october

Hello Legato and Lehket. Ahhhhhhhh so much to be said. Lets start with the pruning and pinching. The best advice I can give would be to take a short class on the trimming on junipers. This is not my only advice, but its my best advice. If you do want to tackle this on your own. I do have some pointers. Use scissors or pruners to make the big cuts. This means branches and even some sub-branches that have to be eliminated.
Pinching is more used for refinement and/or to maintain the shape once the style is established. Also, keep in mind that the tree has alot of growing to do. So as long as you don't make any serious branch removal mistakes, your minor mistakes will fill in.
When cutting, other than main branches, you always want to " cut back to something ". In other words, if you have a big piece of foiliage and there is a part that is sticking way out. That long piece is probably too hard to " pinch off " If you use scissors, cut it back to where it connects, so there is no stub. Also when you pinch you just kind of pull off the little piece you are removing. Pinching works in a different way than cutting. If you cut a green piece of foliage, it will turn brown on the tips. In the initial styling you will probably have to use scissors and get some brown, that is to be expected. When you pinch the piece off, the piece breaks at the weakest point, the natural point, so there would be no browning. However, new foliage grows around the browning part anyway and the brown tips usually fall off in time.
Lehket, I agree with you about keeping evergreens in some light in the winter. In fact I was thinking about posting a thread to find out the percentage of people that share our opinion. I have read many, many articles about the needs of evergrenns in the winter, and believe it or not, about 90% seem to say that evergreens don't need light in the winter. Not saying that this is not so, but I have never deprived my evergreens of light. I was thinking of doing that this year, but I am very afraid that I will have a bunch of dead evergreens at the end of winter. So I don't think I'l be taking that chance. Also, I recently spoke to a felow enthusiast that has 20 years experience and he said, in his oopinion, that he couldn't see keeping evergreens in the dak in the winter. So I guess at least 3 people share our view so far.