From reading the above posts someone not familiar with clethra might get the impresion that clethra is a malodorous plant that spreads like a bamboo. Clethra has an awesome fragrance and a clean habit. Does it spread aggressively? Absolutely not. Unless you are a sloth moving in super slow motion you should be able to keep up with the one or two stems it sends up near the base of the plant. 10 seconds a year with hand pruners and the slowly spreading clethra can be kept inbounds.

So I potted up my 4 bare root plants. So far so good. One is losing some leaves from underneath, turning yellow and falling off. This one is Brandy, and seemed like the most vigorous one with a jillion budeyes. Well, maybe a billion. The rest of the plant seems okay with the top growth nice and fresh and green so I am not sweating it too much. My Peace leaves looked a little funny, but I think I read on a different thread that their leaves sometimes have a "puckered" look to them at first, so I think she is okay, too. Time will tell for both of them, I guess. My question: I think I know where I want to have them planted in the ground. They have been growing in the pots since March 28th, when I last checked this thread. If I now plant them in the ground, would I be risking stressing them or their roots (which I am hooping are growing!). I am pretty good at getting stuff in the ground w/o disturbing roots too much if need be. Do I have to wait till fall? Or, since we have had such a cool, mild spring and just had a good rain, is it possible that I could transplant them now? I know nursery plants in pots start as bare root, but I am not sure how much of a root system they would have in comparison to my non-greenhouse grown potted bare roots. I'm sure mine have fewer roots, so would I be doing a bad thing to try and put them in the ground now?

To all posters: especially Jillmcm an vonyon, thank you so much for your input on this subject. I live in a wooded area. I love watching all the wildlife,- turkey, deer, and especially the birds, we have blue bird, martin and wren houses, and several bird baths. I have suet feeders, finch feeders, and a hopper feeders, along with several bird baths. I enjoy the birds so much, and spend many hours watching them. Then last summer a pair of phobees built a nest on a window sill on the second floor of our house. What a delight! They would swoop down and eat tons of insects. When I saw a hawk in a tree next to our house eyeing the baby phobees, it was too much, I went over the edge. I was obsessed with how to keep them out of our yard. All of the posts on this forum have been so helpful to putting things in balance. I am going to rethink my pattern of feeding the birds. Although the Phobees don't eat at bird feeders,they do use the bird baths, and the mere fact that there is a concentration of birds, attracted the hawks. By the way, the hawks nested in the woods next to us, and I heard the baby hawk calling after it's mother for food and say them hunting together, so I know they have to eat too. Thank you, again!

I am in Texas, rarely heard house has basement, I guess Texas soil can not do basement ? There's a lot of soil variation within Texas. :-) Just in my area alone (Central), there's solid alkaline limestone on one end of the spectrum (underground basements in this case would require blasting, I assume; usually cost prohibitive), and then there's heavy, expansive clay on the other (which exerts a lot of pressure on concrete basements, resulting in higher engineering and building costs). It really is a shame that there aren't affordable ways to build basements here, being in tornado alley and all. :-( Above-ground safe rooms are an option, as are small underground bunker-type structures. To address the original post, I strongly prefer living in single story houses, but I love the aesthetics of two- and three- story houses. For a multiple-story house to truly make me happy and not cause daily frustration, I would need several items that would likely negate the savings over a single story (tiled risers; storage under every stair tread; pulley-system dumbwaiter for transferring large laundry loads between floors; 1st master suite up and 2nd master suite down). It would just be too much. :-/