Well, I had to work late yesterday and did not get a chance to ck the plants. Contacting the nursery will not work though; I obtained the two plants from a nursery that I ran into while traveling thru East Texas. I will just chalk it up to experience. At least the plants cost just $6 each so I am not off a lot of money. At planting time, I did not notice any root problems. But I did notice very little root growth (compared to a hydrangea that I also bought from them). When loosening the soil of both azaleas, I hardly saw roots growing against the plastic container. I think the azaleas/hydrangea were leftover from last year since they were leafless and the azaleas recently received by the nursery were green, bushy, flowering and located elsewhere on the grounds. As far as replacing R. canescens, I am planning to ask one of the local nurseries if they can special order natives from their distributor. Otherwise, I may ck one of the internet/mail order nurseries like Lazy K in Georgia. Question.... When one has root rot on a plant, should one also get rid of the soil where the plant was growing? Luis

Carol, You know, we lived here for about 5 years before I saw a single pasture fire that burned more than a small (maybe front yard-sized) amount of land and a couple of bales of hay. I guess those must have been good rain years, because since 2005 the wildfires have been unbelievable. I was out before sunrise setting up and turning on sprinklers, and pruning up limbs on a couple of small trees. (Part of firescaping is that all limbs be pruned up 8' above the ground so fire cannot climb up into their canopy. It is hard to do this on very small young trees that are only 8' or 10' tall themselves.) Later today, I will cut back the cannas near the house all the way down to the ground. Then, I am going to cut back all the half-frozen (top half froze, botton half didn't) four o'clocks on the north and northeast sides of the house and the ones under the pecan trees too. I'll spend the rest of the day cutting pasture grass and weedeating fencelines, edges where the forest meets the grassland, and the bar ditches. I'd rather cut it now than risk having it burn later. I was walking the dog Saturday and noticed our trees are about as colorful and lovely as they get here in southern OK, but my neighbor's pastures are that dry, tawny-gold wheat color and I am hoping they will cut down all that dry grass before it burns. If we learned anything here at all these last few years, it is that tall dry grass burns a gazillion times faster than very short grass. I think all of today and tomorrow will be just doing yard maintenance and clean-up, but maybe by Wed. I can get into the fenced garden and clean it out. I still have snakes in there, though, so I'd like to do that on a colder day. I do need to clean up all my containers as well, removing the dead foliage and putting it on the compost pile, and stacking up the pots for the winter. The white squirrels in Texas make the news every now and then. They have a couple of them on the campus of the University of North Texas at Denton and they cause quite a commotion on campus. The students feed them, take their pictures, etc. They even have a calendar of photos of "their" white squirrels that they sell to raise money for something on campus....maybe the library. Some years they have only 1 and other years there are 2 or 3. When one of the white squirrels was found dead a few years ago, they had a funeral or memorial service for it. I guess it gives the college students something unusual to be interested in while there at school. All of our squirrels here in Love County are just run-of-the-mill squirrels--no exotic white ones! I have a small tomato plant--maybe 8" tall--in one container on the garage/barn's concrete slab. It must have reseeded from a cherry tomato growing in a larger pot nearby. I thought it would freeze when everything else did, but there it sits, lovely and green, though not blooming. At times I am tempted to put it into a larger pot and try to keep it through the winter, but I know from experience that winter tomatoes don't get enough heat to develop good flavor, so doubt it would be worth it. A snake and trees in the roof gutter! Well, now you know why you haven't seen snakes on the ground....they are living up there in the penthouse on the roof. Personally, I'd rather NOT see snakes at all. I have gone back and looked at our rainfall totals for all the years I could find them, and all I can say about our rainfall here is that it see-saws erratically, from 36" to about 40" in a good year and then from 19" to 24" in a bad year. This is a bad year, but it actually started in August 2007, so it is also a long year. Some long-time residents here who are in their 80s and 90s tell me Love County used to regularly get annual rainfall totals in the 40s and 50s, but it began changing in the 1970s or so and the years keep getting drier. I think there was one year in the mid-1990s when we had over 50" of rain here, but that seems long ago. When we first moved here, everyone raised something: wheat, pecans, peanuts, watermelons, muskmelons, etc. And, in just the 10 years we've been here, most of those crops have been discontinued. For a long time, though, many of the ranchers raised winter wheat, planting it in late August to late September and counting on the autumn and winter rains to make it grow. If they have cattle, they can graze the cattle on it for part of the winter, then pull the cattle off of it in spring, let the wheat head up and harvest it in May/June. Since 2005, there's less and less wheat planted every year, and an article in the Marietta Monitor a few weeks ago said almost nobody was planting wheat this year---input costs are too high, and with no rain falling, there's no guarantee the wheat would grow. Our main crop around here anymore is just native hay which hasn't done all that well in this rain-challenged year. For weeks now, one of our local TV weather guys has repeatedly referred to our "desert-like weather conditions" and it is the most accurate description possible. We're having very cool nights, very hot days, and very dry air with low humidity. Even when cold fronts come through, all they bring us is wind and cool, dry air. We need some warm fronts from the south with warmer, moist, humid air. Oh, well, there's always the hope that next year will be better. In the meantime, all we can do is try to keep the place from burning down. Dawn

Sorry I don't have a pic. Ours is a wood burning unit with limestone up to the ceiling and a limestone hearth. The chimney is limestone with a decorative rockwork at the top...two story. A mantle that is painted to match the rest of the trim...very nice. It's 42" wide... a must. It has glass doors that have no trim blocking the view... a must for me. It's very nice having a large clear view of the flames and embers. I use mine alot. I have 50 acres of trees...free fuel. I opted for a fabricated box unit instead of a all masonry unit, my thinking was something would not be right with all custom innards, what with the damper and all. After 14 years and tons of blazing fires, all is well except a hairline crack in the synthetic "firebrick" sheet. I understand there's a crack sealer that withstands very high heat so that's on the list.

Kara, what all have you tried with that one other than putting it in the appropriate mix? Letting it dry completely out or? ClownMoyel, I encourage you to give your local extension office a call. Sometimes they will do free testing and if not free then for a small fee. I think it's worth knowing exactly what you are dealing with so you know what further steps to take with it as well as the extent of your required actions. If its something that should be burned/scorched earth or just cutting away the bottom part and treating with a systemic. How does it spread, will you need to throw them away along with other plants? These are all questions best addressed by scientific testing. JMO I also really want to know what this is and may help the scientific community at large. So just do it...FOR SCIENCE lol (that goes for you too, Kara but I dont want to lecture you anymore than I already have)