We are getting off the topic, but I remember the lush yard of my childhood w/ all the clover and watching the honeybees, and the exciting days when we would take the honey out of the hives... I planted clover and I wish all the weedy grass would go away! (No neighbors are going to care here as our lots are set in the middle of woods, and we are out in the country.) My clover has had a tough time (doesn't like sand?), but there is one low-growing weed that I am encouraging as it does not need to be mowed. No mowing is my goal. As for my clems (many of which you all enabled!), they are doing fairly well. I was most impressed w/ Arabella- the best bloomer! I have mostly watered from my rain barrels this summer and it is not very satisfactory because the sand soaks up the moisture so fast (great for watering pots and small areas though). I too have to figure out where to plant the ones I stuck in pots in the spring. Most are going into the rose garden (if the roses don't make it maybe the clems will). I have planted several to climb up my deck railings. I know there is a lot of controversy about adding soil amendments, but I am with the other readers who see the fence as a prime planting ground. Maybe someone who knows more about amendments could help out? I wish you the best of luck in finding them a good place, and would appreciate it if you will wish me luck as well. Thanks, Brandy

The first two pictures are a plant in the ground, the last ones are a plant in a 5-gallon spackle bucket. The plants were started from seed in . . . I guess. . . April (?) Planted out around the second week in May. They are all heirloom and indeterminate. The container has 1/3 well-cooked sheep manure/ straw compost, 1/3 peat, 1/3 vermiculite. I dumped hydroponic solution in the container once, several weeks ago. I did not notice any particular change at that time, and it was added only to the bucket and not to the plant in the ground. The bucket gets watered whenever I notice the leaves wilting. The plant that's in the ground has been watered maybe once (I don't have a hose hookup) It has been VERY hot and humid and pretty dry lately. I was surprised that the plants set fruit in the heat. I recently added woodchip mulch around the plants in the ground. I can haul buckets of water out to the garden if moisture might be the problem. The weird thing is that most of the plants in the ground look healthy and green, and that one plant is half dead. The plant in the ground is much worse off than the plant in the pot, and I didn't see it wilt before it turned brown and died. I was worried that it might be something terrible like viral wilt. I would be so relieved if it can be solved by watering more. Thanks so much for the help, Dave

