more info: the vine was first noticed 10 years ago, 5 years after purchasing the house. it does not come up every year. it's had little to no care. last fall the city hacked everything back after a summer of neglect. all clippings were tossed into the cypress (mulch & frost protection maybe). the soil pictured above is what it's been growing in. it has shade at the bottom and climbs to the sun. it is sheltered from direct sun & wind. i believe it is on the south side of the house. all around the base of the cypress, flat shoots pop up where sun barely dapples through. maybe they send roots back into the soil as they grow along the ground, until they reach the edge of the cypress, then go up to the sun. i exaggerated in saying it's climbed 40', as i was having a double rainbow moment. but it's definitely about 20'. :D thanks so much for the help. ~spazplant

Buford: Yes, that is what my rose looks like. Yellow leaves, green leaves, and new red stems and growth. It's only the Sombreuil though. The hybrid tea, grandiflora, Darlow's Enigma, and Rhode Island Red (Fields of the Woods, Kocher Red?) are as usual. Michaelg, I looked closer this am and found that the leaves do have green veins on many of them. So is it an iron deficiency? Cemeteryrose, I did soak the roses with a Miracle Gro solution this am (contains 0.10 chelated iron) and will see what happens (NPK 15-30-15). I was hoping this would not get complicated, as I like to keep things real simple, but I suppose I have to look into the compost situation now. My mix, if anything is more green than brown (lots of coffee grounds and garden and kitchen greens). Usually wet and slightly smelly while it 'cooks', and that's when I add paper or leaves that I keep in a bag adjacent to the bin. But the finished product was dry, crumbly, delicious black and odor free. It was from a 2 year old batch.

Here is a follow-up development: While I suspected the tree suffered from chlorosis from the alkaline heavy clay, I bought a can of iron-chelate and experimented it on one of the branches. I dissolve a few grams of iron-chelate powder into about 2L of water. Then I dipped all leaves in the "experiment branch" in this diluted iron-chelate solution. I then dumped the iron solution right onto the root ball. After 3 days of the treatment, I noticed that the dipped leaves appeared much greener than the rest of the tree, which hasn't improved (or got worse). So I still suspect cholorsis in play with the red maple tree. I am going to dip more leaves to see if there is any good improvement. By the way - against all wise advises we still decided to replant the tree in order to: (1) Raise the tree bed to improve drainage (2) Cut the circling roots (3) Most importantly, remove the sod that I, due to lack of experience, burried at the bottom of the planting hole. At the time of exvacation, the root ball was swimming in a large pit due to poor drainage (not visible from the surface). The smell was awful (guess this is what CSI calls "decomp"). We removed all of the decomp mud, washed the tree's roots, and cut off the roots that have been affected by the rot. We also cut off the encircling roots. We then widened the planting hole from 2.5' to 3.5', filled it with fresh black earth & clay (30-70 mix). We elevated the root ball to be about ~6" above the ground surface. We compacted the mound to make sure there wasn't large air pockets. Then we covered it with ~4" of red cedar mulch, leaving about 6" of space around the trunk. It looks like a large red donut circling the tree. Hopefully the tree will recover from the surgery.

I would replace the clear glass stones in there with some various kinds of moss for a more organic, softer feel. Or, change them out to black polished river stones. I assume you have taken the pussy willow stems out of the vase in the corner - look for some taller green tropical leaves for that piece. You don't want pussy willows in both places in the same space. One other thing - is there any chance you could move the TP holder to either side of the wall on which the toilet sits, perhaps above the butt-ler (LOL)? It feels like the first thing you seen when you look in the door (as in the first pix you posted on this thread), and having the large piece of art above it only draws more attention to it.