Neither the rose nor the clematis is particularly concerned about soil pH, so that is not an issue I'd worry about unless your soil is skewed heavily either way. The deep planting hole sounds just about right. Unlike just about any other plants, it is recommended that the planting hole for clematis should be big, deep and well amended. Typically you will see instructions for a hole about 18"x18" enriched with whatever organic matter/compost you might have on hand. You will need to mound the soil up a bit in the center of the hole before planting, but clems like it deep. The other, important instruction is that the vine be planted 4-6" deeper than it was in the nursery container. This causes the vine to develop a sturdy root system faster as well as to push additional stems from the root crown - when young, these stems on clematis are extremely brittle and vulnerable to damage so the more you have, the less the vine is likely to experience incidental damage. Plus it is always more desirable to have multiple stems rather than just one. Both of these plants are considered heavy 'feeders' and should be fertilized on a pretty routine basis to develop the profusion of flowers they are known for. If you research the Clematis forum you will most often see references to either a fert forumlated for roses or tomatoes and other vegetables - either will work as they concentrate on the nutrients that produce flowers or fruit. Typically the first application coincides with pruning in late winter/early spring (when the forsythia is blooming) and then every 6-8 weeks after that throughout the bloom season. I prefer to use organic fertilizers whenever possible and they tend to be slower acting so application may only be 2-3 times a year. In my old garden, I didn't use any prepared fertilizer at all but mulched everything with compost. I also had bunnies as pets and bunny poop is an excellent fertilizer for both roses and clematis and I applied liberally - I grew a LOT of clematis. Bunny poop is typically only partially digested alfalfa and alfalfa or alfalfa meal is highly recommended by rosarians and clematis growers as well :-)

Advertisers love to use suggestive terms and "thermal bridging" has become one of them. This is an area of building science where you need to do some homework on your own. Absolutely! However, The link I provided is not advertising. It is a Province of Manitoba site advising consumers/builders on some aspects of its nearly 40-year old R2000 homebuilding standards that have constantly evolved as benchmarks for "healthiness, environmental impact and energy efficiency." .... It seems misleading to use the term "thermal bridge" for wood when it has a thermal resistance 300 times greater than that of metal. .... The term is often applied to light wood framing exterior envelopes in a manner that seems to imply that wood studs have the insulation value of solid metal or no value at all. The term thermal bridging is consistently used byEnergy Star, Building America and leading building scientists, such as Dr. Joseph Lstiburek here where he refers to thermal bridging through wood framing on a cathedral roof reducing the R value approximately 20%. (And that's even with a layer of 1" XPS.) If the example of thermal bridging in the first page is a 20% reduction in the effective R value, that is R16. The range given, I presume, is the result of whole wall evaluations. By contrast, using a recommended method of averaging R values, for the R2000 Manitoba example, I get a value of R12.5 whatever theoretical wall size I slot in. Just adding together materials with various R factors does not yield equal field performance due to such factors as air leakage and convection currents. Indeed, studies show that real world installation of fiberglass batts is often way below ideal. And the ASTM testing, from which "standard" R values are derived, doesn't account for wind and moisture. The site moves on to solutions. As I read it, the examples on the subsequent linked pages are not a substitution of the first page. The example was not a matter of discrediting, but simply illustrating. Subsequent pages give further further examples of alternatives. There's no "advertising," as this is a government information site not that of a private company with commercial interests. Indeed, R2000 Manitoba gives equal or more play to reducing thermal bridging by reducing the amount of conventional wood framing--24" o.c. and other advanced framing techniques. Thermal bridging may not the be all and end all of insulation/sealing considerations. But it is clearly a very important issue that is widely ignored in current Codes that blithley prescribe R Values that are typically implemented in ways that result in effective R Values way below the supposed standard.

hi caroline, you don't have to punch through your page, you can simply put the eyelet on the tag...first, you punch through the tag, turn the tag over, and place the eyelet through the hole, so that the hollow end is sticking up through the paper, take your eyelet setter and place it in the hole of the eyelet, and hit the end of the setter with a hammer, gently. this should "set" your eyelet by bending the tube part down. you can then attach the tag with any adhesive you choose, you can run wire, ribbon, hemp, string, yarn, whatever you choose through the hole to give it a finished look, but it will be easier to that before you attach the tag on the page. hope this helps!! make sure you use a mat under your tag when you are setting your eyelet! also, setting eyelets is much easier on a wooden table versus a plastic table, the kitchen counter works great! again, use a mat, like a self healing mat.

A little history. The noodle board vs stove board:. The noodle board is used in homes where pasta is traditional. The stove board is used in homes where summer kitchens are common (summer kitchen is a kitchen outside of the house, so you don't heat up the hs. in the summer). For those of us where neither pasta or summer kitchens are part of the culture we call this the pastry board. It moves around to many surfaces, stove, table, dry sink etc. And we always had a marble piece to fit it so we could do butter pastry. Once we had electricity (1959) we kept it permanently on the old wood cooking stove, since the new electric stove was hidden in a tiny pantry (we weren't really ready). So, don't feel bad if you don't know what a noodle board is, your ancestors probably didn't eat pasta much. I use a noodle rack myself because it's takes up less space. My pastry board is well over 100 yrs old, is 30 inches wide, all one slab of wood! It hangs from a square nail attached to my possum belly kitchen queen (now coffee station). I use it as my grand mother did, and love that it softens my cooktop.