The thought had occurred to me the post had not rooted and was simply using energy reserves, but Jag's comment about this being the only post pushing growth made me me think the post had rooted. I've stuck lots of peach/plum shoots in the ground and seen them sprout, only later to see them die when the hot dry summer cooks them. Nevertheless, hedge seems tougher to me. When I made terraces for my peach planting a few years ago with a road grader, I bladed down a ton of young hedge trees. I just "windrowed" them with the rest of the dirt into the terraces, thinking they would rot with the rest of the organic material I windrowed. Instead they produced multitudinous new shoots. We are still spraying hedge sprouts in the rows. But perhaps it was due to all the broken up pieces of hedge roots. Let us know Jag if the post continues to grow.

Hi Violet First of all I am not an expert like some of the posters before but I can share with you my experience since I moved to this house few years back. You are lucky that they let you pick any hardwood trees, when I moved here the choice was already made by the town. Every one has 2 oaks in the front yard and let me clear how I personally feel about them, lining up a big street and fully mature, they are beautiful! but in my small area of my house I absolutely hate them! they have so many problems, eating up the pavement and worse of all getting sick, from the oaks originally planted in the street some of them have died already, what an eyesore and I don't see the neighbors replacing them.... In the front yard I have a redbud and I hope that it grows so beautiful like some mature ones that I have seen. Ricky that picture looks fantastic! I wish that I had that but I don't know much about dogwood and I might be too warm for them.... Michael, Walli has the silk floss tree, one of my favorites, gorgeous! but is too big for my yard. Tom, I live in Oakland for a reason, we have very old oaks in the neighborhood and they are preserving some of them for the future, taking a walk on the trail or by the lake I really enjoy them, they are majestic and for sure they can tell stories of the settlers of my area. But the 2 outside my house, no thanks,lol. Going back to the trees if I have to pick a crape myrtle, I would only choose a rare and pretty variety and color for my yard, my neighbor has the common white one and I have it in my front yard a black leaved one with striking red flowers. Good luck in your choosing because nobody wants to keep replanting trees. Silvia

We had the entire house renovated, and we considered the flooring to be the most important improvement. After lengthy research, we finally decided to use Azur Reserve St. Tropez engineered hardwood. I ordered 67 boxes in March from Lumberjack Direct and had them installed by my general contractor in May. The new floors looked great for about six months. In November, the planks started to buckle in several areas, and the issue is getting worse. The floorboards lift up at the edges. We wonder if these engineered hardwood planks have been treated properly. The other issue is that some of the surfaces of the planks started peeling off or chipping out. When I contacted the manufacturer, HF Design, and Lumberjack Direct, they basically blamed the installer and subfloor issues. My house is 20 years old, and the subfloor has been solid. It used to be a real wood floor before being replaced with engineered hardwood. The real wood floor never had issues like this. I replaced it because I liked the wider plank and new look. My general contractor suspects Azur Reserve was unable to handle changes in temperature. During the seasonal transition, the indoor temperature was changed from 68 degrees to 72 degrees. We were totally regretful about this purchase.

/sigh... This is one of the problems with internet advice so be careful that you don't cost yourself a fortune following the advice of people who don't fully understand your situation and are just making a lot of assumptions. First, let's talk about acclimation... The required acclimation time for flooring is zero minutes. It would be better to think of it as acclimation when needed (though usually needed). If moisture readings were taken when delivered and were at the baseline moisture content for your geographical region, then they don't need to acclimate. That is rarely the case, but it does happen. In my area there is a flooring retailer with an acclimation room which helps get flooring to the baseline for our area. So the “delivery guy took a reading of the wood and the floor where they were stacked and said they were good,” would be acceptable so long as they really did the readings, and it would be sufficient to charge you for those workers taking the day off. Next, yes, what you are describing is customary in a lot of areas. In reality, flooring installation just isn't hard. The hardest part about laying hardwood flooring is squaring up the layout, which again isn't really hard but does require you to have some basic understanding of the process. It is completely doable by someone who has never installed hardwood before and is willing to take extra time. In hardwood installation experience gets you speed, any amateur willing to take their time can install hardwood floors, any finish carpenter or apprentice finish carpenter should easily be able to install it properly. This is not taking anything away from flooring professionals, the ease and speed at which they do what is time consuming for others is impressive. However, even the hardwood companies around here will often send their less skilled workers to install and reserve the skilled workers for finishing. Finally, be careful about insisting on methods after the contract is signed. That is a great way to simply hand your checkbook to your contractor and dare him to do his worst. You get a lot of control over results, but few over the methods used to achieve those results. If the floor is installed properly then you can't insist that the installer have any experience that wasn't in the contract or required by regulation. The moisture content thing is a great example of this, you can't force a contractor to stop work because he didn't take a moisture reading, you can force a contractor to stop work because the floor he is installing is not in an acceptable moisture range. As crazy as it may seem, being right doesn't require intentionality. You either suffer damages or you don't, and stopping work without damages actually damages your contractor and gives him recourse against you. So if you insist on a flooring professional install, you should expect to pay the entire amount he was going to pay his people to install, plus the entire cost of the professional installer, plus any markup on that professional install that is in the contract. Since he has to pay his people for doing nothing, you have to pay his people for doing nothing. Not that this will be the case for you, but anything less would be a gift.