Ok, whatever. I'm still waiting for somebody to stop by my house with a pair of snips, lol. I'd pretty much let anybody go to town on anything large enough to block the path. Here are some things that need thinning: Lonicera sempervires 'Sulphurea' Jasminum multiflora Thunbergias alata and grandiflora Trachelospermum jasminoides 'Yellow Star' and 'Variegata' T. asiaticum and T.a. 'Variegata' Passiflora caerulea, incarnata and 'Lavender Lady' Bignoia capreolata 'Miss Jeckyll'(maybe a mislabeled 'Mosaic', though) Salvia uliginosa Malvaviscus arboreus Hibiscus syriacus, pink Odontonema strictum Piper auritum Hibiscus rosa-sinensis 'Capatiola', 'Cooperii', 'Red Hot', and some unnamed, colors and white. Hibiscus acetocella Meyer's Lemon Buddleja alternifolia Ruellia brittonia, pink and blue. You can pull as many of these out as you can carry. Crocosmia crocomifolia, ditto. Brugmansia suavolens, bring the BIG loppers, lol. Quisqualis indica................. Oh, yeah. A friend had me cut back her massive plumerias yesterday and gave me most of the cuttings. I've been handing them out like candy. Really, come get 'em, lol.... I made some offers for postage. One person sent their's, no word from one, one didn't understand how to use PayPal. Sigh. I guess I'll have two boxes of cuttings to stick unless I just toss them.

I took a large, established rectangular perennial garden much like yours, cut it in half diagonally, set a rough-cut granite bench in the middle of the long side and curved the edges of it off to either side of the now triangular bed. The linear edges of the rectangle offended the vision I had for my garden--I was going for a more soothing, relaxed look. It's now got curb appeal and when sitting on the bench, one faces my French curve butterfly bed. Cutting it in half also substantially reduced maintenance, mulching, weeding, etc. FYI - I drove my truck to a nearby quarry, loaded the patio granite in the truck myself & hauled it home. Migrant workers laid the patio in concrete so the cost was well within my meager budget.

There was a dog at work who at age 2, for no reason whatsoever, became vicious. Absolutely, positively, unapproachably horrible biter, to everyone including his owners. Like a switch was flipped from nice to mean. We consulted a boarded behaviorist about the dog, and she said that it can happen. Usually male dog, usually neutered at ~6 months, appropriate socialization, training, and upbringing and they just suddenly become mean. She said she used to try to work with people, but hasn't had much success and recommends euthanasia because these dogs are downright dangerous. The client in this case did euthanize the dog after about a week, hoping maybe the problem would go away. We had another client and for the life of me I don't understand them. They brought a terrible horrible evil mean biting cocker mix from the shelter, on death row. I have no idea why they wanted THAT dog. Anyway, before they even took it home they brought it to the vet to be checked out. Lucky me was the only tech on duty at that time. They had him in a carrier and couldn't get him out because he kept growling. OK, maybe he's cage-protective I say, and suggested that I could put the carrier on the table and open it from the top. Fine. Did that. Dog tried to eat my face. Literally. I immediately put him down on the floor and he tried to jump up and eat my face. He was relentless, jumping and attacking me. Thank Gog he still had on the leash that the shelter had on him because he wouldn't let them take that off either. I used it to hold the dog away from me while I put the carrier back on the floor, dragged him into it, and slammed the lid back on. The owners saw what happened. I hadn't done a THING to the dog. They said he was scared. I said take him back to the shelter. They said he'd be killed. I said good. Only time I've ever said that, and I meant it too. They saw our aforementioned boarded behaviorist and refused to do anything she suggested. She had recommened anxiolytic drugs and a Nothing in Life is Free program. Also to feed him separately in a different room because he was incredibly resource-protective, that kind of thing. I have no idea what their deal was, thought it was "mean" to make a dog sit before they fed it and to "drug" the dog (it was suffering needlessly from severe anxiety- it NEEDED drugs and ws cruel to keep him without drugs IMHO). As far as I know they still own this piece of crap. They can't pet him at all, can't take him for walks outside, has to go in their yard separate from their other dog, has to be kept separatly from their other dog (meaning wife is in one room of the house with the evil one and husband is in another room with the nice dog- can't be good for a marriage), if anyone comes over to the house they have to cage him, he's sent the woman to the ER 2 times last time I heard, and he has to be presented to our clinic heavily sedated AND muzzled, and sometimes we still can't do a thing with him. All this time, they could have ended that dog's suffering, and I do believe that living with that level of anxiety is suffering greatly, and rescued a really nice shelter dog from death. I simply don't understand why they have that dog. He's never going to be a good pet for anyone, he's a danger to have around, and they didn't even try to implement a plan that may have made him OK (I doubt it though). They say that they are against animal suffering and couldn't euthanize it, but that dog is beyond miserable and they won't help it. I don't get it at all, and I told them that I wouldn't work with it ever again. Meant it too. Boss OK with that. I can understand people who have pets that are nice to the owner and nobody else. 99% of the time, the pet is just with the owner, so 99% of the time the pet is great. As long as the owner takes appropriate precautions when the pet has to be around other people, it's fine with me. Even though I get my butt kicked by such animals on a regular basis at work. I'm the person, and I've got my ways. I love some chemical restraint is all I'm saying. I guess my answer to the original question, "why do people keep mean animals" is the same for all "why do people do that" questions- because people are stupid.

