Bobert, Ask the P-Vine iff'n I can borry you for a week or so. Eh?

The North Carolina Arboretum' gardens were beautifully designed, but as an aboretum, I found it disappointing. There is little emphasis on native plants or trees.    A lot of money has been poured into the facilities and the gardens, but it was more like a botanical garden than an arboretum. There are several miles of hiking trails through the surrounding forest, but no written guides or identification of the trees and other flora along the trails.   Although I know more than the average bear about understory plants and wildflowers in the woods of the East, I don't know trees all that well, and my knowledge of woodland plants is rusty. I was frustrated to see many emerging plants that I used to know could not recall (shoulda had my field guides with me.)

One real treat was to see trailing arbutus in bloom in several places along the trails we hiked. There were a number of shrubs in the heath family, mostly assorted hobble-bushes, that I would have liked to have been able to identify, as well as more than one species of native rhodies, and a number of different viburnums.

While I was gone, the solomon's seal grew 6 inches and is starting to bloom. Alternating insecticidal soap with dormant oil seems to be keeping the azalea lacebug in check. I used neem oil tonight instead of dormant oil, and have high hopes for this treatment.