HM, What I am saying is we (our organization) have never used the 1/3 rule. First, it is a bit excessive. 1/2 the diameter of the originating limb seems to be more than sufficient. But on top of that, trying to get crews of 20 pruners to correctly identify 1/2rd is asking for trouble. So even when they are 1/2 of the originating limb, they tend to remain intact. Let's just assume this is a tree that is under the age of three...all my trees I do now are on a fruiting wall trellis. Trees are anywhere from 3-6ft apart. The rules I give our pruners are along these lines... For limbs directly off the leader: 1. If the limb is the same size as the leader, cut it off. 2. Tape flat onto the wire any limb that is within 6in of a trellis wire. 3. If the limb is over 45 degrees vertical cut it off. For limbs already on the wire: 1. If the limb is the same size as the originating limb, cut it off. 2. If it is more than 45 degrees vertical cut it off. 3. I want my side limbs perpendicular to my wires, so if the side limb is parallel to the wire, cut it off. 4. Head back wire limb to maintain space with adjacent wire limb. 5. Work back side limbs to 4-9in targeting 1-2 fruit buds on Gala and 3-4 on Fuji or Honeycrisp. Heading back 1 year wood is ok if there is a lack of buds and it is too long. On all cuts above 24in from the ground, make them dirty...a .5 to 1in stub is fine on gala and fuji. 1-2in on Honeycrisp. That is the general template we use..each block gets tweaked a bit based on what I am seeing and what we did last year that works or doesn't work. My pruning probably seems a bit drastic, but my goal in the first three years is to grow as much tree as possible. Any variety on M9 or Honeycrisp on any root, once they go from a vegetative mode to a reproductive mode it is hard to get them to grow. Hopefully that clears it up. It was lunch time...I was hungry.

I don't generally remove scaffold branches of the first tier- they should be permanent, but in a central leader tree with 2 or three tiers, higher branches eventually outgrow lower ones and when they become of too large a diameter to be efficiently fruitful in their space they should be replaced. Merely cutting them back so they don't shade lower scaffolds creates mostly more leaves and wood instead of fruit on oversized branches. I leave small replacement branches a year or two before removing an oversized branch to take its place so it is a continuous cycling in and out of wood. This is one reason an open center tree is less complicated to maintain but once you understand how to do it neither method is very difficult. The problem is that this cycling seems never to be explained in the literature. Lower scaffolds would be removed if you deliberately or mistakenly started with a surplus. Some varieties, including Honeycrisp, are reluctant producers of secondary wood, so it may be a logical choice to begin with extra scaffolds. There is no one way and leaving extra branches can also discourage secondary branching.

I lived with a small patch of goutweed, (sometimes also called "bishop's weed") in my front yard. Every year it would start out great and then get scraggly looking. I read in a random landscaping book that if you weed whack off all the tops AFTER IT FLOWERS, it will come back and fill in and look lush again the rest of the year. I started doing that every year, when the flowers started to go to seed, I weed whacked them and got rid of them. That will also keep it from spreading via seed to nearby area, somewhat. However, the issue you have around your spruces is probably a lot more than just shade. A lot of decomposing spruce needles can affect soil nutrient availability. Also, the roots of the spruces will compete for those nutrients with whatever you plant there, even goutweed. It too may get straggly. I struggled with straggly groundcover plants growing under a tree in my yard for years. Eventually I got big pots and filled them with impatiens for color. In that way, I was able to provide the nutrients the plants needed to grow. Vinca, lamium, or ajuga might also do well, but in general, I have found that groundcover under pines tends to be sparse. If it were me, I'd experiment with a plant called partridgeberry or squawberry first, scientific name Mitchella repens, mixed in with maybe Christmas fern, Polystichum acrostichoides or one of the smaller leaved heucheras. I've seen all of those doing reasonably well under pines. YMMV.

You are the last person who should be building a house in a subdivision. I'm not saying that as an insult, either. I am saying that you have an individualistic mentality that does not go well with having rules or neighbors. You will never be totally happy in that environment. I can see that because my husband is very much the same way. He doesn't look for controversy, though , and likes a drama-free life, but he still wouldn't like being told what he could and couldn't do (either by a HOA or CC&R's).