I agree wholeheartedly with tiffy (and by the way your gardens look wonderful). Mulch serves many purposes in the landscape and one should not overlook its use in this day and age when drought and water restrictions are in the news all the time. If you are lucky enough to live in an area where water is not an issue now or where mother nature is currently supplying you with sufficient moisture so that you don't have to irrigate, that is nice. But with changing weather conditions, you might never know when all that could change. Mulch helps prevent water evaporation and your need to apply it to keep your flowers and plants looking good. It decomposes over time to improve the soil structure to help the soil hold onto the moisture it does get. It is readily available by collecting fallen leaves, community giveaways by those cities that collect fallen leaves and then compost them and either give it away or sell it, and often tree trimming companies will give chipped wood away for free (my local utility company gives it away free when they clear limbs from the power lines). I for one would not consider a garden complete without a nice layer of some type of mulch to conserve moisture, improve the soil, and keep weeds down. Too me it would be like going out into public wearing loads of jewelery without any clothes on! LOL

leaves do not last forever. New ones grow, and old ones fall. Let them grow. You may want to pinch a few, say 10 percent, just to encourage the shape you want, but let most grow.

Diane, like all things - it does pass and this snowfall happens maybe every 20-30 years. Last year there was almost no snow. As for humour...now when I come inside for a coffee break, I'm so sweaty I can actually tear my top off and run around half naked to cool off and no one can see me! They can't even come to the door for the snow piled up - no flyers! no junk in the mailbox! Heaven. The only person who can see me is hubby, who's working and didn't even look up when I ran upstairs for a light top! Now that's what I call love. Nothing but love! He's blinded by it!

The new growth in the first photo is a sucker. The graft is the knob where all the other canes are sprouting from. Anything much below that point will always be root stock growth. I *think* I see a living bud of the original rose at the base of the only green cane remaining, so it might be worth removing the sucker and replanting. To remove the sucker, don't cut it, but pull it off with a downward motion. It looks like the other two have lots of new growing points from the right place, so they should be fine. John