The problem with this thinking... which to me used to be fine, till I noticed, that all is fine and dandy till something goes wrong....then people scream... For example, you may want to take any drug you want, then your cousin dies of an ephedra problem.... then all of a sudden your thinking is changed. Personally, I generally agree. I think that the stupids who mess with something they don't understand.... just weeds out their genes from the gene pool. But apparently, others don't see it this way. I see this in almost all aspects of American life... ANOTHER example... You all want a freemarket system... till you pay $3 a gallon for gas... then you scream. People seem to want what they want with no concern for the consequences... I just do it... and unlike Cacye, I LISTEN when someone says there is a danger... some don't... that's why they try to beat trains in train crossings.... ANOTHER way to weed certain genes from the gene pool.

Thanks, Kim, for the confirmation. I checked on Chinese chives, it's the same as garlic chives mentioned in Field Roebuck's book. He stated, "In at least one controlled experiment, when planted underneath roses, garlic chives completely eliminated spider mites and reduced aphids." Rose magazine site stated that high-nitrogen chemical fertilizer does encourage aphids. The Canadian website that advocated fall fertilization, rather than spring, cited less insect problems with earlier nitrogen fertilization for wheat fields. Garlic chives have white flowers, it is listed among the invasive species. In my experience with invasive species, it's the least invasive, since it can be pulled up easily. It's a tiny bulb - rather than invasive roots. If you cut the flowering stem off before it becomes seeded, then you stop the growth. I was hoping it becomes invasive enough to gather a gallon for making pot stickers -but it did not spread fast enough in our 40" inch annual rain and high germination in magnesium rich soil. I also have the American chives with purple flowers, this is invasive since it spreads by roots. This chives is more drought-tolerant than Garlic, or Chinese chives. Calendula, or potted marigold, is just as pretty but more drought-tolerant than regular marigold. Calendula host many beneficial insects, especially green lacewings. These lacewings fly around and eat Calendula's pollens. But they give birth to larvae, named aphid lion. More info: "Each lacewing larva will devour 200 or more pests or pest eggs a week ... After this stage, the larvae pupate by spinning a cocoon with silken thread... the adult will live about four to six weeks...Each adult female may deposit more than 200 eggs. Nectar, pollen, and honeydew stimulate their reproductive process." What I like the most about garlic chives, or Chinese chives is its medicinal and anti-inflammation properties. It's especially yummy in potstickers, better than green onions. I like Calendula (comes in bright yellow and bright orange), since they are drought tolerant and still bloom during frost. Below is a picture of Calendula in my tomato garden:

Gardengal, Seriously, I don't get my info from Wikipedia which is probably the worst place on the net to get correct information. First of all, I have 5 Giant Sequoia, so I have studied about them from various sources for years. I also have been to California several times to see them and this was during the winter and early spring, not just thevsummer and I can assure many areas get flooded. Most people and photos you see are people that go during the summer (dry season) when the water level drops. There are huge giant sequoia growing smack in the middle of a creek in a gravel bed estimated over 1000 years old. The info I refrenced is from the website of the #1 grower of giant sequoias in the United States. For one, technically there is no sandy loam in the Sierra Nevada, it's alluvial granite. Second, the mature trees need thousands of gallons a water a day to survive, they are not getting that from JUST "moist soil", they have a massive source of water at all times. Third, they have a very shallow root system for the size of the trees, that means they get most of their water from the just above the soil to about 10 feet below. But your repeating info from a man (John Muir) that first wrote about Giant Sequoia before the 1920's that has been debunked long ago. This is an excerpt from the National Park Service today: "John Muir was perhaps the first writer to single out the role of soil moisture. He found that medium soil moisture is optimal for sequoia growth. The sequoia is never found in any valley exposed to the rush of floods, nor on any hillside so steep and unporous as to shed its soil and rain. It grows always where the deep sandy or loamy soil is capable of holding the winter moisture all the year, or where the rock is full of innumerable fissures and is shaded and cool and moist" (Wolfe 1938). Even though he failed to indicate