I would guess there are some municipal constraints that control what you can do with a spring. It might be smarter to landscape in a way that allows the water to ebb and flow than to try to shunt if off your property - if that is where mother nature and the city decree that it should be. Also, where do you want the water to go - check that it is OK for it to go there. The more you can tell (and show) about the problem and the area, the better the information you will get. Karin L

I originally found the formula when I visited the Rose Forum - there are many variation of the original. They actually used neem oil because it is very light oil - canola oil is very light oil. I mix a gal. to keep handy: 2 Qts = H2O 4 tsp = baking soda 1 Tbsp= mild dish washing liquid 2 Tbsp= Canola oil Pm - if you look underneath the foliage you'll see teenee-tiny light green caterpillars - these tiny guys can skeletonize a rose bush nearly overnite!!! They don't touch the blossoms - last season 2 of my KOs were full of blossoms completely undressed of foliage. Daily dousing of the formula took care of the bushes - very soon Rose bushes were normal again! Whaass if you asked the nursery they sell you a spray bottle of insecticidal soap = at least 10 to 13 $$. A bottle goes very fast!!! Hs - I don't think it's that difficult - my dil's were badly curled, dousing daily got to the culprits & took care of the problem! Try it you might like it ... saves $$!

I may have part of the answer regarding why aspirin may be of some use. A few years ago, I had a class in plant pathology during my university years during which we had discussed methyl salicylate's role in plant disease. We had come across a paper in a scientific journal relating an experiment on tobacco plants (frequently used in research because they'll catch almost any disease imaginable and they're cheap and easy to grow) following the discovery that some plants, when infected by some disease, gave off some of it in the form of vapor. What was observed was that the neighboring plants, although eventually attacked as well by the same disease, showed less severe symptoms. An experiment was then conducted under controlled conditions during which tobacco plants were exposed to the compound. What was found was that methyl salicylate did in fact improve the plants' ability to withstand disease. So what happenned ? I can't remember what was said in the paper following the results, but the answer undoubtedly lies in what are called elicitors and messengers. I'll spare you the details (and for myself, the task of digging through my old school notes in some forgotten corner of the basement) but the big idea of it is that some plants produce certain chemical compounds under certain stresses (such as disease) which may evaporate out of the plant and be dispersed in the surrounding air. Neighboring plants of the same species would then, upon contact with trace amount of the messenger chemical, react by producing increased quantities of some compounds which increase their ability to withstand stress (such as additional cell wall material, certain plant hormones, increased quantities of wax on the leaves which would slow fungal attack). This may sound far-fetched, but keep in mind that plants are highly complex organisms and that most of them do have some biological or chemical way of reducing their susceptibility to disease. Of course, not all plants may produce methyl salicylate, not all plants may react to it, and not all plants may produce volatile compounds. But within the same plant, there are often distinctly observable reactions in healthy plant parts when one of them is under attack by a pathogen. As I said, there may be more wax production, there may be a change in leaf orientation on new growth (in order to reduce moisture retention on the leaf surface, thus reducing the ability of some pathogens to survive before penetrating the leaf surface), there may be changes in the chemical make-up of sap and so on. Reactions such as this have repeatedly been observed in many plants under stress. While it may not always allow a plant to ultimately survive the disease, it may allow it some extra time to flower and set seed, thus allowing it to reproduce. Imagine the population-wide advantage of having stumbled upon the ability to communicate such information as the presence of disease ! Anyhoo, back to your roses and black spot. Perhaps roses would react to aspirin, perhaps not. It's certainly worth a try in my opinion and I dout it would harm the plants. One thing it will certainly not do, however, is act as a fungicide; at best, expect a reduced incidence and/or severity of black spot on the plants you'd have sprayed with aspirin. Some people might object to spraying man-made compounds such as aspirin in their yard even though it does occur naturally in some plants (like many other synthetics, which naturally occur in several life forms), but that's a matter of personal opinion. If you're one of those people, but you're intrigued by this whole aspirin idea, you might want to try researching willows or wintergreen. Aspirin was first developed from willow leaves (indians used to chew them as a cure for headaches) and wintergreen contains methyl salicylate, so there may be some way to use them as a natural plant spray. I have no idea if it would work, this is purely hypothetic, but who knows.... I hope this has been informative....good luck !

@Mentha, thanks for offering! I've collected too many perforated Monsteras; found two more big ones locally. (I don't know if they're obliqua, friedrichsthalii, or adansonii. I read they're supposed to be synonymous but the leaves are different; one has much pointier leaves than the others, with smaller slits). But if you need to send them away, sell them on eBay? I'd be happy to adopt another, too! That little one is doing OK right now. (Making a new leaf, looks clean.) I've learned a lesson: DON'T go crazy stripping "root bound" plants, and pot up according to root size, not plant size. (I don't know how plants survive suggestions like Figure 2. here; a nursery owner told me they actually don't touch the outer roots at all when repotting, and just add more soil around them. Their plants look great.) I thought I was "helping" them by trying to put them in coarser soils like suggested here, but they didn't enjoy the excessive root pruning when I tried to remove the old soil. And I used way too much hydrogen peroxide in trying to compensate for their new, over-large pots. (Something like 1-to-4 rather than 1-to-11 of 3%; surely burned them.) Anyway, I've repotted again (downsized) and am letting them rest and recover. P.S. nice Skyrim icon :D