The buds are early in flower but still stretching. Thick white stigmas popping out of all the bud sites. And there's a beautiful purple color that's beginning to show on the early sugar leaves. I defoliated only a couple of the largest fan leaves off the main stem. The were bigger than my hand and blocking nearly all the lower sites, so I felt it was beneficial. The spacing has been good on all the branches and I haven't needed to remove any other foliage besides the big boys. I did also remove the absolute lowest budsites because at this point there wasn't any chance they would ammount to anything