Hi All, Thanks for your responses! Well, the Trumpet Vine has not been "attacked" lately. So that is okay. We stopped hanging suet cakes high up in the trees out front for the summer so no report there. We think the Coons were the thieves in the night there... But we do know what was digging at and around the bird feeding skid....my husband saw them. Rats. I did not like this one bit and was upset.....husband stopped feeding the birds right away. Filled the holes, cleaned up all the feed he could and set the skid up against the Hemlock. It wasn't long until he didn't see any Rats. We read some place that they will move on when the food supply stops and it seems they did. We used to have many feral cats that came thru here but our cat club has been getting them into the tnr program and rarely see any which is really a good thing. I don't know what we will do this winter about feeding the birds. We have a big feeder on the deck that we set up for winter so we can see the birds close up. Will they return right away and the problem will be back? We live in a nice neighborhood and I am sure the neighbors would be very unhappy if they knew we had this problem. Guess it is a wait and see situation right now....thanks again for your ideas! Shirley

Can you see between the bottom of the susan and the shelf? Is it attached at only one point? Is there any chance it pops into some sort of hole spinner thingy. If you lift up on it with lots of pressure would it "pop" out? That is the only thing I can think of.

Thank you for this post! I couldn't figure out why my clothes smellled like butane . I wasn't sure if my dryer was going bad, if the dryer ventilation was clogged (even though my ventilation dryer pipes were recently installed) or if I had a gas leak. We can't live without a dryer and yet, I was mostly concerned with safety. After reading this post, I realized that my floors were sanded and stained the day (and day after) I ran my dryer. I would have never attributed that terrible smell to the floor chemicals seeping into my dryer without these posts! Its been a few days now and clothes are drying and smelling great. Hope the butane smell washes out of those 2 chemical loads.

He is over at UBC Botanical Garden Forum username JT1. He has always been very responsive to questions and has posted many threads on his garden so a lot of what you want to know is probably already there. I think the MOST amazing thing about his garden is the fact that he lives right next to the lake he is actually in a warmer climate zone than people hours south of him which allows him to grow many of the cultivars he has. If you can find that thread where he explains that information its fascinating. As far as the amount of space you have for your garden, I think 7'-10' from your house is plenty of room to grow a lot of nice maples and not just dwarfs. JMs are very versatile and will often adapt to the space they are given. Some cultivars like a lot of space but most of them will nicely fill in the space they are given and are pretty easy to keep a decent size. Amazingmaples posts a lot of videos of his collection (which is incredible) and he has a Sango Kaku that he has had for 16 years and it's only about 6' tall and 5' wide. I have two large Crimson Queens on each side of my front door that were planted about 4' from my house by the previous owner. They are a very nice size and other than a couple of limbs that I trim each year require no maintenance to keep them from "eating" my house. If you can post a few photos of the space you have to work with, people here can give you tons of advice and suggestions.