And she did, me, in my own garden.

A dozen years ago, I painted this cinderblock wall (about 6' x 14') the sea-foam green color in the photo below. I've never much liked it. I went ahead and planted the climbing hydrangea up it. For the past few years, I've been really wanting to re-paint the wall. I didn't like the green color poking out from being the vine, and I really didn't like it in the winter without the foliage - directly across (12' away) from my living room's bay window - a direct view of a color I didn't like. Here's what it looked like in early October:

So, I'd been debating what to do about the color: wait until the foliage died back & go at the wall with small artist paintbrushes to paint in between the attached vines? Carefully remove the vine, paint the wall & then find a way to tie the vine back up? Or what I finally decided on: just cut it back & hope for the best.

So, last weekend, in the heat wave, I cut my H. Petioralis way back and painted the wall. I left a few thick stems down at the bottom (visible in the below photo), and there are several thinner branches/vines that have layered in and are crawling along the base of the wall. I figure, at some point, it will grow back.

My co-worker told me that her husband once cut her climbing hydrangea all the way back to the ground not knowing it wasn't a weed, and that it grew back after a few years.

So, forgetting (for the moment) the bad horticultural practice of severe cutting back of a mature vine, in early July, in the middle of a heat wave with no rain in the forecast, what do you predict in terms of survival/re-growth.

This is an interesting experiment for me. I will not be devastated if the vine doesn't make it - I can get a new one easily & cheaply. And the ugly green cinderblock wall is no longer!

Here's what that same wall looked like as of Saturday afternoon: