Try digging down in the soil after it's had a chance to dry up some from the rain and see how wet and or sticky your soil is. Does potters mix mean potting soil? You might of added more water holding capacity to your natural clay soil rather than supply drainage OR your ammendments were not dug in and incorporated enough...you want to add ammendments that have bigger particles to help create more passages for water to drain. Check out the Compost, Soil and Mulch forum for ideas.. I do know that lotsa folks who have added sand to certain clay type soils ended up creating cement. Compost works if you add enough for the area and depending on soil type you might add more or less. I hope you find your answers...that was a pretty nice looking plant! Cant hurt but to give it a try and cut back to the healthy parts of the plant/s and give it a whirl. Vera

The idea of assembling a wad of randomly chosen paint chips from the stores boggles my mind. I've said many times before that I do not agree with that method. Just because you, the consumer, doesn't have to pay for those paint chips, someone does. One round of refills for color selectors (chip racks) can cost a paint store on average $3,000 - $5,000 or maybe more. Thousands of dollars of collateral that people totally take for granted; parents use the color displays to keep junior busy while they shop, people remove chips and put them back "where ever", etc.. Stores would rather you just lay the chip down on the counter if you don't want it - don't put it back in the wrong place in the rack. I guess I have to take solace that on the other side of this incredibly inefficient process, at the very least, all these unwanted, unused chips are being properly recycled. Yes, it is true that the price of color collateral (paint chips, etc.) is built in to the price per gallon. But it's a moderate, reasonable, average margin. The margin isn't huge to support each person taking a "bazillion" paint chips. And if you make an effort to properly educate yourself on even the basics of color, there is no need for a "bazillion" paint chips to begin with. Not to take a "scolding" tone, it's just there's absolutely nothing about the suggested process that I agree with or think is a good plan. Strikes me as wasteful and a little lazy to be honest. I agree, however, that you should never look at wall color on a horizontal plane. Walls are vertical and that's how you should evaluate the chips/sample boards. Debbie is correct, Aura/Affinity colors are not full spectrum What makes Aura special is the actual paint, not the color palette. If you want SW Creme via MyPerfectColor, you have a really, really good shot at getting the best match possible in a BenM base to a SW color. I know the quality standards for color matching from My Perfect Color and they are best-in-class. They ship paint/color and they fully "get it", they understand the need for precise calibration and standards. MPC is a good option. As far as individual colorants and formulas - there isn't any one data point *within* a paint color that you can identify as more constant or not constant. It's all the factors wrapped up together that contribute to more constant or less constant. A general rule of thumb - not set in stone rule - is the fewer colorants in the can, the less shifting will occur. Black in the formula also aids in capturing light beams and stopping them from reflecting back into the space. Some people equate that to more constant paint colors. Others label it as "dead" color. The expectation that color should not shift or change is, arguably, the core issue. Perhaps it's not the color that needs adjusted as much as the expectation for how the color & light relationship is suppose to work.

