when we bought our house there were 32 crepe myrtles inthe yard. the previous owner had NEVER trimmed any of them nor any of the other trees other than 1 apple tree. the CMs along the drive are roughly 20 ft apart, yet when we moved inthey were all grown together almost in a hedge! i had to do sever pruning to get them to look like a CM should look, and even now 3 years later some look like crap because they have not filled back in. mild pruning is best, never take more than about 1/3 the total volume of the tree away at any one cutting. mine suffered because i took about 60% and it took them a couple years to start recovering. you can cut the tops completely out of a CM, leaving just the main trunks, but i prefer to just selectively prune them instead of commiting "Crepe Murder" as the local horts call it. as far as the compost heap, just keep piling it on, it will start back cooking again.

Well, I have no clue why Floridata (usually reliable sourse) made such statement, but here is a quote from not less respected sourse, Missouri Botanical Garden, 'If bloom is not a concern, stems may be cut back hard in early spring each year to a framework to induce growth of vigorous new shoots with slightly larger than normal leaves. Such hard annual prunings will control size, but most likely at the expense of profuse flowering. Hard pruning is more often done on the purple-leaved cultivars.' My personal experience is in full compliance with above statement. I guess, 'most likely' are a key words. Here is a link that might be useful: Kemper's Cotinus page

I prefer to cut back as soon as new growth appears. I like getting rid of last years growth and looking forward to nice fresh foliage. Al

Oh, and I'm leaving the crinum ('Elizabeth Bonsanquet') alone. I figure it's ugly, but it looks like the dead leaves are protecting the bulbs for some reason, so it can stay as is. Pretty much the same with a beautiful variant of setcreasea I got from BB a few years ago...the dead leaves seem to be sheltering the smaller leaves at ground level. I am going to scour the yard this weekend for every shred of canna, since last year was just awful with leaf rollers for me...and I'm going to go down the street and offer to clean out a neighbor's cannas also. I think this is where the leaf rollers are camped out for the winter, as I noticed last year they never cleaned them up at all, the new growth just came up out of the dead stalks. I sure hope they don't mind me asking...I have some really nice ones that I haven't been able to enjoy at all in the past 2 years.