hi Susan,
In your wonderful climate, cutting it back by half will be ok, then dig in some organic manure, or fish blood and bone meal and later when it starts to shoot new growth give it a liquid feed of high nitrogen NPK 20-10-10. When the leaves are fully developed again feed with a balanced feed NPK 20-20-20. Kath:)

Thank you for all the suggestions. Do you use steer manure?

If you're going to use steer manure, make sure it's old. If you buy yours in a sanitised form eg pellets, it should be fine to use straight out of the bag. Sheep pellets are also very good. Powdered and mixed with the soil is also useful and it helps hold moisture. However, if you put it on too thickly it can form a crust which will stop water getting through. Lightly fork it to break the seal if this does happen.

If you just hauled it out the pasture, put it into an opaque, heavy-duty plastic baggie and let it age into a no-smell, no lumps, lightly moist substance, probably with an earthworm population. If you don't, and someone was feeding out hay, you could import lots of interesting pasture weeds with tenacious roots.

Blood and bone is also appreciated by fuchsias, especially under a mulch, to stop nitrogen robbing by the working microbes.