At least to me, it's more about science than just randomly making a change or two out of curiosity. When I develop an original recipe or "improve" an existing recipe (mine or others), I keep a record of each change. I used the same method to develop a "base" cookie recipe using sorghum flour from a local mill using a set ratio of ingredients, then adapted the base recipe into different kinds of cookies. This method has a lot of practical uses. I have a form sheet I've pre-printed with the original recipe on the left half of the page and places on the right half for: -DATE -INGREDIENT CHANGES - with reasons why I chose them. -RESULTS -NEXT TIME - changes to make yet again and why or what results they will make or expect. Changes can include the pan type or size as well as ingredients or mixing methods. -NOTES Some recipes take many iterations. I remember reading how Sara Phillips, author of "Baking 9-1-1" and web site formerly baking911.com now http://www.craftybaking.com/?baking911=true made 100 changes before she got her recipe for low-fat white cake the way she liked, so if I make 4 or 5 alterations I figure "good enough"..... I'll live to bake another day with or without this recipe. ;-) This isn't America's Test Kitchen after all, but I do keep notes from things they have tested and how they worked so I don't have to make the same mistakes. Chris Kimball's books are also full of this information. I even send foods out to work with hubby with the ingredient list (not amounts) and critique sheets his office staff can use to judge or compare a recipe (believe me - these wonderful folks will eat ANYTHING and criticize EVERYTHING - so I'm not afraid of their honesty). You can always tell who was in 4-H because they are familiar with the judging process and do a good job - and I'll dismiss the critique "I don't like coconut." in a recipe with coconut in the title and on the ingredient list. After all those years as a Foods Judge, I also use my "Fair Judging Standards" (you can find lists of these on-line) as a guideline and I use terms used in judging for things like general appearance, shape, condition of top/crust, exterior color, volume/size, lightness (in weight for size), crumb (interior portion), texture, color (appropriate for the product, pleasing to the eye), moistness, tenderness, flavor (which is really a combination of taste and smell). Most recipes will follow the tried and true baking standards and ratio of ingredients, others are an anomaly - a "one off" - so to speak, that doesn't follow traditional baking or is a complete fluke. "Flukes" also have reasons they work. An example of that is a Molten Lava Cake, which was supposed to have been an accident when a sponge cake was under-baked, and now it has a number of different base cakes including flourless cake or brownie types. And who the heck decided adding a 4-oz. bottle of red food coloring to a Red Velvet Cake (which can be deadly to anyone who is allergic to that particular dye color) was a brilliant idea? Or, add a drained and chopped canned sauerkraut to a chocolate cake recipe - both are examples of taking "creative" license. --When developing gluten-free baked goods I have an entirely different set of guidelines because there are different ingredients used. --You can successfully make changes in recipes but it helps to be aware of some guidelines, such as established ratio of one ingredient to another for each type of baking. This is also how we judge recipes when we read them in books. Will this list of ingredients in a Brownie recipe make cake-like brownies, chewy brownies, or something in between? If you know the attributes of certain ingredients, the ratio between ingredients, you can make that determination by reading the recipe. When I was a member on another message board, a member who was a competent baker, complained about a Banana Bread recipe they made unsuccessfully several times and wondered if there was a mistake in the recipe. The recipe was from Peter Reinhart's "Crust and Crumb" (on the book jacket it says "MASTER FORMULAS FOR SERIOUS BREAD BAKERS) -- that is until he got to the ratio of dry ingredients to wet ingredients in his Banana Bread recipe wrong, which were completely off (and even with the correct ratio was at best an insipid banana bread recipe). --There are some things that are just standards in baking, so if you fiddle with them too much you may need to adjust in another area. It's also where you may want to make sure you have a scale for weighing ingredients. The crystals of granulated sugar are large and there is a lot of space between the crystals when you measure it in a cup. There is very little space in powdered sugar. Therefore, you would find weighing the amount of granulated sugar and substituting it with the equal amount - BY WEIGHT - of powdered sugar would mean you have the same amount by weight, but it won't be the same amount of "sugar" if you substitute cup-for-cup. The same goes for salt. If you normally use a fine crystal salt product (like a fine sea salt), there will be more salt per teaspoon (by weight) of the fine crystals than if you use a teaspoon (by measure) of a chunky crystal salt product (Kosher salt) because it's off-set by voids of air between the larger crystals. Therefore you really should weigh the salt for accuracy rather than by the teaspoonful otherwise you may find a finished product is too salty or not salty enough just by changing the type of salt crystal you used. In other words, it pays to measure accurately, and accurately means using a scale rather than