Not a horticulturalist/botanist, but I travel in the same circles. I do many presentations and demos/workshops for area gardening communities. Thanks for asking. It's normal, especially under low light conditions like you usually find indoors, for trees to shed their lower and inner foliage. This happens in nature, too, because the tree is able to 'recognize' parts (leaves/branches) that aren't pulling their own weight. IOW, they are using more energy than they are making. The tree recognizes this as a bad deal, as far as its survival is concerned, and sheds the parts. Before it sheds them, it 'recycles' all the nutrients and bio-compounds it can from those parts, and uses it to grow longer or taller - usually in search for the light that the shed parts weren't getting. You can trump this natural tendency by fooling with the tree's hormones. If you cut off the growing tips of branches, you greatly reduce a hormone (auxin) that stops dormant buds from activation. This is why your shrubs can be pruned in neat little cubes & balls of tight foliage. Cutting off the tips of branches or stems makes lots more branches behind the pruning cut. Where the new growth occurs depends on several things. How much you cut off, and how many of the growing points you remove. This is a pretty complicated subject, but basically, the more energy your trees have stored, and the more energy they are capable of making at the time of the chop, and the more you cut off, the greater will be the surge of new growth from back-budding. Right now, you're lacking the 'energy it can make now' part - unless you have very good supplemental lighting. Because you lack the 'right now' part, it's better to wait until next summer to do the hard cutting, but you can prepare for the work now by some light pruning and getting cultural conditions as close to perfect as feasible. Air layering is used to make new plants. It isn't very effective as a tool to create back-budding until the layer is separated. You might be able to root the cuttings you take off the top. I'm not familiar with propagating your plant, but I can find out and help you with instructions if you like. It's not that I'm not familiar with whatever method works best. Once you terminate a branch or stem by cutting off the apical meristem (the growing tip of the branch), the branch can never extend again; but, if you review the way I cut back the China Doll, you can see that I simply took a newly emerging branch and trained it vertically as the new leader. You can't even tell. This technique is used very often in bonsai to make the trunk tapered and look old. It's also useful for correcting houseplants that can't support their own weight because they are starved for light. Whenever you work on trees, you need to be patient. They don't respond to us being insistent that they hurry up. ;o) They're on tree time & we're on people time, they're different. Chopping the tree at the right time will usually yield a branch you can train to the vertical within a few weeks. Tip-pruning now MIGHT force a branch you can NOW train to the vertical so that when you DO make your chop (just above the new branch), you already have the new leader prepared. Unfortunately, now is not a good time to do any serious work. Your plant needs its foliage for the low-light winter ahead, but you can tip prune. That is you can remove all the growing points at branch ends, which will force back-budding and more branches. There are some other cultural things that would be good to pay attention to as well. If you need guidance I'll help you with those issues, once you decide how you'd like to move forward. Take care. Al

Bellegallica, I'll have to report back later on Burlington and RVR's versions of Rose du Roi, since I just received the RVR version this spring. The canes and foliage do look different, but the RVR rose is so young, I can't evaluate it properly, yet. The one from Burlington repeated its bloom throughout the hottest parts of the summer (its first year) without any special pruning but did not sacrifice growth for bloom (I was too curious to remove buds). Christopher makes a good point about the other roses that are mixed up in the CdC mystery. Perhaps that original feeble, flesh colored rose has been replaced by the more attractive and stronger-growing Hybrid Perpetuals. But maybe it still exists, being sold under the names of those very roses that are being sold as CdC ...and each other. This does sound like a mystery worthy of some space in the garden. But I don't think I'll order Heirlooms 8ft tall rose that resembles Jacques Cartier and doesn't rebloom... I'll just go visit Carol, and see it in her garden!

Ouch, I'm still running SP3 on a Gateway Notebook and a Dell desk top (2007 model) and have no problems. I'm thinking of also updating an HP Notebook, but wait as I continue to read about SP3 problems. My Gateway, most used by me, has AVG 7.5, the AVG AntiSpy, Spybot, SpywareBlaster, and SuperAntiSpy.. and I haven't detected any problems, albeit when I run the anti spyware programs they usually find some bad guys....which I delete and go on my way. I'll take a read of the link provided above when I get some time.

False windows are done a lot on commercial buildings (to hide view of suspended ceilings, partitions, etc.) and sometimes on a residence. The window would be exposed on the exterior and would not be visible from the inside because it's covered up with drywall or some other material. Consideration must be made as to how one intends to mask the view through the glass of the false window. "Spandrel glass" is often used in commercial projects (a dark non-fading non-see through thick glass), but it is recommended that the window be somehow ventilated on the interior to prevent heat buildup and product failure. Some have simply painted the glass black, but that could lead to problems from heat buildup. For residences, I've most commonly seen it utilized on fake dormers to match the other functioning dormers. You could google "spandrel glass" for more info.