the necessity of sunlight for seedling development, his assumptions are essentially correct, and many writers have repeated them in modified ways. Invariably, these modifications involve the effect of climatic differences, soil type, depth of organic layer, leaf litter, shading, etc. ***Recent investigations, curiously, do not bear out the belief that rich, deep soils are a necessity for sequoia growth. Observers have tended to compare forest soils to agricultural soils. While crop plants need nutritionally rich as well as moist soils, trees depend mainly upon available soil moisture. The grayish podzolic soils of the Sierra are less than impressive to the serious farmer. Furthermore, many people tend to grossly underestimate the complexity of soils. By and large, Sierran podzolic soils are relatively thin and not abundantly nutritious. With clay a minimal soil constituent, the total moisture-holding capacity of these soils is limited by the amount and distribution of precipitation, subsequent density of vegetation, temperature and relative humidity during the growing season, and the wetability factor of the soil. Sequoias show a strong tendency to favor drainageways where the requisite degree of moisture content is constant. Yet the drier slopes also support sequoia growth wherever the trees can become established (Wulff et al. 1911). Contrary to popular belief, then, soil depth and richness are clearly secondary to soil moisture availability. Sequoia distribution within groves strongly reflects its affinity for soil moisture; a crown that may weigh a ton or more seems to demand it. Muir (1911, 1912) was a proponent of the thought that sequoias created their own moist environment as he wrote below. "It is a mistake to suppose that water is the cause of the groves being there. On the contrary, the groves are the cause of the water being there. The roots of the Big Trees fill the ground forming a sponge which holds the water. The Big Tree is a tree of life, a never-failing spring all through the hot, rainless summer. For every grove cut down, a stream is dried up." Perhaps Muir failed to understand the magnitude of transpiration, i.e., the vegetation "pumping" soil moisture back into the atmosphere. It is true that forest vegetation regulates the yearly flow of water, thus modifying the distribution of runoff and moderating the extremes. Forest trees play an important role in cycling water from the ground back into the atmosphere. Removal of the transpirational pumps, namely, the trees, has often converted a dry forest into a swamp. The patterns of growth- and site-selectivity all bespeak the species' affinity for high soil moisture and reflect the effect of temperature and relative humidity perhaps more than does precipitation alone. The ratio of evaporation potential to precipitation as an environmental factor is important, and its recognition has produced the widespread belief that the sequoia grows best in protected locations where the average annual precipitation is from 45 to 60 inches (Schubert 1952). Rundel (1969) amplified this interpretation somewhat. He found that sequoia stands on northerly slopes have greater density than on slopes of other aspects, although the total number is generally less. It is perhaps perplexing that these trees, admittedly with an affinity for abundant soil moisture, are much more numerous on westerly and southwesterly slopes, which are potentially the drier ones because of the sun's more nearly direct rays. Thus, for example, relatively moist drainage bottoms and meadow margins, although small in their total acreage, support dense stands of sequoias. Even rocky slopes support some 3% of the total sequoia population in the Giant Forest. Contrary to the records of John Muir, large specimens are fairly common on slopes exceeding 30° and we find some on slopes approaching 45°. We conclude that, regardless of a grove's geographical position, this species favors avenues of surface or subsurface drainage. Although surface drainage patterns are obvious, subsurface drainage may be too obscure for visual identification. The Grizzly Giant in Yosemite's Mariposa Grove, a good example, grows on a low ridge which appears well drained, but an apparently abundant subsurface flow of soil water is undoubtedly a major reason for the tree's great size. Evaporation potential is partly a function of temperature. Since temperature decreases with increasing latitude, average temperatures in the north are the same as at higher elevations in the south. Thus, the mean altitude of sequoia groves in the Kaweah Basin to the south is 6600 ft, whereas it is 5400 ft in the northernmost grove. In the northern groves sequoias are found mostly on south-facing slopes; in the southernmost, on north-facing ones. Altitude and direction of slope, then, indirectly reduce water loss from the trees while maintaining an optimum temperature regime for growth. The stream drainage