What a great antique tool collection. If those tools could talk, they would tell us about hundreds of hours of dirt-work. Maybe they were there when the owners wore their backs out. lol. What a great way to display and honor what they represent. I would add a garden sign to the collection. "SWEAT HAPPENS". Or a quote from a gardening poet. "Sweat Doth Happeneth". There thats better. The blue bottle tree is so great and I'll bet looks wonderful as the continuation of the blue garden balls in the other tree. Your garden bench looks so inviting. The 'hopping steps' (log slices) make a very fun path to get to the seating area. Dont forget to paint loads of wood sealer on them every season. (I had some but mine were cut too thin and rotted down quickly) The headboard has a forboding look that says, it dares any of the woods to encroch any further. "May not grow beyound this fence". lol. It all works well and you needed that pop of white to prevent the shadows of the woods from swallowing up the designs of the bench and headboard. Thank you and Carol for providing a rose garden for your princess!!!!! Roses are gifts of love. I did not know that mini roses could live through the winter and come back! Let me know their proper name (it's probably Latin). I'm all excited about learning that. Great pictures!

Actually, I'm starting to think it's a problem of being underwatered... late last summer when I had the same problem, I greatly reduced watering, and nothing changed. I checked the soil (gritty mix) again and it's totally bone dry. I had been watering pretty frequently, but very little each time - maybe only 20-30ml each time. The trunk only started to become a lot more solid when I began watering about a month ago, so maybe I just need to water a bit more each time I water. There are lots of new, white roots growing and no new signs of rot... it had been unusually sunny for about 2 weeks so perhaps the plant needed a bit more water during this period? I'll try watering a bit more each time I water, and maybe reduce the frequency a bit. Will keep you posted on how this goes... Thanks again for the suggestions!

I'd like to clarify some of the confusion regarding the "fuse-grafting techniques, and training methods that I have used on some trees. I will employ this same method on the fig trees that I have just purchased. I realize that this technique is not for everyone. I just wanted to share this information with you guys. Use it as you wish. "Fuse-grafting" techniques DO NOT involve cutting into the healthy bark so that the cambium layers can be aligned. No wounds are created by this technique so no insects or diseases will enter or infect the trunks being joined. No special follow-up treatments are needed. It is not labor-intensive. Once the stems are joined together, just follow your regular fig growing routines. The mainstems are simply screwed together to create a fatter, and stronger "trunk". The "composite-trunk" will not be weak, nor will they pull apart. The screwheads will quickly be covered over with new bark, and in time, you will not be able to tell that the heavy, fat trunk was at one time, made up of individual stems. This "grafting" will take a few years, and the spaces between the individual trunks will fill in and smooth over with new bark. Your trees will look like a bundle of tied-up cornstalks for a while so be patient. In addition, this method consolidates plant material which would normally be grown in separate containers. I do not have the space to grow individual trees, so I needed to find a way to grow my fig trees in one container. Fuse-grafting to the rescue. Now I'll have three times the plant material growing in one place ... and maybe three times the figs too. I also like seeing trees with short, fat, trunks with lots of taper supporting a nice rack of ramified branchlets. More branches, more nodes, more nodes, more figs. This preference is a hold-over from my bonsai days. Large diameter trunks convey age and endurance. Exposed rootage does too. I like thinking outside the box. I know that this training method might be too unconventional for some, but I'm going to try it out to see how well it works...or, fails. Wintering-over will still be a problem for me. I have an unheated shed where I stored some fig trees over the winter '06. The trees did OK. I'm hoping for the same results with my new trees. I've also read that fig trees can be brought into a heated room to break dormancy about a month before they are ready to be grown outside. For my zone, this would probably be around mid, to late April. I'll try bringing my trees in on Tax Day and I'll put them outside around Mother's Day. I read that it takes about two weeks for dormancy to break and for buds to swell, and, at least another two weeks before the new leaves start suffer from low light. Any thoughts...pro or con?

You were refueling. Gardenweb is one of my favorite places to refuel before I plunge into whatever I'm trying to accomplish. Unfortunately, the more I read about here, the longer the list grows :-). Update on the room: I got the plaster bonding agent. I ended up getting Silpro Weld-o-bond because it was available locally, and it is labeled for bonding old plaster to gypsum materials. If you are in the greater Boston area this may be easier to find than Link or Plasterweld. I tried spraying it but I wimped out on the mess. Plus it was beading and dripping off the plaster, not soaking in. I ended up brushing it into the cracks with a small (1 1/4") Purdy brush. I had to make multiple passes as the first pass would apply, second would break surface tension, and subsequent ones would provide more liquid to absorb. I also thinned it nearly 50/50 with water per label instructions. It is fantastic! No more crispy crumblies! I can run my finger down a crack, and it does not rain sand down on me. I wish I'd known about this before; it is great stuff. At $12/gallon, it's a cheap lifetime supply. Today I am moving some cabinets around in my kitchen so that the refrigerator can open fully (it has been flush to a side wall since we moved in 2 years ago). Wish I'd thought of this before. Of course, the cabinets are 50 years old and nailed in 50 different ways, so it's a bear to get them out. I'll be using screws to put them back :-). Hopefully I will finish that today and then it's back to the trunk room.