Hello, everyone. Please bare with me as I try to explain what happened with my clematis and concerns I have with it.

I was at a friend's house last spring and I noticed she had a clematis growing in her front yard (the soil was VERY sandy, moist, full of ANTS). It was trying to vine out, but my friend didn't care for it and didn't give it proper place to do so, so it was just going on the sidewalk and climbing on top of itself.

I couldn't take it anymore, so in the summer, I dug it up (HUGE root ball) and took it to my home. I had to cut pretty much all of its foliage since it had climbed all over itself and the flowers inside were not their best (smaller than some that were on the sidewalk).

After I was done giving it a haircut, it only had a leaf or two left... and it was down to its ROOTS... I didn't know what to do with it at this point and was just going to throw it away. I threw in a 2-gallon paint container (clean) and left it there for a few weeks (outside). I noticed it was growing (slowly, but surely). By late fall, it had pretty long vines and lots of foliage, but no flowers. Before I decided to take the container in the garage, I cut the plant down to its root ball again, put more dirt in (since it didn't have any), and just left in the garage this winter.

I was doing spring cleaning and to my surprise, it has about 10 shoots from the root ball and they are all growing UPWARDS, strong!

What should I do with it? The flowers I remember from this clematis were medium-sized, pale purple and it became deeper in the center. Should I re-pot in a bigger container? How do I make sure it flowers for me this summer?

Any tips or suggestions will be appreciated.