a dry measure (cups, spoons). --Know ahead of time when you reduce fat and sugar without adjusting other ingredients, you will be sacrificing some tenderness, and it may dry out much quicker. It helps to make low-fat items in much smaller amounts - an 8x8-inch pan instead of a large 9x13 - so leftovers don't dry out quickly and are unappetizing. --If you increase the sugar and fat you may find it's TOO tender and falls apart when sliced. If this is something like a quick bread you are altering ingredients in, you may find it will work best baked in a small loaf, or a long narrow Danish Loaf Pan, instead of the traditional 9x5-inch quick bread loaf pan. Smaller slices will hold together better if the crumb is a little too tender. --You won't always get the same results by using 100% whole grain flour in a recipe that was made with bleached or unbleached flour. Bran in wholegrain flour will require an increase of hydration because it soaks up more liquid, which makes for a heavier finished product. --Don't make too many different changes at once, change one or two things each time you work on the recipe. --Other things that can change a recipe is using the muffin method of mixing ingredients instead of the cake method. Using liquid fat instead of solid fat, or vise versa. Separating eggs and beating the whites and adding the yolks (or even an extra egg yolk) when beating the sugar and fat until pale and thickened, then fold in the whites. --If you've increased the sugar content it could delay how the baked good "sets" and the original baking time could be off. There is logical established baking temperatures for baked goods high in sugar, so you may want to switch to a lower temperature and a longer baking time if you increase the sugar by a large percent. -Powdered sugar right from the bag will work differently than powdered sugar that has been finely sifted. Powdered sugar once came in 10X, 6X and 4X, and those numbers indicate the size of the mesh used to sift it, with 10X being the smallest and is sifted much finer. You can make some of these small changes to recipes yourself. --It also helps to know the internal temperature of different baked goods to test accurately for "doneness". AHHHHHHHHHHHH, the science of food. -Grainlady

"I know that I know nothing." Perfect, Nik! Thanks for resurrecting my old response -- I could have saved myself a lot of time writing on this one if I remembered that I had already written that one (with me, it seems, it's not only "Tempus fugit" but also "Mens fugit"....). Everyone needs to evaluate their own situation, because each situation is unique and one essentially does "know nothing" a priori . For me here, huge, elaborate soil amendment became a thing of the past, probably in one part because I won't grow roses that require it and in the other part because I have found it generally unnecessary for the kinds of roses I like to grow so, at most, minimal amendment to make a foothold or "half-way house" of sorts for young plants is the practice. That's what made me excited about Camps' original proposition (and I was particularly enthralled with hearing how Chinas are faring in her woods so far - wonderful). A follow-up observation since the above excerpt was written, involving some tea-noisette plants that I considered expendable at the time of their planting and so did not bother with any soil amendment at all, is that it is also possible to grow a totally healthy rose without amendment (or much after-care) at all, here. 'Celine Forestier', in particular, is an amazing story, as I relegated the gallon-size plant to a sorry, unimproved spot in the back of the lot under a Schinus molle tree (talk about invasive roots!), since the plant was in such bad shape that I expected it to die. Ten years later, it is a beautiful, well-blooming rose, holding its own against MAC (which, as a duplicate was also planted without soil amendment and is now 20'+ up the pepper tree) on one side and 'Reve d'Or' on the other. That part of the yard is basically subsoil with 1" veneer of topsoil sediment eroded down from the neighbors on the hill above and all of it produces an alkali bloom on the surface. As Christopher no doubt discovered upon reading Linda Chalker-Scott's coffee grounds "Myth" article, it is not really a debunking but a discussion of what is known and unknown (I like her papers, by the way -- just wish she would not use the generally misleading term "myth" in the titles to, I guess, grab attention). I am interested in Christopher's experiment re the rate at which coffee grounds can be incorporated with benefit. His observations so far in line with what Charles Darwin observed, as related in his last book, "The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the Action of Worms", that the castings of worms add approximately 0.2" to the surface of the soil each year (explains the "sinking" of ancient monuments, etc.) and mixes subsurface soil with whatever is on the surface. In part explains why, too, mulches may not do much in drier Med. climes as far as incorporating organic matter go -- earthworms are nowhere near the surface here during the summer months, for one thing -- only reappear in the winter months. Daisy's donkey dung method in Crete sounds almost romantic (and obviously works!)...I wish I had donkey dung... All in all, I have found this thread an informative fountain of ideas. Ecologists like nothing better than a great, free-flowing argument. ;-) (I also liked Christopher's parrot quote so much that I am now reading Twain's Following the Equator.)