Oh, Annececilia, you have precisely nailed the specialness (terrible grammar, I know) as it truly has become something of a family endeavour. Although the wood means different things to all of us, it has bonded us together better than any single thing I could have imagined. The youngest, Tas, has bought a second-hand cargo net to string between trees and is already planning ziplines, ropeladders and platforms. Naomi, my middle daughter, lives nearest the wood and is deeply involved, along with her daughter Phoebe Rosa, (our grand-daughter), making themselves a tipi to stay in (and scavenging timber for a tree-house) while my eldest. Rowan, already a committed gardener, has invested in many green woodworking tools and he, and my sweetheart, Reuben, have made a sawhorse (Champion, the lumber horse) and a pole-lathe with plans afoot to make charcoal, coppicing and other woodsy things. When we have children, I guess we start to think in a longer term than the next week or so and even the idea of 'legacy' has been sneaking into my thinking. Obviously, we have nothing to leave them with apart from their wits and even if we had money and property, I have seen families torn apart by the very things that had been meant to protect them......but a bit of woodland, too small for much and not saleable in parts (by covenant) really is something quite remarkable to sustain our family. Neither Reuben nor I have much of a family ourselves - I was adopted and Reuben's family are no longer alive......so our little dynasty starts with us, really. To to have this project, glueing us all together, is infinitely precious to me. I loved your story of remembrance daffoldils - such a special act of thoughtfulness which resonates every new season - what better celebration of life could we hope for?

I keep pulling up the starts from that *^%*@+#&!@% tree all over my yard...front yard, side yard and back yard, and the tree isn't even in my yard! I got so sick of it's crap coming over my side of the fence that I cut a monster sized limb out of the tree this past Fall. Didn't want to risk a run-in with the #)%*()#^@! neighbor by using my gasoline powered pruning attachment, so I attacked it with my saw blade attachment on my 16 ft long pruning pole. Never have I had so much satisfaction with a saw before. Really worked out my frustration on that tree. Cut it in the most un-arborly fashion in hopes of killing the entire tree, but I doubt it will suffer that badly. Next I'm considering drilling a hole through the fence and into the tree and attaching a direct feed from a bottle of Round-Up, the really concentrated woody vine and brush killer kind. Yes, I'm that insane. Oh, and about the red bloated tick looking bugs that come with this tree...TonyK was right, you can't kill them with anything but soapy water and it has to be almost waterless soapy water or else they just keep on going. UGH!!!!!!!

Hi Early Bird, Sumala and the group. "I've red every post about tom. here and I think I can manage nematodes, I just picked up some nice tom. from plants in containers. But TYLCV? I don't know what to do with that." Yes that does look like TYLCV to me. It is spread by tiny white flies. What to do about it? The first thing is you must clear all host tomato plants from your yard. This includes any in pots. Any tomato plant in the area can serve as a host and keep the TYLCV going. Do you know of any neighbors that are also growing tomatoes? If so this could be a problem. All tomato plants and maybe peppers/egg plants must be gone for 60 days. The infection carrying white flies will have died within the 60 days putting an end to the cycle. After the 60 days you should be able to start new tomato plants from seed and be free of the TYLCV. This is what I did after lossing my spring crop to the TYLCV. So far things are looking great with no sign of the TYLCV. This TYLCV has me running scared and it looks to be a very serious problem. I plan to only start my own tomato plants from seeds in an effort to try and keep from bringing in the TYLCV from an outside source. I also managed to get samples of special hybrid tomato plant seeds from Hazera that were bred to resist TYLCV. I ran a germination tests on the seeds right after I got them and the seeds were very good with almost all the seeds coming up. I managed to grow a few out into the summer and found they did resist the TYLCV very well. I even got a few sample tomatoes before the heat took it's toll. I picked two of the best from the samples I got last summer, the Polina and the Shanty and have them growing this fall. I just do not have enough room to plant all five of the special Hazera hybrids until this spring. I look forward to trying these tomatoes and they may help a lot with resisting the TYLCV. "Delta Charlie may feel a bit slighted by the implication that treefrog was the originator of the post hole method. I think DC put it forth first. Maybe I am wrong?" No worries, I ran across the post hole method on some remote web page someplace that I can't remember the link to. It was being used to keep cut worms at bay. All I did was experiment and adapt it to keeping nematodes at bay in our sandy soil. Treefrog is really the one that ran with the idea as I use raised beds for most of my gardens. I'm just glad it is helping people grow our beloved tomato. Good luck with the TYLCV, DC

Bringing this back up for consideration. We have enough interested members that Retreat will take place! We would love to have more join us!!! Remember that this year it is a holiday weekend which hopefully will help with travelling. (Columbus Day holiday-US, and Thanksgiving-Canada) We generally leave camp around lunchtime on Sunday (either eating first, taking a bag lunch with us, or we could plan not to have their lunch at all), but we could actually stay all afternoon if we wished. We currently have coming for sure: Toolgranny-Linda Jennifer in VA Teresa_nc Sunnycntralfl-Gwen & Rob Grammyp-Beverly & Tim Faye, Fran & Rosa have all expressed interest as well. Please email me with confirmation in you'd like to attend and I'll send my address for the deposit. Jennifer