Meanwhile over on Polk Boulevard, alerted by the fate of the sycamores in your neighborhood, I looked for failing trees and gaps in the ranks. I saw none. The allee is still complete and therefore majestic with the trunks rising like pillars in a cathedral to support the canopies that roof over the street.

We don't have hurricanes. Instead we have infrequent wind bursts (I don't understand what causes them) at speeds up to 100 miles per hour, and infrequent tornadoes, though luckily not anywhere my neighborhood over the last eighteen years. I've seen the sycamore rock bodily while the top whips wildly to and fro during one such wind storm. Truly frightening. Easy to imagine the entire tree falling.

Still, I'm inclined to spare the tree a few more years. Maybe I can get our new city forester to advise me.

That reminds me, maybe Alex Shigo can advise me (I mean his book), but where is Tree Biology? I have horticulture books in three bookcases near my desk, another full bookcase in the basement and some books in cartons and after a lot of looking yesterday I still hadn't found it. Hmm, maybe I donated it to The Brenton Arboretum?

The books also claim that clematis is hard to move--something about a root blight that gains entrance via wounds. I've found that the roots are fleshy and maybe nine inches long, radiating in all directions from the crown of the plant (like a teenage boy's hair), so if you spade about five inches under the plant in a circle a foot from the crown, you can lift all the roots intact (with the exception of the hair roots outside the circle) along with an intact cone of soil.  Dig the transplant hole to match the cone, set the cone in place, add soil crumbles in any gaps, water well and repeat the crumbles if needed. From then on you have to water both the cone and the soil around it so the cone never dries out and new roots and root extensions have moisture to grow into. There's lots of lore that clematis need cool roots. I don't know. But I mulch clematis to keep the sun off the ground and plant clematis near a shrub, or the deck, or the house, so they get some shade every day.