zen

There are a few kinds of ligustrum that grow here and i'm sure there as well Chinese privet will have larger darker green leaves that are shinier and will have larger flower drupes, where as the most common will probably be ligustrum vulgare, then there is L. ovalifolium or California privet with somewhat pointed leaves I use omstly vulgare which seems to be the stuff growing around here taking over the undergrowth. When young they are VERY flexible as far as branch and trunk bending (untill they reach about 1" or thicker) and as far as soil mix used, watering regimine, and general abuse. They ramify easily just by cutting back new shoots to the first two leaves or so, or you can get a twig to ramify further out by just cutting it a little bit further out than the leaves where you want the branch to end, in other words they do die back a bit to the nearest leaves so if you leave a little twig sticking out and then cut that off later. When you do a hard prune (trunk chopping without leaving any green is a bad idea, as it leaves the entire trunk to die back and shoots up alot of new suckers at the base) but you can do consecutive chops cutting lower and lower each time and cutting suckers off as they grow, when the new branches start they look like little buds with a few leaves, but let those grow and they will form branches rather quickly. If you have any other or more specific questions post them here and we'll have a good informative thread going here.

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"Although profoundly "inconsequential," the Zen experience has consequences in the sense that it may be applied in any direction, to any conceivable human activity, and that wherever it is so applied it lends an unmistakable quality to the work."

~ Alan Watts (1915-1973)