channels are also channels of cold air drainage, especially if they descend from high mountain peaks, so that the value of available moisture must be pitted against the limitations of winter survival when temperatures may drop to sub-survival values. The same drainage channels, however, transport cones and seeds that are carried downslope where grove extensions form long, narrow fingers and occasional detached outliers. In the Mariposa Grove, flooding, not too many years ago, carried seeds along a tributary of Rattlesnake Creek, and today there are numerous thriving young sequoias mostly at high flood level on either side of the creek. No parent trees grow above them, although some are so close to the drainage divide that chickarees might have carried the cones into the other drainage basin to eat them. Perhaps the best-known and most classical grove extension is along the South Fork of the Kaweah River below the Garfield Grove. A dozen sequoias line the river bank at elevations as low as 2800 ft��"one specimen growing on a gravel bar in the river channel, a most unlikely site (Fig. 29). The altitude is the lowest known in the world for a naturally seeded giant sequoia. An increment boring indicates that this tree was seeded in the middle 1880s, when a torrential flood also floated huge sequoia logs through the town of Visalia some 40 miles to the west in the San Joaquin Valley." I can go on and on with info, but as they point out with this statement: "We conclude that, regardless of a grove's geographical position, this species favors avenues of surface or subsurface drainage. Although surface drainage patterns are obvious, subsurface drainage may be too obscure for visual identification". Surface drainage is from water draining off the surface from rain, snow or flooding from creeks, rivers etc.. Sub surface is obviously from springs, cracks and fissures pumping water upward or a high water table. from the original poster: "In the dry of summer the water table drops to 2' down. Rest of year it's about a foot or less below grade. After a good rainstorm there will be 2-3" puddles that last for days even weeks." I see no indication of swampy area here. Puddles does not mean swamp and after a good rain storm in the Giant Sequoia groves you will see puddles that last for a awhile. I do not see any indication the water in the area is from run off or a collection point. She indicates she is in the mountains, that's exactly the same growing conditions as a Giant Sequoia. In addition, her summer water table is fairly typical of a sequoia grove water table that's not on a mountainside.

Why do people do that? Everything looks better with large trees! After hearing that, I think I'd be inclined to leave the trees and wait to see signs of distress. It does seem like maples can take a lot. The house across the street had a maple that was planted directly under the power lines, so aside from the trunk, the top of the tree was cut in a C. To say it looked odd...! My best friend had maple trees over in Braidwood. She really wanted to plant under them. The roots were practically on top of the soil, so she had someone haul in soil and we spread it out over top of all those roots. When it came to planting, we were forever running into roots. She got out the sawzall and that's how we cut the roots. I've read that you don't put soil over roots, there was no talking her out of it. That was over 18 yrs ago and the trees, when they moved out 2 yrs ago, were still fine. Now this is nothing compared to what's happened to yours. So I don't know. It's just with the birds that you're seeing, I'd be inclined to leave them. I do know a guy though that has a sawzall. I'd probably go ahead and buy a redbud and borrow that sawzall and go ahead and plant the redbud. But that's me and I've done it before. Gray dogwood must be more tame for other people. That was another shrub that we had to remove. At the back of our very small lot, we have a privacy fence. The gray dogwood was near it, then we made a path leading from the garage to a door we'd made in the fence. After 4 yrs the dogwood was coming up on the other side of the fence, the other side of the path and you could tell that the roots were going under the garage. We've got cracks in the floor, so who knows when it's going to pop up! Ha! I planted Silky dogwood the year after I planted the Gray dogwood. I'm not finding the Silky to be anywhere near as aggressive as the Gray was. They have it for sale at the plant sale you're going to. It's Latin name is Cornus obliqua. I also have the Corylus americana. I like it, I like it a lot. For some reason, after I planted it, the Japanese Beetles showed up. I'd never had them before. Maybe just a coincidence. It's a spreader too, but much easier to control with the spade. There's also more viburnums that would do great in shade. I know it says sun to part sun, most of mine are in shade and doing great.