero. Crown Princess Magareta got pruned twice, right before winter, and again in spring before the rain hit. My second pruning produce more blooms. I checked on multiflora rootstock: 1) yes, it likes acidic, and my Comte de Chambord (grafted on multiflora) loves sulfate of potash (21% sulfur), gypsum .. but hate pea-gravel (pH 9). It loves tons of acidic rain, so I run the down-pour from my rain-spout via a hose onto that rose. Salty fertilizer isn't best for roses grafted on multiflora. Multiflora picks up salt well, thus more prone to rust. Multiflora prefers cool & rainy like the climate they are native to: Japan, Korea and Eastern China. They are imported to cool & rainy eastern United States in 1866 as rootstock for ornamental roses, and became invasive. I notice that my 2 own-root Comte de Chambord can take heat & drought much better than my Comte grafted on Multiflora: it sulks at temp above 90, and can't handle dryness.