Sliding an Edge or Vert w/o stretch/pinch texture image?

[Misty Wisty]

is it possible?

i'm trying to outline the tree with edges and verts.

cutting an edge only wants to place the vert in the middle.

sliding distorts the image.
and redoing the create texture in uv window doesn't reset the image to be undistorted

am i missing something fundamental?

thanks.