I don't like the sound of that. It must go if it is a tree. I knew it wasn't a from a nearby tree, so I will blame the birds for this one. I was hoping for some type of small native bush or something. Oh, well. Thanks for the ID.

It's real hard to give spot on advice when far removed from the subject matter. A hands on 360 evaluation is a must. Without that we shoot from the hip. I suggested cutting the 2nd branch back to the foliage line with the bottom branch blocking the cut off. My thought was it would regenerate new foliage for better balance. With the bottom branch gone by all means remove the stub. My Ginkgo b. 'Princeton Sentry' limbed up to 12 ft. It had a few wayward out of character limbs. It took me a long time to muster the courage to get out the saw and go for it. Glad I did. It was planted in 1988 with no thought of conifers needing light or for that matter anything needing light. Now my conifers receive the needed light and the Ginkgo remains the yards stalwart protector commanding all the attention it deserves. Barbara. in time your ginkgo will sort itself out. Just be patient Dave

Thanks for all the responses. You have given me a lot to mull over but alas, not a consensus! You all seem about as evenly split as my thinking has been! If it's any help, here's a pic of the new chairs with the pillows and throw from the other chairs. My pillow and throw selection is a bit lacking, but it might give you an idea. Not sure the throw and pillows help. I do think that the new chairs are a bit more sophisticated than my decorating style -- the New York City apartment is a great comparison (as I studied the pictures I posted, I was thinking they looked like something Emily Henderson would put in her Hollywood-rich-people makeovers.) My house is a farmhouse with wide-width pine floors and pretty much all the furniture is vintage/antique and kind of country/shabby/farmhouse in style. I'm just not sure the new chairs fit with the style. (But then again, maybe my style could use some shaking-up!) Also Ingrid - the coffee table is a chest brought back from China by a relative. It has odd Chinese paintings on it featuring little bald people with fishing poles. I hated it at first and had planned to paint the whole thing black but over time the paintings have grown on me. And though you can't tell in the picture, that exact shade of turquoise is in the rug. Really the rug has pretty much every shade in the room which I guess is handy for giving lots of choices for accessorizing -- and my accessorizing skills can clearly use all the help they can get!

The nursery industry has already responded to concerns about size and seeds with multiple different dwarf and (supposedly) sterile forms or hybrids of Buddleja davidii. Just one wholesale grower alone offers at least several (along with some older, conventional varieties): https://plants.monrovia.com/search?w=buddleja A late friend that was surprised about how much he had to water his Seattle garden after moving here and buying a property went back to Chicago one August to visit relatives. Where he learned that they had had one inch per week of rain since May that season. Out here an entire July may pass by without an inch of rain having occurred. Except for certain outer coastal zones summer rain is not a significant factor on the Pacific Slope, with the Lower 48 consisting basically of a dry summer western half and a rainy summer eastern half - the annual precipitation curves of the two corners (Seattle and Miami) are exactly opposite one another. The talk about how rainy it is here is not based on summer conditions, with there having been a bumper sticker around in the past that read Seattle Rain Festival - November to May. We never get the copious summer downpours of the eastern states, where in the South in particular it may rain feet at a time. So, yes: if a plant like butterfly bush is a noxious weed here in the Pacific Northwest this is not due to the presence of ample summer rainfall.