I wouldn't hesitate to remove the soil. I don't have to look back at a single tree I planted here and wonder what might/could have root problems... because I washed the soil off everything and went in and fixed everything. All the great advice given here regarding trees planted too deeply and except myself and horster - for the hundreds of posts & everyone else is willing to skip the obvious. B&B is troublesome and we all know it. If it weren't for Adam's willingness to dig into the rootball to find signs of roots ~6" below and if he'd of just left it, that tree would have died. John, if a root-system is really screwed up and say has a long taproot with minimal fine roots, I'll pot it into soil-less mix and put it in mostly to full shade until it grows fine roots and in a larger container than normal. It may take three years until I'm happy/ready to plant it to the landscape. If I think after I've washed all the soil off and pruned the roots that it is good enough to be planted to the landscape, then yes I do stake it but I don't stake any tree so it can not sway in the wind. I usually put two metal fence stakes on opposite sides and wrap a towel around the trunk of the tree and use green, plastic, horticultural tape to tie the tree off. And I dig an immense hole and plant above the soil line and because of all the backfill, the tree will stay in place due to the sheer magnitude of the weight of the soil. That's all I have to say/comment upon. Dax

If not for the ARS, there would be no website of ours about it. When it first got bad here, over a decade ago, I gathered as much info as I could, and it wasn't much beyond "doesn't affect cultivated roses" and we started studying it in twice a month trips to the LMU rose garden where it was a serious infestation. I contacted the ARS, got the info about what it takes for articles for them, did a detailed three part article and had it rejected because it was too long and if I could condense it to 1500 words and two or three pictures, they would reconsider it as it had been a couple of years since they did a piece on RRD. This damn near broke my heart and spirit. I could see the problem growing, the lack of info out there and no way to get the word out. Then via Gardenweb, we got a call from a garden in northern Virginia about RRD in their garden and they needed pictures to confirm it. We (mostly my computer literate husband) turned the three articles into three chapters of what would evolve into our e-book. I also greatly condensed the material from it into an article that appeared in the American Rose. Lots of people who receive the magazine never read it; I can't tell you how many people never saw those three pages. Last January's American Rose also had a bit from me about RRD; that evolved from something I had written for a newsletter within the ARS. I was asked to give a talk about RRD at the ARS National in Philadelphia, and I had a two page hand out summarizing the talk. Those two pages got a fair amount of reprinting with ARS newletters and also led to some talks, some with good attendance, many with marginal attendances. I've given up being frustrated and just try to put what I know out there in a format that can be referenced. If anybody cares to, the bibliography in the e-book is the place they should start, rather than starting from scratch and reinventing the wheel. A decade ago, I said that the problem wouldn't be solved in my lifetime. I've no reason to change that assessment.

I suspect I will oil it at least once; I should try it on the piece that won't be visible when the cabinet goes in today. Blackeyedpeas - knowing the gender of the baby before it's born is like knowing what your birthday gift is ahead of time. Ruins the surprise, which is almost the best part, IMO! Neither of my kids wanted to know in advance (and in "my day" it was not possible to know), and I suspect my next daughter will want a surprise package, too. So...I'll get there eventually. Thanks, everyone.

I had more blood tests this year than usual - about 4 vials. The one showed high prostate numbers, at 18.9, and they tend to get nervous at 20 or so. That brought on the biopsy, and when they found cancer in half of the dozen cores (only a tiny amount in the quadrant that had cancer in only one of three cores), they calculate me to be at intermediate risk and wanted to know whether it had established outposts in other locations, so sent me for bone scan, involving them taking shots of my body at about 10:00 a.m., shooting some stuff into me via intravenous and having me come back upwards of 4 hours later to see whether some parts of my bones lit up like a Christmas tree. Then had a CT scan a week or so later, and visited the urologist's office on the same day, to hear that they hadn't found any cancer in other locations. They figure to keep an eye on the PSA number every three to six months, and start looking if the numbers start rising rather quickly. Didn't make any noises about sending me to the cancer clinic. Did some stool samples, as well ... answer came back that the colon seems unjeopardized. Part of the trouble with a good many cancers is that they operate so silently ... until it gets late in the game, often too late to do much to counteract it. ole joyfuelled