Just a quick update on my growing projects

Trident maples -
I ended up getting about 11 seedlings to sprout. Out of 100+ seeds, only 11 sprouted. Not a very good return.
The trident maples are small and growing slow. Very slow. They look miserable to be honest. I wouldn't necessarily call this a failure, as any success is still a success. Having said that, I think the best thing to do in the future would be to purchase a few more established trident maple seedlings, maybe about 2-3 years old. Seeds from ebay seem to be crap!

Japanese Maple (deshojo)
I ended up getting about 45 seedlings to sprout. Out of 100 seeds ordered, I only received about 95. Of those seeds, I only planted about 72. The rest I gave away to a friend at work, and at least some of those were sprouting when I gave them away. I'm not good at percentages, but of the the 72 seeds I planted, 45 sprouted. All in all, a pretty decent return.
The deshojos have been slow to sprout. Most have their first set of true leaves. Some have dropped their seed leaves. Personally, I don't care for the leaf color. It's too burgundy. I would prefer a more light red coloration. However, the leaves themselves and the seedlings look healthy. They're not growing as fast as I'd like, but I think that's a function of the cool weather. Overall, I would call this growing project a great success.

Azaleas -
My azalea drastic pruning project has been going great! Azaleas are continuing to grow very well. Azaleas are responding very well to the drastic pruning of the branches and roots with lots of new budding on the old branches. I bought some more azaleas this spring and drastically pruned; they're already showing new buds on old wood.

Mugo Pine -
I don't think I've spoken much about this guy. Purchased mugo pine last summer from Home Depot and performed drastic pruning of foliage and roots. I didn't see any new growth and for a while I thought I might have destroyed the tree. I've never grown a mugo pine and I thought I might have pruned it out of season. The tree only cost me about $6, so if it turned into a big failure then I was only out about $6. The lessons learned from a tree pruning failure would have been worth the $6.
It was not a failure though. I started seeing new growth early in the spring. I allowed the new growth to develop into candles and just cut back the candle growth to a couple candles per twig. The mugo is on its way to becoming a decent pre-bonsai, I think.

Japanese Andromeda -
Pieris japonica. New project. I just bought this little guy from Home Depot about a month ago. I liked the flowers and it had a very interesting trunk. I left it alone until the flowers faded and yesterday I pruned it back. Not too hard, as it already had some interesting trunk structure. I cut the roots back by about half. We'll see how this guy develops.

It's mid May and it's still cool here. Sunrise is at 5:30, sunset at 8:50. We're already getting almost 15 1/2 hours of sunlight daily. My growing area is not getting a lot of direct sunlight, mostly partial shade. Despite the long light cycle, I think it's too cool. With the partial shade, I think my growing area is still too cool to expect robust growth.