Thanks, gardengal. I think you may be right that the tree was deeply planted. We've never seen a skirt of larger, exposed roots. I have tried to pull dirt and mulch away from the trunk, but it's really tight with roots and almost impossible to do. If you look closely, you can almost see the line on the trunk where the mulch used to be, a couple of inches above where it is now. I don't think I can get the dirt/mulch level any lower, really. Overall, the mulched area is probably only a few inches higher than the surrounding lawn. On your advice, today I added a little compost and a light layer of mulch over those exposed feeder roots. I may post again when I get the soil test results. Thanks again!

My son did that. Once we took him off milk because he seemed allergic to it, and a couple of months passed with no milk or by products in his diet, he quit grinding his teeth too. Milk caused all kinds of problems for him, but it was constant coughing and sniffling that lead us to change his diet.

Well we don't know what happen in court but DH's uncle works in court not where she was. He told DH that she can't drop a DOV anymore. They had to have both appeared. The Felony Theif charge didn't go away on its own either but again we have no idea. All we know is the night before court they were all going out for Ice Cream like a big happy family! Social Service would be wonderful if it would help. The thing is when we called the police that night. Soc Ser said that they wouldn't open a case unless the police found reason to do so. I don't know maybe I should try again. We live in another county. If I do it I will look like a jeolous SM. DH will not do it because he is afraid of how it will effect the kids and how they might hold it against him and or me. Or that she will not allow him to see the kids. I think he needs to put her in her place because she is doing wrong by the kids. To top it all off, Last night SS told DH that he and his sister aren't planning on coming this weekend unless we have something good planned to do. Next weekend we was planning on taking them an extra weekend to go on a fishing trip. He don't think he wants to do that either. (I think they are afraid to come that they might spill BM beans) They don't know we know all but the details already.

It looks like you will be getting light from both the top and bottom of these sconces, and so I would try to do a test installation before doing a permanent mount. I have a portable wall that I use for testing the sconces that I design, but you might be able to make something similar yourself with a half sheet of plywood and a "J" box. You will need to add a block of wood next to the hole that you cut for for the J box, for mounting the J box. Here's part of the drawing I used for building the sample wall, showing plan, back view, and side view. The rectangle in the center is the hole for the J box. This drawing does not include the base we made to hold the wall.