You don't have to run away from here. You have a pretty good understanding of cars at this point and that's important. I have to deal with situations all of the time, where the only thing some people are thinking about is saving themselves money, and they totally forget what "fair" really means. Fair is always something that works for BOTH parties. I can't tell you why "BrakeMax" didn't see a gaping hole in an "air intake hose". I suppose you are either describing the plenum hose between the air cleaner and MAF sensor, and the throttle body, or some other vacuum hose, or a hose that directs air for the IAC. I can envision quite a number of different systems, and I don't have specifics on exactly what vehicle you own. So I'll stick with the plenum hose, since an air leak between the MAF and the engine will severely affect performance. A DPFE will give you a check engine light, but have little or no effect on performance. I won't rule out the possiblity that the plenum hose simply finally completely failed after the DPFE was looked at. They do have to flex constantly, and are a common failure item. There are several master mechanics on this forum. I looked at that web site. It looks pretty good. But still taking a code, and then asking advice about what could be wrong, is still leaving the wrong impression. Follow this. 2002 Pontiac Grand Am with a 3.1l Auto. It's setting a code P0101, that is a Mass Air Flow Sensor performance code. This car is owned by a family friend, who happens to work at an Auto Zone! They pulled the code and wanted to replace his MAF. Jason chose wisely and brought the car to me to test first. By monitoring scan data and taking snapshots for playback I was able to measure the reported volumetric efficiency (VE) of the engine. VE is the measurement of the actual amount of air the engine can pump. For example, a 3.1l engine at 5000rpm should easily pump 160grams or air per second at wide open throttle. Jason's MAF sensor was reporting 90 to 105 grams per second, and struggled to get over 4500 rpm. VE measured 55%. Well that's why it had a P0101, the computer knows how much air the engine should be pumping, based on throttle opening and rpm. At this point, there are still several possible causes for the code. A bad MAF is clearly one of them. Funny you should mention it, but a torn plenum hose would do the same. Some type of an engine mechanical issue could do this, heck even a very bad air filter could actually have given the same findings. But there is one more, how about a restricted exhaust? The test for this is to remove the front O2 sensor, and install a gage and actually measure the back pressure. The spec allows for a maximum of 1.25PSI, and that's under a load. Simply speeding the engine up in neutral had this one building 14 PSI. The fix was to replace the catalytic convertor, which was still under the 8yr/80,000 mile warranty at the dealer. No one, reading a forum would effectively lead the poster to that diagnosis. There were more details uncovered during the testing that helped make the decision to measure the back pressure. One of them was by watching the long term and short term fuel trims on the scan tool while driving the car. If the engine was actually getting more air than was being reported, then they would have been shifted way positive, because the engine would have been too lean. But because the MAF was actually reporting how much air was truly entering the engine, they were reasonably close to neutral. I can remember when I first started working on cars, I was 14 when I tore down my first Chevrolet 350 to put a cam in it, and had a valve job done on it. My grandfather had given my dad the car because it was running so bad. BTW, that wasn't my first engine job, I did a head gasket in a lawn tractor a few years before that. The thing here is there are people who are born with the ability to do this work. I suspect you are one of them, just like I am. It's not easy work, and most of the time the pay actually stinks, especially when you keep dumping huge pieces of your paycheck to buy more and more tools. But if someone really likes fixing cars, there is a freedom there that few other fields can offer. Now do you know why it's hard to find a good motorcycle mechanic? Probably because it's too hard for them to make enough money to stay in the field long enough to get really good at it. Running a repair shop, cars or motorcycles is expensive. The overhead eats some 60% of the gross profit, and then the wages and benefits start coming out before the owner finally gets his/her piece of the pie. Your couple of quotes about how much something was going to cost you if a shop had done the work, fails to show exactly how much profit the shop would have actually made if they had done it. In short, less than $125/hr of profit would have me working for free. That's how much it costs to run a shop like mine. That means, I would have to diagnose, and repair your air hose problem in about 35 minutes based on the numbers you provided, and be hard into the next job, or else I would not actually make any money at all. I invest heavily in O.E scan tools and software. That's one of the reasons it's so expensive for my shop to operate. The facts are, if I could double my parts mark-ups, and double my labor tomorrow, (and still stay busy) and then throw all of that money into more software and O.E scan tools and I'd actually still be losing ground. In 1993 I had one scan tool, a Snap-On MT2500. I could work on anything that showed up at the door. Today that same capability would cost more than 1/4 million, and the updates, and software licensing for the tools would continue to eat tens of thousands of dollars each year to continue to support them. You are correct, you don't have to be overly mechanically inclined to do some repairs. You do have to be very gifted for many others. Plus anymore you just about need a business degree to balance the pennies so that you have a chance to be there for the customer in the first place. The others that post here have seen some of my diatribes like this one. If you want to learn about cars stick around, just give us some room to earn a living. We should not have to apologize for trying to do that. ASE CMAT L1 30yrs exp.

OK, I'm game to start... Your soil test results show that there has been way too much unnecessary fertilising going on in your gardens. You say "Mom used to spend a lot of money on miracle grow garden soil and some kind of rose fertilizer. She would just give that to (every) thing growing in the yard." And " I figured the bottle brush was needing some too, so i poured about 2 or 3 pounds of epsom salt around the tree and waited." There's really no reason for you to throw around fertilisers willy-nilly, without knowing the reason for it. For your bottle-brush (Callistemon) specifically, they hate pretty much ANY fertiliser, but especially phosphorous, which will kill them dead. And your soil test indicates very high levels of phosphorous. Personally, I'd cut that plant down to about 6" high and see if it re-sprouts. They survive this treatment very well and grow back big and fast. (Unless it's already past the point of saving.) In the meantime, I'd stop using any bought chemical fertilisers and continue with what you're doing now, just adding leaf mulch, compost and maybe a light dusting of blood/bone meal. Then, in a year or so, get another soil test done for comparison with this one.