LIme sulfur is rather hazardous in the undiluted form but not once diluted. It is however bad for your sprayer to leave it in the sprayer - gunks up the little parts with crystals. You should always cover your skin and especially your face when spraying anything. Anything. Then change your clothes and take a shower with any kind of spray other than soap or oil. Lime sulfur is used to wash dogs to kill mites so how hazardous can it be?? all these dogs would be dropping dead. My dog groomer DH uses no gloves when he does so, not my recommendation but he's done it for years with no apparent ill effects. There could be subtle damage but obviously nothing severe, nothing I'd lose sleep over if I only used it occasionally in the garden, with gloves and face mask! Which is what I do. Do not dump undiluted pesticides down the sink. Professionals discard their unwanted pesticides by diluting and spraying them. you could also wait for your local trash handlers to have a Hazardous Materials collection day, which are organized specifically for things like pesticides and paint and batteries so they don't end up in the landfill or the sewage treatment plant or the local surface waters. But I think you're over reacting. I am very cautious with pesticides but I routinely use lime sulfur and I don't put the dogs in when I do. But I do wear gloves and rain gear and rubber boots and a face mask! and shower afterwards. I also prefer copper sulfate for peach leaf curl but lime sulfur is the dormant spray of choice for roses, and I use it in more dilute form during the growing season for blackspot. I consider it much less hazardous than Funginex or Daconil! As for the labelling differences between here and Oz - probably due to differing legal requirements. There are different kinds of toxicity. Environmental versus applicator, as you have noticed. Also concentrates differ in toxicity from diluted sprays. And different nontarget organisms will be affected differently by the same chemical. And something that might be known to cause immediate and irreversible eye damage in concentrate form might not be hazardous when diluted spray mists the skin. That's why the labels go into so much detail. And when they're talking about flaggers and mixers/loaders, they're talking about people who spend a 40 hr work week in close contact with pesticides, not the home gardener with brief contact on an occasional basis.

I think that noxious weed growing on the ground is called ground ivy. I am not sure exactly what it is, but I just call it yard cancer because it spreads all over the place. I pull it out literally by the buckets. That is not the worst problem. If you look at the Freisinger Morgenrote and Olympiad pictures, in the background growing up the tree trunk and not limited to that location, it is what looks to me like a sizeable stand of poison ivy. It grows all over here. It is trying to spread into the yard also. I sprayed it with an appropriate weed killer. Hopefully it will die off. I have a creek running through the property, and there is all sorts of stuff and sometimes critters back there where I don't even mess with it. That situation might change if I were to win the lottery and have some money to somehow integrate both sides of the property into a unit, but the area is a wooded area amidst all the houses and businesses. I would like to be able to keep all the trees, and the city might also have final say as to what can and cannot be done with the creek.

I would leave them alone until there is no more possible threats of frost, so like in April maybe. Reason is that even thought that dying foliage is ugly, it will protect the rest of the plant and root from more damage in future frosts. It's only early January and we could have several more frosts until spring. If you cut it now, what's left could be damaged again, even maybe down to the roots. So I'd just leave it for now, and cut it back in April. But do water it if we don't get any rain for 2-3 weeks. A well watered plant handles frosts better than a dry one.

Stuff happens. What defines you is how you deal with it. You have dealt with it and done everything right and no one was hurt. You're right, it's a good reminder to I had someone back into my car, get out of their truck and look, then pull away and leave. She left three dimples in my bumper. She didn't try to come find me, she didn't leave a note on my car, and she didn't give her contact info to the guy working in the parking lot. She didn't accept responsibility, she didn't apologize --she just left acting as if nothing had happened. That's what really made me angry.