Annette - I usually give the clematises some clematis fertilizer in spring - if I remember! I forgot to this spring and it hasn't seemed to hurt them.... :-) But I figure all that prolific flowering must use up a lot of energy so I will try not to forget to fertilize next spring. DH likes to garden too - he's largely responsible for the veggies in pots and, because I'm physically disabled, he does the heavier labour like digging big planting holes and pruning tall things. We generally work well together in the garden - although he sometimes misunderstands my instructions and cuts down the wrong thing or does something 'the wrong way' :-) But nothing dire happens... His assistance is vital to the garden here and is greatly appreciated by me! I know somebody like that clematis person you mention. She has a 10 acre property - and goodness knows how many clematises! She is 'responsible' for getting me into growing more of them. She and her DH are moving to BC this fall, so that clematis lady will have some competition soon... :-)

Very funny turkey photos...lol. I think my DH might have a heart attack if a turkey started walking around on the top of the car. He's already wondering why it is that the birds choose the branches right above the car to sit and make their deposits. [g] I've had my hummingbird feeder out for a couple of weeks with no visitors. I saw the Oriole in the yard a couple of times, so I decided to add a half an orange to the top of it. That's not working either. Yesterday I saw an Oriole fly right over the orange without so much as a glance. [g] Not that we don't have a pile of birds out there. Grackles and Starlings seem to have made us home base. I've seen a couple of them being followed by adolescents squawking for some food. All the usual cast of characters and a few pigeons have decided to drop in since last year. We're not putting out any cracked corn, just safflower and black sunflower. I was wondering the other day if you can have too many birds. They're fighting over the two birdbaths, so I added a third and still the robins and the starlings are competing for top bird position. Somedays I need to clean and refill the birdbaths twice a day. I've been seeing lots of bird droppings on the fences and along the rock edging of the perennial beds. Lately, DH fills the feeders and in a few hours, they empty one and are halfway through another. Anyone else think they might have too many birdy visitors? [g]

I don't live in zone 3, but for what it's worth, I have grown the Blue Moon wisteria for 3 years now in zone 4 and can't say enough good about it. Since it flowers from new wood, there are no flower buds during the winter to be killed by frigid temperatures. If the vine lives, it will flower, and flower early. I have tried growing the chinese varieties, which die back, but Blue Moon has had no die back of even the smallest vines. Here are some pictures of my 3-year old vines in bloom over a trellis bench:

We're in totally different zones so I'm not sure how much difference that would make in how a wisteria would perform. It looks like yours is a Japanese wisteria (it's twining clockwise; Chinese wisteria twines anti-clockwise) My young Japanese wisteria bloomed for the first time in 2012 at 5 years old. I keep my wisterias well pruned - pruning seems to be the key to getting them to bloom as young as possible. I found the Japanese one kept fooling me by producing relatively fat buds that on my Chinese one would be flowerbuds but turned out to be just foliage buds. When the Japanese one developed flowerbuds last spring, there was no mistaking them because they were huge! But I need to check more often this spring to catch the distinction between them and leaf buds at the very earliest growth stage. Looking at the first picture in particular I can see that yours is near to flowering age because of the short spur with a lot of buds. Once the plant develops those, it's getting near to blooming age - although it may still take a year or two to actually produce its first flowers. I prune a bit differently than what is usually recommended. I prune all whippy new growths back into the framework I want to develop and only allow long growth if I want to extend the size either vertically or horizontally. That makes for very dense growth and promotes lots of flowering spur development. It seems to work for both the Chinese and Japanese one. I grow both mine as 'trees' to make controlling them easier. A long-arm pruner is a very handy tool to do the pruning. I never fertilize. Wisterias are legumes and fix their own nitrogen. I think pruning is more important to flower development than fertilizing. BTW the stems on yours are not 'thick and old' - that's still a young plant. The stem will become more tree-trunk-like as they age and if you keep them pruned well. If I were you, I'd only neaten it up a bit at this point, trying to preserve any stems with those stubby growths. Then see what it does (i.e. do any flower buds appear?) when growth resumes. Then be diligent about pruning/training new growth to shape it as you want. Japanese wisteria flowerbuds May 2012: In bloom - 5 year-old plant: At 3 years old (small 'tree' on right side of bed) with 10 year-old Chinese wisteria 'tree' in flower in the background on the left). Enjoy your wisteria but you MUST prune it to control it (and get the best flower performormance or it will be a monster! Pruning is a weekly - sometime daily - chore when the vine is young and in the season of maximum growth.