I have the same problem with a pear or two I just received. The top is fireblight tolerant but the rootstock probably is not, if it is common pear. A few P. communis selections (not seedlings) would be fine (the OHxF series) but these roots are probably seedlings. I am going to bury the graft a few inches down to encourage the top to root and to isolate the rootstock from vector bugs and discourage leaf buds from forming. If you absolutely need a callery rootstock, buy the cheapest "Bradford" ornamental pear at a cut-rate nursery and graft it yourself (the "Cleveland Select" pear now being sold too is probably OK but is reportedly a bit more FB susceptible). Graft branches now or in a couple months bud the stem.

You know, I had a suspicion that the red dots were just part of the natural leaves, but I wasn't sure. It seems that I've seen those on cherry stems before, but I was busy and didn't get around to inspecting my young cherries to get back to you on it. As far as the chewed leaves, it could be a number of things. I have some weevils that attack some of my shrubs, and I think during the day they hide on the ground under litter or maybe they even dig down into the ground a little. Then, they come out at night and eat the leaves. But the weevil damage I have is more on the edges of leaves. If you can't see the pests that are doing this to your trees, go out late at night with a flashlight and see if you notice some bugs on the leaves. It could be earwigs, crickets, grasshoppers, beetles, or who knows what else. If the bugs are things like my weevils, you have to spray the ground around the tree and clean up any leaves or other litter around the trees to remove hiding places. Spraying the leaves during the day may not leave enough pesticide behind to kill the weevils that come out at night, so you have to spray them where they live. Let us know what you find out!

Jane no doubt it will be an Apple commercial if it is not already! I saw one last night that could have been about this reboot over and over situation, have to admit those commercials are funny. IF you have your computers fully updated with all the windows updates and you do not want to tackle this now you do not have to (totally up to you), this is not a super critical update like sp2 was, it is rated moderate. There are some additional changes it makes to the system itself which microsoft would like people to install. But I know a lot of people have decided to at least wait some time to see if there might be some hotfixes that come out to handle some of the issues that are cropping up and there has been discussion in the microsoft forums that this time they may actually put out a hotfix for some of the problems prior to pushing out sp3 in auto update. So waiting is not a bad idea at this point. I would suggest though that you uninstall your IE 7 through add remove before you do install sp3, because if you do not you will not be able to do so at any time in the future and it also affects the ability to try to do fixes on IE7 should they be needed. You can just take it out, put in sp3 when you decide to, then put IE7 back. Or just stay as you are and continue getting your other regular critical windows updates. It is your choice. At this point in time they will not stop you from getting your windows updates just because you do not have sp3, so don't be concerned about that.

The common Geum of moist woodland trail-sides in this region is G. macrophyllum. It is characteristic of such situations. (Otherwise less moisture-dependent G. urbanum has become prevalent on some wooded Seattle sites, and appears to be spreading rapidly)