Too bad about your tree. You're very lucky it was only a tree and not everything. Please clarify: did you grind the stump and refill the hole with the ground stump? Filling the hole with chipped wood will result in a hole exactly the size of the hole you started with. The only thing you can fill a hole with is minerals like a soil containing clay, silt, and sand. A hole full of organic matter will completely empty itself before your eyes. Not only that but while it is disappearing, nothing will grow on it because of the huge nitrogen requirement to decompose the wood. The fastest way out of your situation would be to go out in the woods, find a piece of rotten wood, and put that on top of your pile of chipped wood. Then keep the pile moist (not soaking wet) for several weeks until the wood rot takes hold in the wood chips. After that the wood rot fungus will sustain itself without the continual moisture. Still it will take a year or so to completely rot away. then you can fill the hole with soil. If you dig out half and fill it will soil, the rest will eventually rot away and leave you with a hole again. ...and nothing will grow on the top layer of soil while the wood underneath the soil is rotting. Agree with Mitter. Hay is not what you want. You want straw. But I wouldn't even do that. It is too late in the season to expect grass seed to sprout. I would sit back and let Nature take Her course. Then see what you have left. She may do you a favor or may send you something worse.

After hearing about the tornadoes with deaths in Missouri and Oklahoma, I'd felt very lucky. I hope all of our friends are OK. There doesn't seem to be any damage to the house, thankfully. The storm last September really did a number on the siding and roof- we had to replace the entire roof then, including the wood. Garden damage is far less than what I expected to find. (I took the camera out with me and the batteries died after one shot). Two of my 3 butterfly weeds are flat on the ground- blown down flat. They already had flower buds. My Yvonne's Salvia are planted in a row, like a hedge. The one on the end was also blown flat. On closer inspection I see that it was partially blown out of the ground. When things dry up some, I'll dig it up and replant it. For now it's just being supported upright by a stake. And some leaves were blown off of several of them, others were torn. But they are setting their flower buds. Most of my recently planted seedlings look good, just a little crooked, no doubt too small to really catch the wind much. The weather currently looking good, the sun finally peeking out occasionally. My husband has been on the computer all day, working on the photobucket viruses. They FINALY seem to be gone. But so is my husband- the idiot just left for the golf course. I just can't imagine golfing on this soupy ground. But nothing interferes with golf. And still a 30% chance of storms tomorrow, 90% chance on Saturday. What a vacation/planting week I picked. I'm just going to curl up with a book. Karen

Cut off any broken branches back to a main stem. They will die anyway. By now you probably can see which ones are alive and producing leaves. I've read that horizontal branches (the bent ones) produce more branches with flowers than upright ones, at least with climbers.

I cut up the sunflower plant and hauled it away. Saved the seedheads that were ripe and threw them into the shrub border here for the squirrels and birds to eat. I decided to take a drive around town this afternoon to see what I could see. The power is on here in our section of town known as "The Landing" after the name of the main road down here. But as soon as you make a turn to the section of town with the two supermarkets all the power is off. Really bad news for the supermarkets as that means all the meats and frozen foods have to be tossed. Bad news for all the residents of town too as that means the supermarkets are not open and no one can go buy food. Lots of resturants in that part of town too but all closed.