When I said "I would pay generously" I meant that I'm commited to pay to Peterson too. I love plants, so I love people who makes that other people like me can enjoy with them. I'm payed for my work and I think that Peterson's work deserves a reward too. I'm not trying to pirate other person's efforts. I'm just trying to get the best cultivars. I've been recently talking to Neal. He is trying to bring his cultivars to Europe, but we have to wait 3, 4 or more years (I don't know why). If somebody is going to sell me some parts of the Peterson's cultivars, I'll put in contact with Neal first in order to he stablishes the correspondent fee.

Ken, if I kill it I'm not buying a new one unless it is one that can keep its promise to stay 6 feet! That's my focus. My other focus is less work, not more in the garden. Botan, That picture is terrifying and beautiful. It must be a West Coast frame of mind thing that helped it get that big. When you say "fifty years ago" do you mean that it 50 years plus years old? And I infer that you were 50 years younger when you crawled under it. Were you an infant whose mother unwisely let you hold a pruning saw or a young nimble guy... which would make that plant at least 70? Doesn't it remind you a bit of the Monterey Cypresses? Thank, all, for the helpful advice. Marie In 50 years I'll be buried under mine, literally and figuratively.

Lavender or purple will likely be the color of the next CM we put in our yard. I prefer purple, mainly because it should give a more appealing contrast to the blue of the vitex we envision planting next to it. I can understand the interest in pruning to maintain a certain "fill" of foliage and bloom in a certain space. What I don't understand is how that awful, whacked look can be tolerated, even for a moment, while awaiting the return of the next season's growth in that desired look. Not meaning to sound all self-righteous here...it's just my gardening style, to use plants that are suited for the space available to them, instead of filling a space with a plant that has to be pruned to hideous (my opinion) to keep the plant within bounds, even if the view of the whacked look is only temporary. If I put, say, a CM variety with a mature size of 15 feet in a 5-foot space, that would just be too much work for me to keep the plant in bounds every year. I would want a plant with a mature size that fills the 5-foot space. I'm not a crape myrtle expert. But experience and intuition tell me (correctly I believe) a couple of things about the "radical annual pruning" of CMs (just my alternative term for the "murder"): (1) It weakens the plants overall; (2) It possibly deprives the plants and visiting wildlife of mutually beneficial, balanced and natural interaction, and (3) While enabling more concentrated bloom and dense top-growth, it raises risk of losing what might be preferred (a more appealing resultant appearance, that is) to storms or pests because of the naturally weaker new growth. My memory is always "dumping," but I believe I remember seeing some summer storm damage to CMs that were whacked the year before. So all the CMs had for foliage and bloom were the short, weak new branches all clustered together. Maybe I just saw some photos of that damage. Anyway, the damage made them look as if they had never leafed-out and bloomed at all, because all the new growth was torn and bent down, if not torn completely off. Those images, more than any others, swayed me away forever from the "murder" manner of pruning.

Don't get too excited. It's not over until it's over. The bail may be lowered. The case will probably hinge on a new law in Illinois that permits use of 'from the grave' testimony -- deceased told others she feared for her life or that the accused told her he'd committed a crime. Then, since this will be the first test of the new law, there's immediate cause for appeal. I hope they can keep him locked up until the trial and during any appeals. We are all sick of his smirking face and antics designed to prejudice as many potential jury members as he can.