Chasing pH is a futile endeavor. Well, that depends on what your goals are, what your pH is and your access to resources. You're trying to push your pH from an 8+ in calcareous clay down to a 5.0 and you're on a budget? Yeah. That's pretty futile. Now let's say you've got a pH of 7.5 in a sandy soil with no lime and would like to shift it down to 7.0 or even a little acid so that your maple will stop showing symptoms of alkalinity induced chlorosis. Let's also say you have the means to buy some sulfur (and/or iron sulfate) pre-plant and use acidifying fertilizers to keep the pH down over time? Not futile at all. In fact, it's really common. As free hydrogen is replaced by anions (e.g. calcium, magnesium, sodium, potassium) the pH rises. Well, not really. pH is not a relationship of hydrogen to other cations. pH is an expression of the relationship between hydrogen and hydroxide (OH-). Note that hydroxide is an anion. That's why you can always calculate your pOH if you know your H+ concentration and vice-versa. You will never be able to calculate your pH from your concentration of other cations. At pH 7.0 and above there is no free hydrogen in the soil.Actually, if you have a pH of 7.0, that means that the concentration of hydrogen is exactly the same as the concentration of hydroxide in the soil solution. If you had no hydrogen your pH would be 14 and your pOH would be 0. I think you may be thinking of exchange sites on colloids. If you have a pH of 7.0 or above you may indeed have 0% hydrogen (or actually so close that it is reported as 0% on a base saturation analysis). Also, you can't raise your pH by just picking a cation and increasing it. That's why you won't get an increase in pH from adding gypsum (calcium sulfate) except under special circumstances.

I'm a first time poster on this forum. What an extremely interesting thread!! I have to agree with Ellen and others. Norway Maple is extremely invasive, highly prolific and it doesn't just shade out native plants, it leafs out earlier than many natives, thus not even allowing them a chance. Burning bushes may be used as foundation plantings, but anything that berries easily becomes invasive (e.g. Asiatic bittersweet). Notice where bittersweet grows? Under trees and power lines where birds sit and defecate the seeds! What a great evolutionary trait that they picked up. No wonder there is so much of it in our woods! Burning bush berries are loved by many birds. As you are driving along someday note a BB denuded of leaves. You will notice it quivering with birds (usually non-native house sparrows). You may not notice all alien invasives, but I see plenty of volunteer burning bushes around on road edges and wood edges. If you really start to look for these things, you'll see how bad the situation is. I had read somewhere that poison ivy was brought here as an ornamental in the 1700's. I have a hard time believing that though. You'd think the person that dug it up would have realized its "down" side. Personally, I think a ban is a great idea. It would make some of the housing developers and nurserymen use a little more imagination in choosing foundation plantings and things to sell/plant. How many more Norway maples and burning bushes do we need? At this rate, everyone has one in front of their house or at least 10 in their neighborhood. The other issue is that while you may be right that we can't reverse what is already done, I agree that making it a law is highly educational. The nurseries aren't going to educate people. I, personally, did not know about this issue until after I bought some nasty invasive plants. I have never understood why our government continues to allow known invasives to be sold. They spend millions trying to eradicate some invasive alien weeds. The fact that we can't solve the entire problem is no reason not to attempt to prevent it from getting worse. There are plenty of really nice alternatives to most of the invasives on the list. Anyone that lives in Mass. can go to New England Wildflower Society and see the lovely gardens that they have created with natives as well as buy some really nice, healthy native plants. AND your gardens will probably look quite different from most of the neighbors....which in my mind is a plus. Just my two (twenty?) cents. Here is a link that might be useful: Alternatives to Invasives

Sorry, Marcolo, I must have misunderstood your post on the Rusic Modern thread when we were discussing next topics. I thought there were going to be two threads (about a month) between Rustic Modern and Steampunk. But it sounds like that is what you're suggesting now, regardless of what you said before, is that right? Something other than Steampunk, then Steampunk? Yellow had at least a couple votes, and so did a real MLS listing. I'm okay with either. Yellow would probably be less work to introduce.

Hmmmm, owned horses for 20 years---4-H, have had dogs my whole life except when in the Army, had cats, parakeets, tropical fish, white rats, lizards, rabbits, a raccoon, a opossum, and have fed birds on occasion. I am extremely realistic. I currently have two dogs, both mixed aggressive breeds---one of which I rescued from euthanasia----both of whom are stretched out by my feet as I type---tired from the afternoon session of work/exercise/play. They are a part of my family, but---they are dogs first, second, and always. They get treated like aggressive breed dogs, not like my grandchildren or my children. Shorty, the 20 year old chihuahua mix we just had to euthanize because of advanced cancer, was treated like a small noisy dog. Max, my 3 year old German Shepherd/Rottweiler mix(the out of control rescued dog) is a watchdog. The daughter of the family who got rid of him is a friend of my oldest granddaughter and was here Sunday. She had not seen the dog in a year and a half. She could not get over how calm and behaved he is. They tried to treat Max like a person, thinking they were being good owners. Max had no idea how to be a dog---and that had him so confused and unbalanced he was dangerous. I've been an animal lover my entire life. However---people who insist animals have human characteristics are doing a disservice to the animal. Animals have to be treated as others of their kind would treat them to be complete animals. Treating an animal like a human creates unbalanced animals. Now, if the question were---"What has being associated with my animals taught me?----Oh, my, there are hundreds of answers. See my point?