do they shed leaves during cold seasons? or evergreen in warm tropical zones? also, when they produce those purple flowers, do they get fertilized by insects or wind? mine produced a few flowers, i thought that i was going to get some seeds, but the flowers just all died.

Happy anniversary Marilyn Sue. We started dating in HS when I was a junior and he a freshman at Penn State. We married after he graduated and while I was a junior still in college. A year later we had a son and four years later , a daughter. The son has a daughter, the daughter ,a son, and the granddaughter has two babies, boy and girl. So over the half century mark. Yikes!

You bring up a good point about Europe, but there are some key differences between Europe and the US and the way things are handled in Europe vs. the US and you touched on this in your second sentence. And this also applies to antique houses in America, too. Then there is the concept of what is a "natural progression" and I think this concept is something that has not been well followed in the US and that's why there is a problem with "dated". Many people live in houses that are hundreds of years old in Europe. There was no such thing as a "bathroom" in many of these houses for the first couple hundred years of their existence. So, whatever is the first "modern" (~20th c.) bathroom that would have been put in a particular house is always appropriate. And then any subsequent bathroom style up to about 1980. (And not much beyond 1980 or so, imo, which I will get into in a bit). In America, most houses probably got bathrooms in the Edwardian Era up to the Depression, and new houses built after 1900 probably had bathrooms, although I've seen plans without. However, for example, I lived in a building that had no kitchen until 1965, and it had several toilet compartments and probably a room with a sink and bathtub in it somewhere, but not a modern bathroom until 1965. So what's proper in this house? And is a bathroom that was redone in 1955 improper in a Victorian house? Probably not. Really any bathroom that is "newer" than the house (again up to about 1980 or so, imo) is appropriate to the house. Why? because innovations were taking place, and most houses aren't house museums. What happened after 1980 and what is still happening that's problematic in America today? (And maybe not so much in the rest of the world). First, in general, it's one thing to see a very slick contemporary bathroom and kitchen in a 300 year old house, but it's another thing to see a slick contemporary bathroom in a 50 year old colonial revival house. There is much more contrast in the 300 yo house. And what happened after 1980? Up until about 1980, new styles were --new--. the end of the Late modern period was in the 1980s or so and was followed by Post-Modernism which was more or less a statement about reaching an end point in modernism. There is not much left after the white box to pare down. So in the 1980s they started with the fake "Victorian" style bath fixtures and this was followed by revivals of other historic fixtures and elements, and now a prevailing style for kitchen and bathrooms contains a lot of Edwardian and VIctorian inspired elements. It's hard to find a bathroom faucet that is not either a basic style but exceedingly cheaply made; or extremely modern, or faux -Victorian. And that's the crux of the problem: natural progression of bathrooms was always moving forward with technology and new fashions, but now the new fashion is in retrograde, so people are putting in bathrooms that have many elements that are taking stylistic cues from 1910 -1930 more or less in contemporary houses from 1980. It doesn't make stylistic sense. People argue that this is the "current" style going into new construction so it's appropriate but I am not sure. If the current style going into new construction was a bathroom taking design cues from 1955, I think people would see that that looked goofy in a 1980 house. And then there are decorative styles in America that are displaced by geography or are version of something that doesn't really exist. To go back to the OP, there really isn't any such thing as a "Tuscan" bathroom, even in Tuscany. Not how it would be interpreted in America. And while much about the building style may make a bathroom in the Southwest look very appropriate: adobe and or adobe style plaster, wood ceilings, saltillo and talavera tile---that, isolated in a bathroom in New Jersey, when the rest of the house is not that style--again, was never really right, so when that's out of fashion, it looks really wrong. Finally, in new construction, kitchens and baths have gotten larger, more expensive, and higher quality material-wise, than before, and somtimes this is just too elaborate for a house from the middle of the century. There is nothing the matter with improving on quality, there is no need to replace a plastic tub surround with another. But a marble bathroom with detailed nickel fixtures and a crystal chandelier in a modest Cape Cod or rancher just looks displaced. It's the fashion now, so it's what people will do, but it's going to look more dated than something that fit in with the rest of the house better.

Well, I enjoy pruning and directing shape. I try and get to newly installed shrubs during their second or third year to sort of make sure they are growing evenly and in good proportion- no wacko branches growing wild or ruining the form I have in mind. I like to do this while they are still small enough to get into and around easily. After their basic shape is established then going forward I have to do very little. I look at them each spring before they leaf out because it's easier to see their structure then and I clear anything that does not fit into my idea of how I want them to look from my primary viewing angle. Most of my paniuclatas have ground cover or smaller shrubs in front of or even underneath them- these I clear out some of the lower/smaller branches. I have a big yard but even then I always seem to need more space with dappled sun for hostas etc. and this gives me tons more space than if I let the hydrangeas take up all the space underneath. Here's a huge Quickfire (fence is six feet) that shows how I lift up the bottom to allow space for plants underneath and around it. There are some young hostas and other things under there.