Tony Tomeo

One never knows what strange artifacts might be found out in public landscapes. It is amusing enough to find items discarded or simply misplaced long ago by former occupants of a home out in a private home garden. Public landscapes are even more interesting, since they collect debris and artifacts from many more people. Some landscapes have been doing so for a long time.
Besides litter, the most commonly found artifacts are sporting equipment. Frisbees, baseballs, tennis balls, soccer balls, volleyballs and such are commonly lost in dense vegetation. Golf clubs, baseball bats and tennis rackets sort of make one wonder. Chew toys are sometimes left by dogs who go after them, but then return with something they perceive to be more interesting.
Landscapes that are near roadways often feature car parts that might have fallen out of cars as they drove by, as well as a few that cars…

Two others have already written about this far more proficiently than I would have:
https://sweetgumandpines.wordpress.com/2018/11/18/abomination/
https://gardendaze.blog/2018/11/19/amaryllis-queen-of-the-forced-bulbs/
These two articles say it all. I would not have bothered to write about it too if I had not already taken the picture above. I did not read the label to learn what one of these articles said about why these bulbs were waxed. It seals in moisture, so that the bulbs do not desiccate while they bloom without water or moist media. They at least get water when forced by the conventional manner.
I suppose to many who force amaryllis bulbs, there is no problem with waxing them like this, since they are typically discarded as their forced bloom deteriorates. There is no expectation for the bulbs to survive the process to regenerate and bloom the following year.
We can at least pretend that we intend to nurture amaryllis bulbs that bloom…

Root pruning is nothing new. It is done more commonly than we think about for many aggressive perennials like lily-of-the-Nile, that like to disperse their roots into areas where we want to grow more docile annual bedding plants or vegetables. We might do it halfway, or more, around a shrubby plant during spring or summer if we plant on digging and moving it the following autumn. For most small and low profile plants, root pruning is sort of tolerable. The plants that we do it to may not like it, but it is sometimes necessary, and better than not doing so.
Trees are not like most small and low profile plants. Most are very sensitive to root pruning when mature. They are not so proficient at replacing the portions of their root systems that they are deprived of. Large roots that get severed are very susceptible to decay, which slowly…

We may not get much foliar color in autumn here, but we get enough. Sweetgums do not need much cool weather to color well. They would probably have colored better and held their foliage a bit better if the weather got cooler faster, but we can not complain about what we got. Most of the crape myrtles are still completely green. Cottonwoods are defoliating, but without much color. Maples are rare here. The three best trees for color in autumn here are sweetgum, pistache and flowering pear. Of these, we happen to have several sweetgums here.
Sweetgum is not the sort of tree that I would recommend for home gardens. They are innately very likely to develop structural deficiency. By the time such problems are identified, they are difficult to correct without disfigurement. Aggressive roots are likely to displace pavement, and sometimes invade septic systems. Then there are all those…