Sandy, how long have you been making twig furniture? You've done a beautiful job on both the furniture and arch! What a perfect opportunity the ice storm presented for more materials for your art. I really enjoyed the pictures of the ice storm results, just gorgeous! I hope you don't mind, but I checked out your pond pictures as well. What a very nicely planted pond! Did you have it installed or dig it out yourself? It's funny to see the same plants as we grow here year round located around your pond and in your greenhouse. As far as planting vines on the twig arch, I'm no pro, but I would think you might want to add a few more twigs to get continuous coverage. The vine I find to do well in partial shade is the bleeding heart. You should find it to be a vigorous grower without becoming woody or destructive. How it survives cold weather, I can't advise, since we don't get that much here in Fla. Thanks for sharing your pictures! Your composition is very good.

Can you detail how you're trying to accomplish this? It's an interesting concept, and I'm all for people trying something different. What are the dimensions of your arch? How have you situated your Limelights in regards to the arch? I would think to really push the vertical growth, you'd need to prune for basically one strong lead, and be brutal in keeping everything else from developing too much. Depending on how wide your arch is, you might consider doing four of them, one on each corner, and then training them almost like an espalier, keeping the strong leads, and training the side shoots to meet each other in the middle, but that all depends on what kind of arch you have. What a neat idea. Generally, think seven to ten years for a mature paniculata, but who knows what you might get with the kind of pruning this project might take. Perhaps somebody with experience creating a tree form from a Limelight might be able to speak on growth rates.

G.M., I think any ornamental sweet potato would adequately shade the clematis roots. However, last year I had both Blackie and Margarita (and some others as well) in containers (couldn't plant them in the yard-turned-pond) and they climbed both a trellis and a chain link fence. They did look pretty, but might try to climb and compete with your clematis. On the other hand, maybe they'd look good climbing together. The Sweet Autumn Clematis is the only really late blooming clematis I know of, generally blooming for me from late August through early September...maybe about 3 or 4 weeks of bloom. The others are spring to summer bloomers as Caroline mentioned above. I did notice our forecast has changed again and I like the new one more than the old one (if it is accurate!). I gues I'll just continue to watch the weather and do the should I plant/shouldn't I plant argument with myself for the next few days. The 22 tomato plants that I put in the ground yesterday DO look deliriously happy. I guess they are ready to spread their roots and grow. The wind has been beating the tar out of them all week, so I have had to keep a close eye on them to make sure that they didn't windburn. You can add any organic material to your beds to improve drainage and revitalize them. I like to add a little compost, a little composted cow manure, and some pine bark fines (the most finely shredded bark mulch you can fine, whether pine or not, will work). At Lowe's they usually have bagged mushroom compost, which is great, and I prefer the Black Kow (Cow?) manure they sell in bright yellow and black bags. It is 100% manure, whereas the law only requires bagged manure to contain 10% (!) manure, so many other products have a minimal amount of manure and lots of cheap, useless filler. I like pine bark fines as they break down a little more slowly and help feed the soil longer. (You want to avoid working big chunky mulch into the soil as it ties up nitrogen as it breaks down.) If you can't find finely shredded pine, you also can use finely shredded hardwood. I've even used finely shredded cedar and it didn't seem to have any adverse effect. I am watching Megan's forecast right now and it sounds like a cloudy, dreary weekend....but at least we don't look like we're going to freeze. Today's high (63) is lower than it was when I woke up yesterday morning (68). I'm off to get some mulch today for the beds that are already planted. I don't like to mulch them too heavily until the soil warms up to 70, but I do need to mulch them lightly today or I will be pulling weeds soon. And, by the way, I am too sore to do much in the garden today too. I guess you and I need to do a pre-season gardening workout to prepare us for the planting season. Caroline, I hope the moonflower seeds sprout for you. I love, love, love the flowers and they are worth the wait! (Not only are they slow to germinate, but they also are sort of late to bloom....but worth it!) I read an article many years ago in Southern Living about a groom who built a sort of open-air chapel on family land for his wedding. (It looked sort of like the framing of a building. So, I guess it really was a huge open-air trellis built to be covered with vines. The wedding was held "underneath" the trellis.) Then, he planted it with moonflowers. I think he planted some a year before so he could time when they would open. THEN, for their August wedding they timed the start of the ceremony so the flowers would oh-so-dramatically open just moments before the bride made her trip down the aisle. Can you imagine how perfectly lovely it must have been? (I hope they stayed married, 'cause a man like that sounds like a keeper!) Dawn

What do the aesthetics need to be? Did you see this post further down.... Lots of variations on the Cattle Panel theme.... Tom