hey lou ... in my z5 .. heavy amendment or fertilization at planting the fall before.. can cause explosive spring growth.. which is subject to hard frost or freeze.. and death ... BEEN THERE >>> DONE THAT .... regardless.. just trying to get more facts from the poster ... regarding the posters clay .. in OH.. where you are better off having a hobby in the pottery world ... they plant most plants on an elevated mound .... i am not personally involved in clay.. and will defer to anyone who works such ... roots need air as much as water .. and a recent transplant.. needs both, hence the mound .. as the tree matures.. it will put its roots down into the clay .. but just as many roots where they can get air ... planting deep in clay .... and you MIGHT have problems .... rocks are decorative.. and not really a mulch ... i run my drip irrigation for periods involving 4 to 8 hours .... you need to run your system.. then go dig a hole.. and see just how much water is getting into the soil.. and down into the soil at the root level .... there is no other way to speculate whether your drippers are actually watering your plant ... i suspect your drippers are having no effect on the recently transplanted tree.. and but for the rain .... it is starving for deep water ... after the soil dries from the rain.. dig a hole.. after running drippers and see if you are getting water more than an inch into the soil ... the hole doesnt need to be near the tree ... at 12 inch emitter spacing.. in my sand.. 8 hours is how long it takes for the water to meet between drippers ... i learned such by digging holes ... GOOD LUCK!!!!! ken

I agree that a good ripout is essential, and even though you remove all the root you can, you might fight suckers regrowing from any roots you missed, and you may fight them for years. Some people have luck with leaving several inches of stump in the ground and drilling holes in the stump and pouring brush killer into the holes and, at the same time, using a foam paintbrush to paint the brushkiller onto the stump. The idea is to thoroughly kill any roots attached to the stump. Still, you ultimately have to remove the stump or the crape myrtles come back. As for what kind of bulbs (or corms, tubers, rhizomes, etc.) you can plant in fall for spring blooms, there are many. The most commonly planted ones probably are tulips, daffodils, hyacinths, grape hyacinths and crocus. Just remember that in the fall, you plant spring flowering bulbs. Then, in mid- through late-spring you plant bulbs, tubers, corms, rhizomes, etc. that will bloom in summer and fall. That group includes dahlias, gladiolus, cannas and caladiums. You're in a slightly colder area that I am, so hopefully someone who is in your part of the state can tell you what can be planted now that will stay green throughout the winter. Here in far southcentral Oklahoma, plants in the category include pansies, violas, snapdragons and dianthus. For the long term, the plants that grow best for me in west-facing beds in the summer are those that really love heat. Salvias and catmint are two I use a lot in the west facing beds, and verbena bonariensis (a tall verbena with very thin stems) and zinnias are virtually foolproof, even in clay. One of the toughest plants I grow is the Laura Bush petunia. I have them in purple and in shades of pink, but understand they now have a seed blend with white ones in it. The Laura Bush petunias did better than almost anything else in 2011, blooming almost every month of the year. I have found them to be both very heat-tolerant and very cold-tolerant. They have smaller flowers than the hybrid petunias we're all familiar with. The flowers that tolerated the heat best, blooming all summer with no irrigation whatsoever (they are 300' from the water faucet and I am not going to carry water to them or drag a hose that far) were the globe amaranth, aka gomphrena. They struggled a bit in August when temps were hitting 112-115 day after day, but at that point they'd only had about 12 or 13" of rain for the whole year. The globe amaranth I have now is called 'Strawberry Fields' and it has red flowers. It reseeds well and comes back every year here. I've also grown them in various shades of purple and whitish-purple in a different area of the landscape. Dawn

Things are better today. DH is feeling better today, yesterday was a "bad" day, today is a "good" day. We were told that would be the case for the next three to six months. My daughter came over and cleaned house, that's a regular thing on saturdays anyway, and she did a few extra chores as directed by my DH, so he is not only feeling better, but he's feeling more in control of his life. His eldest son called to check on him (he wasn't involved in the yard cleaning) and chat a bit, DH called his middle son and they talked, cheered him up considerably. He called my son last evening and asked him to bring my two little grandaughters over for a short visit tomorrow afternoon. DH's oldest grandaughter came by to give her Grandpa a big hug and a visit. We still haven't heard a thing from the 'drama queens' and that's ok, the last thing he needs is any more 'drama' in his life right now. I hope they stay away as long as possible. DH has decided to let it all go, he says it is their problem now, not his. He's getting a ton of support from people who love and respect him. I'm going along with whatever he wants, plus I won't allow anyone to walk on me ever again. I'll be 'nice' but I'll stand my ground. Thank you all for your good advice and for letting me vent a bit. It has really helped. And thank you for the good wishes on my sweetheart's recovery and rehabilitation. We're looking forward to quite a few more good years of gardening together.

Sorry for the back-to-back post. I'm wondering if the link will go to the correct page, as what shows up on my Amazon home page is a plog, which is part of Amazon's Author's Connect Beta program, where it automatically pushes out author commentaries related to books you've bought (I bought something by Alma Alexander recently). Anyway... in case you don't find it, here is Alexander's tribute to Octavia Butler: [i] "Death triggers memory, it is inevitable, and I found myself trying to think back on the details of my one and only - and now all the more treasured - encounter with Octavia Butler. I really was hoping that someday I'd have another chance to talk to her, because my memory of her is so full of warmth and light. I remember, there she was, this imposing black Valkyrie sitting there at a Science Fiction Museum Hall of Fame inauguration dinner last year, and although I had never met her before I knew who she must be - and that, in fact, is very much what I first said to her: 'You must be...' " "She sighed, with a small smile, and said something about how she MUST be, yeah. How many other black women writers existed in this genre...?" "It made me squirm a little, because I probably said something that everyone said to her. It's a lonely thing, being the Only, or the First, or the Foremost. People see you and they go, oh, you must be... and you have to be. You have no choice in the matter." "But after that somewhat thorny thicket of a beginning, I sat there talking with her for at least an hour - this was the infamous Charles Brown DIsappearing Chair incident, where he got up to go and get a drink and told me to mind his chair and I was so engrossed in talking with Octavia that I completely failed to notice when said chair,right next to me, was spirited away by somebody. She laughed, Octavia, and that remains the only audio I can actually remember from that event - that laugh. I have a good idea of what her voice sounded like, but it's not a real memory - I can't hear her talking. But I hear her laughing. " [/i]