OK Ken - back down :-) I was composing my response while the OP responded so missed the part about fertilizing to offset shearing. Agree that is not a valid reason for fertilizing but to completely dismiss the need for fertilizing, especially if the garden (therefore the plant, any mulching and the soil) has been neglected for an extended period of time is not valid either. Soils often need to be refreshed with nutrients, either via a good organic mulch or with fertilization - necessary nutrients are not present endlessly in unlimited quantities. They become depleted overtime, especially with a mature but untended garden. And "renovation pruning" is not a panacea for all shrubs. Generally that method is used in reference to deciduous flowering shrubs - broadleaved evergreens seldom respond well uniformly to that method and hedge plants in particular are typically approached differently with regards to pruning. Not trying to be contrary, merely accurate :-))

I love old houses - the quality, the history (I was THRILLED when I saw the names of the owners of our then under 5 year old house on the 1930 census), and the style. If I don't win the lottery, I will never live in another "new" build (80's and up) because the vast majority of non custom built homes are just not up to my standards. Of the 4 new builds I lived in in my life, only two were decent. The last decent one had been built by a guy who had previously done commercial building. It was built to last and I have no doubt that one would still stand after a tornado. Because of the commercial background, the finish "prettyness" wasn't there, but those details were added later, by us. The last new build was a nightmare. The "quality" semi custom build was so lacking that I can't even imagine how much worse some of the mass produced really poor quality houses will last. Within the first 5 years the deck was partially rotting (no flashing between the house and it), the roof leaked at the chimney, many of the windows wouldn't work well and/or leaked at the top, lots of the trim wood was rotting out and the floors of both 1st and 2nd floor creaked in almost every spot as did the entire staircase. And then of course you had the "minor" issues like one couldn't use a hairdryer in the master bath before resetting the outlet in the upstairs bath if someone had used a hairdryer in it before the master bath. And the defective shingles requiring a complete reroof at 3 years is hard to forget. My brother has a friend who last year moved into a house in one of those new mass built neighbourhoods in South Carolina. Brand new. 6 months after moving in, a water pipe junction burst (iirc, they thought it hadn't been correctly connected or something) in the attic while they were on vacation and ruined most of the house and their items. The builder denied responsibility and the insurance company was blaming it on the builder since the house was still under "warranty" and it was turning into a huge mess, to say the least. New does not equal free of work and I'd rather strip wallpaper than deal with finding out what corners were cut.

My Mom is moving in 40 days and I have been elected to stage her home for sale afterwards since I had such good luck selling mine in SoFla in '07. Both the new and the old homes are roughly in the same town as is my own, so moving/borrowing pieces is easy. Every single square inch of the house she is selling is in excellent condition- those are our pros. The cons are that this will not be the optimum time to offer a house for sale and the resistance I get from her "not liking" how I am decorating a home that her mother built decades ago. She understands in her head but her heart hurts a bit when she hears that I will be replacing some old light fixtures that her mother loved and neutralizing the "every shade of pink and orange known to man" color scheme that permeates the home. She would not move at all except she is coming on eighty years of age and is in a secluded area a bit too far from me- it takes me too long to get to her and in winter she is near inaccessible. The new house is literally seven houses away from me in a more populated area, so we know it is the right thing for her to do. Just that the process is difficult for her emotionally- leaving an old family home. Best of luck to all of us trying to sell this fall.

Thank you Jane. You have a lovely porch too. I love your willow furniture. You are lucky to have trees to shade it. Ours gets morning sun and can get quite warm very early one. One of these days we want to close in our sleeping porch off the master bedroom with storm type windows all around to make it more of a three season porch. We've not used it in years. Used to go out there in the evenings. I used Windows Paint to the above virtuals. I have an original version of PhotoShop that came with one of those pens (by Bamboo) that a friend gave to me since they already had PhotoShop. I think they run around a hundred dollars or so. I've not looked at them for a couple years now. Both Adobe and Corel have free online trials of their photo editors. I've tried them both and liked different things about each one so I never made up my mind which to buy. Now that I have the Adobe from my friend I should ask for the Corel for Christmas from my hubby.