Hi Brittany, Sorry about your canna and I hope your poochies will be fine. I know nothing about canna being toxic, but I know how you can save yourself some tears from the loss of your canna- sending you mail! Lynn

P.S. ... DON'T fertilize your tree unless you do a soil test and the test shows that your soil needs fertilizer. Fertilizing trees without testing first is generally not a good idea and is more likely to hurt, than to help them unless the soil lacks necessary nutrients. Trees have very different nutrient requirements than flowers or vegetables. Most soils have the nutrients (mainly nitrogen) that trees need without adding additional fertilization. Also, only water the tree when needed. In this drought that may be once or twice a week, but the tree will not need any more water than it would have if it hadn't been hurt by the cold. In fact, it should need less water because there will be a greatly reduced leaf surface with original root mass. Basically, water when the soil becomes dry at a depth of about 2 to 3 inches. Fertilizing or overwatering will cause additional stress on the tree and could easily result in a longer recovery time or even death. If it were my tree, I would make sure the pruning was done correctly, ensure that the area around the tree was free from weeds and mulched lightly, and water the tree only when conditions (drought) make watering necessary.

It is ridiculous, agreed. But it's a function of being caught in this massive change over of technologies and manufacturing of home products and pretty much everything I suppose. Take oven cleaner. My first stoves didn't have self-cleaning ovens. Then those came along and oven cleaner wasn't really necessary. Now we have self-clean ovens that sometimes don't work well, or fry the electronics, or cause the enamel oven interiors to crack off -- even in the highest end brands. So don't use oven cleaner and don't use self-clean either! I know you've read those Wolf oven threads. They are doing reupholstery when they should be rebuilding and rethinking. And a majority of the engineers who are designing this stuff are mostly men while the majority of users are women. Due to media, we see high end looks a lot but need them at a better price. SZ, or Miele & Gaggenau are using sheet stainless but more affordable brands can't use it and to hold a price point. The coating technology is extremely good now (at least the faucet folk claim that) so they are coating and selling it as stainless and marketing it with cutsey names that sound to the average person like stainless with some type of specialized treatment. Yes, we are getting specialized treatment. Re the paper towel thing. I cannot imagine why a manufacturer would say no paper towels for the inside of a fridge. Curious which brand it is. And has the person who was told this asked for an explanation about why not? I know that from my interaction with various manufacturers I hear some pretty dumb things from them and some things that just aren't true. Again, microfiber towels work better than anything else I've tried, including paper towels, for cleaning in general. I use yellow and blue for regular cleaning and reserve the green ones for kitchen use only -- no cross use. I wash them in hot (140F) water or on sanitize (165F) if heavily used. Ain't no germs livin in those towels after that. And if it's not a washer where the hot water temperatures are precise, just saturate with alcohol before washing.

Shellac is magic- it is one of the few paints that sticks to anything- we often use it when we don’t know what the substrate is because it will ALWAYS stick. Just hit the knots with shellac once or twice then your latex topcoat.