Oh, Woody, do you ever have a bad year with anything in your garden? Your pictures always take my breath away. So lovely.

Thyme - The American wisterias bloom on 'new wood' while the Chinese and Japanese ones bloom on mature flowering spurs on 'old wood'. That's why the American ones start blooming right away. It takes a few years - and proper pruning - to develop the flowering spurs for the Chinese and Japanese ones. My experience has been that the Chinese one developed the flowering spurs quickly and easily, probably partly because it seems somewhat inclined to produce summer flowers on new growth if it has been pruned, and partly because it is a grafted plant. The Japanese ones don't have that summer flowering ability I gather. My Japanese one actually has had visible flowering spurs for several years now so it appears to be just a matter of getting it mature enough. Last week we went to the nearby Royal Botanical Gardens to take a close look at their Japanese ones to see if I could determine exactly which buds are flwering ones. From what I could see, the flowers appear to arise somewhat differently than the Chinese ones since they are accompanied by a burst of leaf growths; the flower raceme is in the center of it all. Seeing the the blooming Japanese ones at RBG made me worried that I might have been accidently pruning off the emerging raceme, thinking it was whippy new leaf growth! So it's hands-off pruning the new growth on the Japanese one for awhile :-) On the Chinese one, it is very clear which buds are the flowers long before any visible growth appears. The Chinese one produces flowerbuds separate from the leaves, which don't start appearing until after the flowerbuds start extending. The ease of identifying flowering growth will no doubt also be true for the Japanese one once I've seen it flower for the first time :-) My wisteria book describes the American ones scent a 'musk'. Like most fragrant plants, the scent is strongest on the Chinese one in early morning and evening. In mid-day you almost have to have your nose in the flowers to really get a good whiff of the scent. I don't know if that will be true for yours as well or not. Grafted Chinese or Japanese wisteria are best to ensure relatively quick blooming because grafted plants usually/should mean it was started from a plant that had already flowered - i.e. is mature. My Chinese one is grafted - there's an obvious graft-union. I suspect the Japanese one is a rooted cutting as I see no graft-union. So it was probably not flowering wood. But the variety, 'Lawrence', is known for its hardiness and being an early and prolific bloomer, so I shouldn't have to wait too much longer. I think there's much nonsense repeated about such things as root pruning and otherwise abusing your wisteria. All they need is proper and diligent pruning of new growth - and time to mature. And a lot of the detailed 'proper' pruning instuctions you find make it too complicated and people tend to give up and let them run amok, which is a big mistake and the main reason they...

Thanks you guys. I think I'll remove the ones I have then and just "suck it up". The wall is about 40 feet long. Most estimates say that Blue Moon will get up to about 25 feet in a few years... so can I really get away with just getting two Blue Moon? Or would it be nice to get 3 so that they fill in a bit faster? I'm going to remove one of my other wisteria, too, and just replace it with one of my roses that I was looking for a spot for. It sounds like it's too dangerous to keep the wisteria on the wall with other roses... that they might get eaten. But they'd be ok on a wall by themselves I imagine, especially if I get the Blue Moon variety instead.

Oh, that's wonderful Summerfield! I wish I could just build that almost as you have drawn it! Unfortunately, I've got some restrictions I have to work within due to the lot I have and city setbacks. I've been reading "The Not So Big House" book (loving it, thanks for the recommendation minneapolisite) and was looking at some new ideas from my original layout. **This is pretty rough** and there's a bunch I really don't like on it just yet, but I wanted to give an update. What I like most about my latest update is more windows in the main living area on the south side of the house and all three living areas having direct windows instead of the dining room being sandwiched into the middle of the house. I also like the shared entry so that the 'nice' entry doesn't end up being for guests only. I hate the way I have the pantry laid out, but I do like the idea of a good sized pantry with room for the chest freezer (currently in the basement in our house today). Also, this opens up the living room for a bit more space. My favorite things about the plan you've drawn, Summerfield, are both of the bathrooms, laundry and master closet. Those are the areas I'm struggling the most with. (as well as the whole bedrooms side of the house...) We may have a small television in the kitchen, and temporarily in the living room, but once the basement is finished we would only have the kitchen tv. So no need to build a dedicated spot for it on the first floor. Site Plan: