THINK TWICE, CUT ONCE

OREGON GRAPE HOLLY WITH  A LOT OF UNSIGHTLY WINTER DAMAGE... 

...AND LOTS OF SPARSE, OVERGROWN BRANCHES...

...ALWAYS TRY TO FIND A DORMANT BUD, AND CUT JUST ABOVE IT...

...AND TRY TO MASK THE CUT WITH FOLIAGE THAT GROWS ABOVE THE CUT BRANCH...

LOOKS A LOT BETTER, AND WILL BE FINE AFTER NEW GROWTH STARTS

Wednesday, 8:15 AM.  44 degrees F, wind WSW, moderately gusty,The sky is clear with some haze over the Islands.  The humidity is down, now at 71%, and the barometer is rising, currently at 30.18".  It is a very nice day,
   Neighbor Jon was out fishing for several hours and didn't have a strike.  There is still lots of ice in the channel and the water temperature is only 35 degrees.  No wonder the fish aren't biting.
   There was a lot of bird activity yesterday morning, despite the questionable weather.  Around noon Joan saw a male Baltimore oriole come to the oriole feeder I hung up on Sunday; I put out a plate of oranges and strawberries but that only managed to attract a couple of large crows.  Later in the afternoon I spotted a male chestnut sided warbler down at the lakeshore but it was too quick for me to even try to get a photo.  I heard a lot of warbler song, but I couldn't begin to distinguish what the birds were.  I am not a good enough birder to identify many of the warblers, by sight or by sound.
   I have a large, rambling Oregon grape holly, Mahonia aqujifolium, which is a broad-leaved evergreen (retains its leaves but is not a needled conifer) off the side deck.  It is native to the Pacific Cascades and other northwestern mountains so is usually quite hardy if it remains covered by snow, as it did this year.    Even so, it ended the winter pretty bedraggled, with a lot of burned foliage and some branch die-back.  I never seem to trim it enough, so it has a lot of heavy branches that have few leaves, making pruning problematical.  The challenge was to prune out dead or disfigured foliage and branches and bring the plant under control, without disfiguring it too badly.
   The secret to any such corrective pruning is to always make a pruning cut just above a dormant bud or a branch internode that has an axillary bud.  One should always try to make a cut that will be masked by other foliage, and above all, don't leave "thumbs" of heavy branches with no buds, as they will die back if they have no foliage to support them.  Unless you are doing hedge pruning, avoid simply shearing shrubs, as much ugly growth will sprout from the disfigured branches.
   When doing cosmetic or corrective pruning, take your time.  I use a horticultural variation of the old carpenter's corollary, "measure twice, and cut once." :
   When pruning,"Think twice, and cut once."