If I order any seedlings, Pam, I'll check out the Indian Mound Nursery - it's gotten rave reviews! Like I said, I don't understand why the pink and/or red-flowering dogwoods don't grow down here, but I must not be the only one who's had trouble with them, because Amy said that there was "finally" one for the South, which means Deep South. About 15 years ago when we made a trip through Tennessee, I was suprised to see sourwood growing right out in the open. Down here it's an understory tree only. The hurricane opened up the area around one of mine, and it's been dying back some each summer. Sourwood only blooms down here on the branches that get some sunlight, though, which is usually on the outer branches of trees at the edge of the woods. It's a very different tree than the ones I see in Tennessee. I don't understand this either, because it gets just as hot in TN in summer as it does here - the only thing that I can figure out is that maybe the sun's rays are a lot stronger here. I got the worst sunburn of my life in Acapulco in 1964 - it never occurred to me that the sun on an Acapulco beach would be any worse than the sun on the MS Gulf Coast - HA!! If you haven't planted any mag grands, you should do so. People post about their difficulties in growing them on this forum - for me, they come up everywhere and grow like weeds. There's one that's about ?25 tall off the northeast corner of my house that was a seedling just a few years ago. It's close to the hose, so I'd water it in dry spells in the summer, and it's grown even faster than normal. Of course, when they get big, their growth rate slows down. Also, they're THE best in hurricane winds! Carpinus caroliniana and acer floridanum have grown very fast for me, as has nyssa aquatica, which is sitting in a pool of water in a sunny area in the bottom of the hollow right now - it should be happy. Nyssa sylvatica grows pretty fast here, too - there's a pretty big one by my detached garage that was real small when we moved here in 1997. If I think of anything else, I'll add it later. Sherry

When I'm researching a rose, I generally take "disease-resistant" to mean resistant to BS and other diseases, unless the source specifies that, for instance, it is "suspectible to mildew" or something like that. Where I live, BS is the problem, so that is primarily what I'm looking for, but I don't want to invite a mildew magnet into my garden either. So far, my roses have performed pretty much like the descriptions said they would, but I always check multiple sources: the catalog description, HMF, this forum, Dave's forum, disease-resistant lists available a number of places online, etc. I like finding gardening blogs where real gardeners assess their own roses. I start with the nursery description, but I first check out how they rate some roses I already grow. If their descriptions vary considerably from my first-hand experience, then I take all their descriptions, including the new rose I'm looking for, with a grain of salt. Or I do some spot-checking to see if they list almost all roses as disease-resistant--in which case I know it is a lot of catalog hype. I like it best when the nursery catalog rarely makes disease-resistant claims--that way, when they really praise a rose for being so "healthy," I figure they might even actually mean it. In other words, learning how to "read" nursery catalog copy for what it really means is a learned skill (and I'm still working on it). I also check the descriptions at several nursery catalogs to see if there is any significant difference. However, if they all lift the same description from the same source, then I treat them all as just ONE source. At HMF, I also check the "comments" section to see if gardeners have included their own real-life experiences with that rose. For places like this forum, I do what most of the above posters do--pay more attention to posters from geographical areas/mini-climates close to my own. Since there aren't that many Kansas Zone 6 posters here, I take a more regional approach (Missouri and Oklahoma, for instance--I live fairly close to both) and look closely at their assessments. However, I don't rule out other assessments. Since I'm not looking for the ONE source that will answer my questions about disease and other matters, I can learn a lot from posters from other areas also. It becomes kind of a balancing act, weighing all the pros and cons based on zone, etc. Like Molineux, I find most California info won't help me at all since many there have no BS to speak of and that is a big question for me. On the other hand, I do not live in BS h*ll, so I don't give as much weight to a comment from a place that has high BS pressures (unless they claim the rose was healthy despite the BS pressures). Like anything else, some evidence is more telling. Weighing the worth of the evidence becomes a major part of the process. If all the sources disagree a lot, I rate the rose "questionable" and avoid it. Actually, I think researching the rose is part of the fun of rose gardening--especially in the early winter when I can't get into my garden. LOL. Kate

IMHO, has nothing to do with Verticellium from what I see. Just doesn't look like the pattern. The leaf spots are likely due to wet weather IMHO, giving something an advantage over the tree. Leaves are rarely perfect this time of year, so unless it gets allot worse, I would not worry about the spots at this point. While I don't know if jean has the right pathogen (would require more extensive testing(, I do think they have the right ideal. Namely that it is something that got into a small wound etc. Your pictures seem to chow that it is working top downward. As for what to do about it, as indicated before, it looks like your doing exactly what needs to be done. That is pruning out to well below the affected area, with proper disposal of pruned material (i.e. burned or in the trash, but not in compost). As for the mulch, it probable has nothing to do with it. However I will say this about cypress mulch. From what I have been told, in many cases this mulch is obtained by removing entire tree from the swamp ecosystem for no other purpose than to make mulch. At this point the ecosystem is often so disturbed that seedling cypress do not survive. It is for this reason I don't use cypress mulch any longer. Arktrees

Patrick, I'm in VA and experience very hot, very humid summers. I've been trying MANY different varieties of Teas and China roses, and I grow them all totally no spray. I can't comment on size of the bushes because my roses are still so young, and, in their first spring after their first winter in my garden, they got severely set back from that peculiar Easter freeze. Just now are most of them really starting to show some decent recover. That said, here are somein the more pink range that seem to be doing very well for me: Comtes du Cayla (I LOVE this rose) Maman Cochet Mme. Antoine Mari Mrs. B.R. Cant William R. Smith Jean Bach Sisley Spice Caldwell Pink (polyantha bloom machine) I'm noticing from my master list, that I grow too many yellowish Teas...oh well. Robert