I live in zone 5, too, and it's a dieback shrub here. I like it pruned to get more colorful leaves. I sacrifice the flowers(smoke) by doing this, but I don't like them anyways. There are different cultivers, but most get to be about 15-20ft. I think. They don't need a lot of fertilizer, so be careful with that.

while it does seem to have lost some branches, I would still advise that you wait until July before pruning those branches off. You see, I own a royal purple smoke bush and have noticed they start leafing out from below and slowly work themselves up towards the top. My tops haven't fully flushed out and for sometime I thought they were dead too. Except this week when new buds have started to appear. It is very slowly leafing out and I expect it would be another couple of weeks before it's fully foliated. Also -- yes, remove new shoots from the bottom--- unless you wish to make it shrub like instead of being tree like.

Annie, I'm interested in the panchetta. How did you age it? Or, I guess more accurately...where did you age it? I Googled & found a site that recommends hanging in a 60 degree environment with about 50% humidity. I can manage the temperature here during winter but did you just put a humidifier in the room? Did yours get moldy? How long did it hang...10 days? BTW, I had to pay $5.99/lb. for pork belly. Organic, from Whole Paycheck. Annie, is it OK to order a non-organic belly from our regular grocery store...or will it be filled with junk? I specifically asked WW & was told there's never anything injected & the hogs are feed whatever it is that hogs are supposed to eat with no growth hormones or antibiotics. We're trying really hard to reduce the junk in our diet...any suggestions on what we should ask for? I'd love to get the cost down although good organic apple-smoked bacon costs about $12/lb. here. Thanks, Tricia

So I have two radon sources: my crawlspace dirt and my water cistern off-gassing radon (confirmed to be 20,000 pCi/L by water labs). I am suspicious about that high of a reading, sounds like an error. If it is true you are on top of a uranium mine and your radiation exposure is similar to living at Chernobyl.... If these levels are real your area would need to be condemned. What are your air levels reading? You would be better off spray foaming your floor joists, installing heat tape on your plumbing so it doesn't freeze (not touching the foam or anything else), and ventilating the crawlspace with outdoor air. You want to make your house tight so radon doesn't get in, not make openings to try to blow conditioned air out (which is very inefficient also). You should also not have ductwork running through this crawlspace. You will be better off using a granular activated charcoal system for capturing the radon in the water, and the filter material may need to be registered as radioactive waste. I guess doing the external cistern could work. It would have to be very large and would have to sit long enough to off-gas which is not practical for most homeowners but if you have the space to do it (and it sounds like you do) then it should work.