Hi Markowe:I don't know if I can help. Maybe you should to make the change from summer to winter locations gradually,so as not to shock the plants ? Don't know if that's what happens. My Grandmother would "sort of" do that, by moving out them of the sun,near Fall. Then into the house when colder.Did you ever try a humidifyer for dry heat. I have that problem also. It will not only help the plants but you too. When you have the humidity right. You will feel warmer at a lower temp. Cuts you heat costs ! and Sinus problems. Maybe someone can jump in and add to this. LOU

LB - full and partial defoliation is a somewhat advanced technique that is used for different purposes on plants that are very healthy. It can promote fullness and finer ramification (branch structure) by stimulating lots of adventitious back-budding that otherwise wouldn't occur if the plant was simply left to its own devices or if a normal pruning strategy was being employed. It is also very useful in restraining those branches that seem to garner the bulk of the tree's energy outlay, while at the same time forcing more energy to branches in distress because the tree might seem to be avoiding allocation of a fair share of energy to them, for which they suffer as they decline until they finally die and are shed. In short, it's a useful tool to help the grower balance/control the amount of energy that flows to the tree's various energy sinks. Read the first paragraph, or more if you like. Pruning branches back to 2 leaves and allowing 2 branches to grow from the axils of those 2 leaves and repeating the process over and over is the best way to promote fullness in your plant, but you must consider timing.If you did this every month of the year, the plant would soon die. The best strategy is to prune in June so you're removing winters leggy growth, then pinch all through the summer. Sometime in August, you stop pinching & allow the plant to grow unencumbered by pruning all winter long. When the summer solstice is nigh, prune again, follow your pinching routine, and repeat that cycle year after year. If you're repotting regularly and have some sense of what makes a tree pleasing to the eye, there is no reason your trees can't all be spectacular in just a few years. It's not at all difficult to master the basics, which ensures your ability to keep your plants viable & healthy; and learning the basic pruning steps isn't too difficult, either. I won't say a monkey could do it, but it doesn't require a rocket scientist, either. TLT - I'd cut the leaves in half on the top 1/3 of the tree ..... or you could try tenting the tree for a few days, but decide and act soon. The tree's response to drought includes the formation of an abscission layer at the base of wilting and drought stressed leaves where they are attached to the branch/stem. Once this layer has begun to form, it cannot be reversed. Regular scissors are fine, the sharper the better ("sharp" means less tissue crushed at the cut), and cut across the veins. Your leaves might regain turgidity, but several of the Ficus species (especially lyrata and elastica) are known for their inability to return to their same spatial positioning after wilting, and especially after severe wilting, so they might well have a permanent droopy attitude. Fertilize once normal growth has resumed. Wait until you're SURE it's pushing new growth before you fertilize. Fertilizer in the soil solution makes it harder for the plant to take up water - not a good thing immediately after a repot while root function is inhibited. We'll have more opportunities to talk about fat trunks, defoliation, and full canopies. I'm thinking it's better not to overwhelm you with a lot of new ideas that you might not fully understand. I think it would be helpful if you pick a thread about your favorite plant (or start one) and sort of flesh out any major plans a few days before you act on them for a while. Very often someone will learn about a technique new to them, get excited about it's potential benefits, and dive right in to it, learning only later that timing was off or a critical step was omitted. Usually, if you sort of give notice about what you intend to do for your plants on your next days off, you'll get some valuable and helpful input from those who've been there done that. It can save an unnecessary heartache. Enthusiasm is a beautiful thing, but unbridled enthusiasm can sometimes end up fostering eventualities that can dampen the spirit, even if temporarily. In case you can't tell, no one here wants to see that happen. We all want to share in your successes. Al

As a bonsai practitioner, I have to know a LOT about how plants work in order to be successful. Technically, a new leaf cannot grow from the bud in question, only a new branch with the potential to give rise to many leaves can grow there. In every leaf axil (an 'axil' is the crotch formed by the leaf stem [petiole] and the branch the leaf is attached to) and above every leaf/bundle scar (the scar directly under the bud in your image), are a row of latent buds waiting to be stimulated to grow. In healthy trees growing outdoors these buds produce random branching whenever growing conditions are very good. Trees growing indoors, due primarily to lack of light and inadequate air movement, often need these latent buds to be stimulated chemically into becoming active. I'm not talking about them being stimulated by actually applying a chemical stimulant; rather, I'm referring to the change in the plant's chemistry which occurs when the growing tip of the branch is removed. This area at the tip of the branch is called the branch apex, plural is apices, or it's often referred to as the apical meristem. Primarily in that area of the branch, a chemical, auxin, which suppresses activation of these buds is synthesized. Auxin moves only downward toward the roots, so removing the the apical meristem where it is primarily synthesized sharply limits auxin flow and its suppressive influence on the axillary buds we're discussing. This allows another chemical (cytokinin) to become dominant, and one of it's jobs is to activate the axillary buds. This antagonistic balancing act between auxin and cytokinin is the chemical relationship on which almost all pruning strategies are based. This is a Ficus microcarpa cutting from which the apex/apical meristem has been removed. since that halts almost all synthesis of auxin, new branches are forming in the axils of both mature leaves. As these branches develop, many single leaves will grow along the new branches, and they too will have a row of buds in their axils, or if the leaf is shed, above the scar left where it was attached (what your image shows). So, leaves that form at nodes while the branch is extending will always remain a single leaf - like the two mature leaves in my image - they can never be anything but a single leaf. All growth that comes from the dormant buds in leaf axils or (the same) dormant buds above old leaf scars, will always be branches. BTW - these buds remain able to be activated at any time during the tree's life, even if the scars are no longer visible and bark growth has completely obscured the older leaf scars. Questions? Al

I'm on TX Gulf Coast -humid 9a/9b. Two favorite evergreen shade vines are Aristolochia trilobata - tendril twining, waxy leaves, fast growing, odd very long-tailed smallish maroon "dutchman's pipe" flowers; and the intergeneric xFatshedera lizei - the golden splashed green leaved cultivar that goes by a number of cultivar names - 'Annamieke', medio-picta, 'Lemon Lime', 'Anna Mikkels'. Not as fast growing and rampant. Needs support to grow as vine (doesn't have the holdfasts of its Hedera parent). Insignificant sporadic flowers but the foliage is beautiful and it lays relatively flat on a support. Can't speak for other climates but Clerodendron (Bleeding Heart Vine) and Passiflora (Passion Fruit) are "underground runners" in my area - pop up 10-30' from parent plant. Hope you find the ideal solution.