Oh, she’ll tell you what you can do with that alright.

tj

(Is there a way to message people here? I've been trying to private message Flora for years.)

It's widely considered taboo, GG, for the sake of human decency, to compost bread in any type of civilized home set-up that I'm aware of. Bread isn't good for ducks, either, but better to take that bread down to the local pond, than to disrupt the greater order.

annpat - click on my screen name and my profile will come up........there is a message tab there. I would have messaged you directly but you have not enabled that feature (neither has floral, btw). You can do so easily by going into your profile page, click Edit your Profile, then click Advanced Settings. Towards the bottom there is a messaging enable tab. I don't thing you need this to be able to send a message to someone but I am pretty sure you do to receive one :-)

And please do contact me directly if you can. We need to discuss this bread issue in greater detail!!

Flora doesn’t do private messaging. Anyway, I’m sure you wouldn’t like me irl. I’m the kind of person who’d put b——d on my compost heap if I ever had any left over.

Oh, dear! You're right. I guess I wouldn't like you. All these years thinking I would!! What a wasted life I've led.

@floral, in at least one language, b---d is standard written short form/euphemism for an unprintable specific word. Very close to the p-word in Boris Vian's "la p... respectueuse".

One cannot live by b--d alone.

My hyphens agglomerated. There are 3 missing letters.

Wasn't La putain respectueuse Sartre?

Still racking my brains for this other b word.

Let’s keep the mystery in the relationship, annpat. I’m pretty sure I’d like you too...

Drat! Sartre indeed! Hoist by my own pétard prétentieux.

The other b---d word is the Russian equivalent of the French.

I've wanted to invite you since about 2003 to a closed society I belong to---a bunch of Garden Web defectors you used to know. We lost Sara the Brit, so I promised everybody I'd go find us a suitable English girl. Of, course, I didn't know anything about your slovenly ways, for sure, until yesterday. You've hinted, but sometimes a person doesn't see what they don't want to see.

Sorry, annpat, butt I doubt you would pick me as a new favorite. My old buns occasionally end up on my compost as well...and I don’t mean I’m sitting on it.

tj

I feel like I just stepped into an episode of the Twilight Zone.

Garden Gal, I did something that I knew better than to do. I bought an expensive Stewartia---a tree I've always wanted----but when I finally bought one, and brought it home, I realized I really hadn't given much careful thought about where I'd put it and the place I wanted to plant it is construction soil---rocks and gravel---but in a lovely spot for viewing. Instead of leaving well enough alone, I incorporated a lot of compost in the area surrounding the planting zone and some in the planting area with the gravel. Predictably, I have water around the tree trunk when the snow leaves each spring. It doesn't really build up at other times. The thing is the tree is thriving I think. The peeling of the bark is radical in the area that gets wet, but I'm not sure that's not normal. The bark is peeling fairly uniformly all over.

It's such a pretty tree, and I hate to lose it. I wonder about running a trench from the depression near the trunk to where the land drops off a few feet away. I presume I shouldn't scrape away all the raised soil away from the trunk.

It's about 7 feet tall and is finally settling in. It's covered with buds.

annpat, I don't know what to tell you :-) Despite what one may read online, I do not find these to be the slightest bit drought tolerant so a moist soil - but with good drainage - is desirable. If the tree is thriving and the snow melt doesn't hang on for too long, then I'm not sure you have much to worry about.

But it sure wouldn't hurt to direct puddling water from snow melt away from the tree if you can.

Years ago I googled Stewartia, and your name came up in a discussion about them, which is why I've twice asked your advice about them. I didn't know they were supposed to be drought tolerant, but mine isn't. I actually watered it twice a day last year along with the rest of my garden during our drought last year because even though it had been planted two years before, it kept wilting.

Good, I think the best plan is to slice a narrow trench away and downhill from the tree. I hope the totally peeled bark around the base doesn't mean I have a problem..

Even though I collect Japanese maples, Stewartia is my favorite tree! I like them so much I planted a grove at my old house. And I use them in my design work often. I have nothing bad to say about them. Except don't deprive them of as much water as they want or by midsummer the foliage will start to look ratty. That's why I find those assorted websites reporting them to be drought tolerant once established a bunch of baloney.

It had been on a wish list of mine for 30 years before I could afford the size I wanted. A grove!! How lovely! Now I want a grove.