You can let go of the stressing out since IME Clematis are quite resilient. The pruning group gives you guidelines to maximize bloom, but if you don't do it correctly, the plant will still grow. You are right that Nelly Moser is one of the clematis that blooms on old and new wood (type 2). The buds you are seeing right now were set last season on old wood. The new growth is the two long stems that are getting longer and probably started from old stems. You may also have some new stems emerging from the base of the plant, or some of your other stems may also send up new growth. You can either let the stems continue to grow and there may be more stems to join it as the season continues, or you can clip off the growing tip of the two stems to see if they will branch out more. I imagine that your plant must have been good-sized to start with to be so large and vigorous in its second season in your garden!

Where I am, sometimes my entire type two plants get pruned by cold to ground level, and they send up stems and bloom just fine, but a bit later than usual. Other seasons they bloom on old wood. My season doesn't seem to be long enough for fall bloom, however, so the September bloom is a bonus for you.

There's an FAQ on pruning Clematis, and another good resource is Clematis on the Web. You can type in part of the clematis name (the search engine doesn't like spaces so only put in one word) leaving the rest blank, and it will give you basic information on that specific variety, or you can instead supply other information to find plants that fit your requirements such as size, color, pruning type, etc. to get a list of plants you might want to check out.

Thank you so very much. I nearly drove myself mad yesterday trying to remember what group it belonged to. I was all freaking out - what do I do, what do I do? Lol, I hate to not do something right. Your reply made me feel so much better as well. I've got to dump this stress.

And yes, I guess it was considered a good size. I knew nothing about what I had purchased until I got home and researched it. I do remember it had 2-3 main stems already, and now I think it's got 4, maybe 5, which I guess is good. I'm like really still learning about this beauty, and wow some of the pics I've seen. I just want mine to flourish, full and lush, to it's full potential.

Funny thing is last year when I put in the ground I planted it just like it told me, which it can't remember now what I did lol, but I did follow the directions, and I actually thought it had died. It just didn't look good at all. I kinda forgot it, was planning on trying another this year, seriously thought it was dead. Boy was I surprised, and we had a cold winter, down in the teens a lot. And it being it's first year in ground it made it ( I couldn't believe it) so now I'm all tickled and can't wait to see what happens with it this year. Just want to do what's best for it.

And I'll check out those links for sure. I haven't been here in awhile so I hope you get this. I really appreciate all your advice and the information you provided as well.

Thank you