Hmm,you're at least the 4th person to have this happen here in recent weeks....just wish some of my maples would grow a bit more ha. It's not uncommon when conditions are favourable for maples to throw out vigorous shoots.It's certainly not a sign of ill health,quite the opposite.With some cultivars of maple it is undesirable to keep the vigorous growth,but I think with your maple it boils down to personal taste.The branches however may not necessarily keep their drooping stance and may grow more upright with time.I'm guessing the trees you have seen are what are referred to as 'dissectums'...their inherent deformities cause their leaves to be heavily dissected and their branches generally droop and twist more.Your maple is not one of these. Please note that if your tree is grafted and these shoots are coming from below the graft(you'll see a join very low down on the trunk)they should be removed.

Japanese Treelilacs bloom on old wood. The pruning suggestion (don't prune) would be my first recommendation. Is it in the lawn that you fertilize with nitrogen diligently? Do you fertilize it diligently? Another don't do, IMO. A couple fertilizings of the lawn shouldn't hurt, but no need to feed the tree. If it is still growing fast (1.5-2ft/yr), it certainly doesn't need any help growing. More fertilizer helps keep it in the vegetative mode, not the flowering mode. If you've been watering, it's way time to stop that too. A little drought now and then will help it flower too. It's too late to do anything drastic, flower buds for next year have already formed, if they were going to. Save the root pruning for spring 2009, about the time that regular lilacs finish blooming. If it works, you will get blooms in 2010.

#2 most garding book show under cut branch to avoid split branch. some time you don't want to drop brach over another branch or over shurb or plant or something else, you cut wide V shape cut under branch then cut vertical cut from both side of branch, leave narrow center of brach, you can push branch either side to avoid hit other plnts/shurb then make final cut. #3 when prune shrub , try to trim off branch slantly. cut face toward ground, if branch of tree need to trim off, cut branch face up ward. This way pruingis less ovious.

I think that the best thing you can do is to get yourself better educated about gardening. Go to your library and find a couple of books about gardening, and make sure that one is a general "encyclopedia" type of book - Reader's Digest had one, and Better Homes and Gardens did too, and they both covered, not in PhD depth but deep enough that they covered more than the high points, plant placement, types of plants (annual/perennial/shrub/vine/tree), shade/sun requirements, and things like that, which all gardeners need to know. You also need to think about what KIND of garden you want - nice cottage garden? Roses? Evergreens? Plants for wildlife? Minimal care? Do you want to work in the garden every weekend (I do - it's my therapy) or have mostly lawn? There are no wrong answers here - it's YOUR garden and you get to make it what YOU want. Most landscapers are Mow and Blow; far too many landscape design places and garden centers are all about arbor vitae/river birch/ pampas grass (apologies to those designers that aren't), which is why so many yards are interchangeable. Around here (Essex County), every garden center I have gone to has the same shrubs, vines, and trees as everywhere else. If you decide that you want something even slightly different, you may have to search a little, but those little garden centers that sell the good stuff are out there. A lot of the "regular" garden centers are staffed by the horticultural equivalent of used-car salesmen, who will try to convince you that you really want a nice juniper instead of the lilac you came there to get - be strong and stick to your guns!