Special? It's widespread around here - it's our normal soil. That was extreme during the 2011 extreme drought, but yes, it does that. It's TX black gumbo clay. You'll find about the same stuff in parts of Montana and, believe it or not, Hawaii. Nearer the coast where humidity is higher the cracking isn't quite as severe, but it still will get impressive in the drought periods. When it's wet it swells enough to be self-sealing. Rice farmers love that. Building on it is a bit tricky. To dig it you want it moist and plastic, then you take it out in slices working near vertically using a rice shovel. The funny thing about our coastal area is that soil like that is the widespread stuff. But there are sizable pockets of very clean sand. It seems there is a commercial sand pit about every 10-20 miles, and in those pits there is no sign of that clay. There was one ~ 60 acres in size being worked for years about 5 miles from me. About 10 years ago the remains of a Columbian mammoth were found in the pit.

top caty, I assume that this is just a rough draft, waiting for a bit of editing (punctuation, spelling, etc.). It's SOOOO difficult to edit your own material, I know! I'd leave out the part about the mycorrhizae as most of your readers will find it difficult to locate. The mention of mycorrhizae without explaining what it is might cause undue confusion. And I ASSURE you that successful air layering and container growing can be done without the inoculation of the fungal spores. I'd also leave out the part about scraping the bark, as that introduces a technique not required (and will not be understood) by the novice practitioner. Making slices that are clean and not too deep will be challenging enough. Speaking of clean, I think that you should cite a few basic sanitation steps. I see no mention of the types of tools you should use, either. What about the primary reason that indoor plant growers practice air layering? (To reduce the size of a towering house plant!) [Perhaps this article is directed towards landscape plants, however.] I also think that the article would not be complete without a good list of plants that are amenable to air layering. A warning of the best time of year to begin the process would be a good idea, too. All of this is just my measly opinion! Good luck with the article; I think you've made a good start!

Came to this website looking for updated info on the latest appliances and thought I'd check in with this thread. I'm glad I did. DISASSEMBLY My sleeper sofa (see posts above) had to be disassembled too. When I first ordered there was plenty of room for delivery, but during remodeling I decided to put in a door that was normal-sized (too narrow for the sofa). It wasn't hard to put the unit back together again on the other side, but it's more complicated than just screwing the legs back on. So I'd suggest you make sure the delivery people (or friends of yours) know what they're doing. Then it would be fine. It's not brain surgery, but it's not like playing with TinkerToys either. You're buying a relatively sophisticated mechanism, as well as something that looks good. So it makes sense to respect what you've paid for. You wouldn't let just anybody install a dishwasher, for example. But thousands of them get installed properly every day. AMERICAN LEATHER CUSTOMER SERVICE I would buy American Leather again, even after my nightmare. I accept that things will go wrong with a percentage of anything that's manufactured or delivered. My problem was with with my retailer, Foremost Furniture. At every step of the way they were careless. As in, they could not have cared less what happened once they had all their money. If you do not live in New York or the tri-state area, you cannot make this mistake. I believe AL pushed Foremost to fulfill their legal obligations in my case, thanks to this site. After I posted here, the situation was addressed. I could not get a refund--Foremost dragged this out for years, so the sofa was now officially "used"--but I got a store credit. That is not, IMHO, AL's fault. Foremost is a nightmare, so I warn anybody about their truly nasty management. But if you have a decent retailer (and do your research into their customer service record), I think AL is a very good value in every way. I love their stuff. I only come to this site when I am remodeling or need advice on purchases, so my purpose in posting is to clarify what I can and to be fair. I'm glad I didn't have to go the time and expense of taking legal action to solve my problem. It took years to address the problem; that's wrong. But once AL got involved, the problem was attended to in a reasonable time frame. And they only got involved because of this site and this thread. FWIW

I got a new hard-drive and more RAM in my laptop. At the same time, it was upgraded to Win10. I use Opera and Google. I would use the Edge, except that it's not compatible with AdBlockPlus. I wouldn't be without ABP. I'm trying to upgrade the desktops to Win10. It took a couple of hours to (we thought) install on hubby's computer, but when it was done, it was still on Win7. So I don't know what it was doing all that time. We'd check on it, and it was installing (85% done, etc). I'm going to do it on my desktop to see if I have any problems. He did it from Microsoft's site, so I don't know why it didn't install.