When trimming, keep in mind that this is a matched set of “bookends,” so they should be exact, mirror image duplicates of each other as much as possible. I would think of the trimming project as a challenge … as if you were involved in a manufacturing process making a machine project on a lathe or something along those lines. It would not be at all detrimental to use a tape measure to double check dimensions for matching throughout the process. I would rough out the shapes of both before fine tuning either. The place to begin is standing back well away from them trying to envision what they are to become. If the shrub needs to be moved a little left, right or forward, this is the time to notice it and account for the adjustments you’ll need to make in the cutting. It really barely matters where the plant roots are located. If you the shrub to be 4” to the right, “move” it there with the cutting process. It’s important to envision the finished product before cutting because there is a substantial part of them that won’t get any cutting at all. If you just charged up on them and started hacking away, there’s a good chance you’d cut some wrong parts off. Since the pair of shrubs are matched, the first cuts to make should determine the height. (To match the pair, follow a line on the siding of the house as a guide. Don’t measure from the ground.) Keep in mind that you do NOT want to cut at the place where you envision the limits of the finished product to be (the red line in picture.) There are three reasons for this. As soon as you finish cutting the plant it’s going to grow and if you cut it at the finished height, in a short time it will grow too large. The second reason is because, even though you tried hard to make it a perfect shape, it’s not going to end up as perfect as you’d hoped for. Later, when you need to trim and try to perfect it again, you will want to be cutting only in the newer, softer, easier-to-cut foliage, rather than in the hard, sticky, woody portion. If you don’t cut a little smaller in the first place, you’ll probably end up where the next cutting has to dip somewhere into the woody portion of the plant again. This is a royal pain. If you make the plant a little smaller to begin with, it gives you a “cushion” against having this happen. In general, I find that people have a strong resistance to cutting the plant smaller (the blue line in the picture.) But do yourself a favor and get over this. If you mistakenly cut this plant to a stub, in two years you’d barely remember your error because it would be pretty large again. In cutting it just 6” less than you want it to be, in two months you’ll barely remember or notice that you did that. The third reason you want to cut the plant a little smaller than the “finished product size” is because the more foliage you remove from the top portion of the plant, the greater it is that you expose the bottom portion (the part that is undercut and desperately needs to grow) to more light and an improved chance of quicker growth. Between the yellow line (which represents the ground plane) in the picture and the shrub, there is nothing at all to cut … until you get higher up to the blue line. At this cavity at the lower portion of the shrubs, all the foliage will be left untouched so it can continue to grow as quickly as possible. The goal is to keep the upper portions of the shrub trimmed so that it shades the lower portions the least as possible. Even if you want the shrubs to be larger than what I'm showing, for now you should trim them as I'm showing because you're in a corrective phase trying to regain the lost lower foliage. In your second-to-last picture, it shows how a subordinate, adjacent shrub has encroached on the Yew, which is clearly the more important shrub. The lesser shrub should be trimmed such that this doesn't happen.