Illustrator - two questions, resizing without distortion and cropping objects?

Question

Adobe Illustrator

Hello, two stupid questions, on YouTube about cropping through layers for the illustrator, I didn’t find even. I tried clipping masks, but it cut off not what is needed) the top of the leaves, but it is necessary that the bottom be cut off.

That's what happened, cut off up, but you need to bottom.

The second question is about reducing the image of the layers, I tried to reduce it in 2 ways, it distorts a little.
Let's say there is a logo, it distorts the branches in the leaves, why, dick knows.
Before I reduced it.

After reducing, I selected all the layers, held down the shift and pulled it down and the image decreased evenly, but the trouble with the branches on the leaves.
They even some fat steel, blurred.

Answer 1

1. The clipping path hides everything that is not inside it. You need to make it like this
2.

They even some fat steel, blurred.

Turn on stroke scaling
3. Look at some illustrator courses (there used to be good courses at lynda.com ), by clicking and asking questions on the toaster, you will master it for a very long time.