A friend who gardened with me at a school garden would not thin....claimed it was "playing God". Instead, she let me do the thinning and made some comments about me being God. We had a serious talk and put a stop to that talk. She now understands that many of the veggies will never produce a decent harvest if we don't thin. But, I am the one who must do most of the thinning, just without any unwelcome comments. You say: "i didn't have the heart to thin the summer squash, zukes, and tomatoes... so i'm gonna be dropping them off on door steps in the middle of the night! " If those plants are seriously crowded they will have poor or no yield and there will be nothing to drop off anywhere. Crowding of some plants also gives a greater chance of fungal and other disease. You may want to tough it out and thin some more....or get a gardening friend to do it for you :) I don't like to "waste seeds" (aka "thin") much myself and make my own seed tapes for radish, carrot, and some other small seeds. I'll space them about twice as thick as I want them. If everything germinates there is some thinning to do yet, but not near what I'd need to do if I direct planted with my clumsy fingers.

A plant autopsy is always useful to find out WHY it did what it did, so you can adjust care if necessary and thereby make failure less likely to happen again whether you plant a tree of the same type, a different tree, or nothing at all. For example, I dug up several Cercis last year and discovered the roots were all circled in on themselves in the ground--the roots had never spread out correctly for healthy growth. It was not the care they received--they were sitting in their containers far too long and the root systems were doomed. It may have helped in initial planting to have trimmed the roots to remove all the circled material, but that was not done by the installers. The one Cercis I planted myself that was very fresh in a 15 gallon container and that did not have circled roots, was 10 times as healthy, even though it was in the same soil and received the same care as the others. So I learned to examine the root systems before buying any tree, and after, if they fail, to see what happened.

This is advertising. You should buy an add instead of pretending to be a regular poster. Anyone that is having difficulty hearing should ALWAYS consult a physician that specializes in auditory difficulties.

My 17 year old son played the drums for over a year, practiced daily and went to loud concerts. Not anymore. He has hair cell damage in one ear. It drives him crazy. He has no hearing loss per say, just a weird buzz, crackle in that ear. He was told that loud noises such as concerts, drums and such can make the tiny hairs in the ear lay down much like grass when you walk on it. If you don't stand or walk on the grass again it will slowly start righting itself and eventually be standing up again. The best way for someone to not "walk on their hair cells" is to stop exposing oneself to loud noises or to wear protective ear plugs. There are all kinds available in drug stores and from ear doctors. There are even special ones that can be custom made for musicians. I took him to an Audiologist who suggested wearing ear plugs every day until the problem corrected itself. After months of no improvement, I took him to an Ear, Nose and Throat doctor. An MRI of the brain was done on him thinking the problem might be related to a tumor or aneurysm since it was only affecting one ear. Thankfully his brain looks fine. We will now investigate custom ear plugs from an audiologist. I hope this helps your daughters realize the seriousness of loud music, I know my son is pretty bummed by the prospect of having this irritating problem in his ear all the time. By the way, I was a nightclub DJ back in the 70s and 80s. Our legal limit for both records and live bands was 110db. I had a decibel reader and had to keep harping on the lives bands to keep the levels down. They hated me for it and contiued to push the limits all the time. Your only defense it seems is to protect yourself by wearing good ear plugs. Jodi-