Your clematis pictures are wonderful, Carol, thanks! If anyone should spill coffee on their keyboard (not the computer itself), the thing to do is to immediately - as quickly as you can move! - unplug it from the back of your computer. Then immediately wipe up all the coffee you can externally, and take the keyboard to the nearest sink. Get warm water flowing there, and rinse the keyboard over and over, angling it in different directions each time. Eventually, with all the shifting around, you'll get to the point where you'll imagine that every spot on the inside of the keyboard has been rinsed and rerinsed well. At that point, hold the keyboard on end, let it drain as much as it's going to while you stand there, and take it to lean against a wall where there's an air conditioning/heating outlet that can blow dry the keyboard. If you don't have that kind of central heat and AC, then get out a fan and direct it onto the keyboard. (Don't use anything with very hot air like a hot hair dryer for this.) After about half a day, flip the keyboard to the other end, and continue letting the fan push air into the keyboard through all the crevices around each key. After a day or two of this kind of treatment, it ought to be dry inside, so you can plug it back in then. Guess how I know this??? Not once, not twice, but maybe half a dozen or more times is my spilled-coffee keyboard record. Anyway, this method has never failed to work for me - every time. I've used this method on the older kind of Mac keyboards and the newer slimmer boards as well. Under no circumstances use the keyboard for even a single stroke once the coffee is inside; doing so might result in an electrical short and then the keyboard will be kaput. Oh, and yes, I have a backup keyboard for those spilled coffee times. Any coffee lover needs a backup keyboard! Or any lover of tea or whatever. I spilled a hot lemon spiced concoction the other day, and was just lucky it didn't spatter onto the keyboard, but ran all over the carpet instead... I've never spilled coffee on the inside of a computer, other than once on a Powerbook where the keyboard part was the only part affected and I could remove it to treat it separately. (You must have been doing something out of your desk chair to accomplish that feat? It sounds horrible!) I've done some installations on the inside of some desktop Macs and don't see why you couldn't (probably) do a cleanup there right away too, as soon as you've had the coffee spill. Try to ground yourself when you do anything inside your computer, and then just touch a metal part of the case before touching anything else on the inside. Take out the battery first before doing anything else. Then if you've managed to spill coffee on the hard drive, that's the spot you want to go to as soon as possible, in case it's still on the external case that holds the hard drive and hasn't run any father yet. (The hard drive will be the thing inside a largish metal box with sizable cables going into and out of it.) The reason to do it yourself, even if you don't mind paying someone else, is that you're better off if you can dry and rinse, rinse and dry the wet spots yourself, before they start to eat into the tiny wiring on the inside of your computer's external housing. And you could use several clean sponges for the "rinse" in the case of a computer spill; no need to hose it down. You'd need to allow a couple of days for it to dry, but if you have some pressurized air to direct at the spill locations, you can speed this up. If the battery also got some spillage on it, be sure to wipe that clean too. (Do pay attention to which direction it is headed on which end so you can put it back properly.) None of the above about going inside the computer's box applies to a computer like an iMac or other all-in-one kind of upright flat computer. They'd be exceptionally hard to spill coffee on the inside of them, though. Best wishes, Mary

Chalk Hill and Brushwood Nursery have very good plants, however Brushwood doesn't carry The Duchess and Chalk Hill is sold out for now. You will have better luck ordering from Chalk Hill in late winter to VERY early spring. They will ship according to your zone. Spring would be a better time to plant anyway, in my opinion. The roots will have all summer to acclimate and grow. The Duchess is a very fine clematis and worth waiting for ! Suzy

In a few places for extra privacy... I would add some tall trellises... then add climbing roses or something at the bottom. Once it fills the entire trellis, you'll have solid privacy. I purchased some climbing roses and within a year they are nearly 10' tall. They still need to fill in more, but they grew straight up. Along with that, Add something like the picture below... then plant something on each side to climb up and over. By the way, nothing as fancy as this, since the vines will cover most of it. In summery: instead of putting up additional wood to look at, I would add structures that you can have stuff climb. Then in spots that you have more room, add a few narrow plants that grow straight up And the trellis

Oh, my! Did you really plant 3 Betty Corning clematis there or even one? Do you have anywhere else you can plant her or the roses? Clem BC is an enormous plant, tall and bushy, and will be far too large for that space if you have other plants there. One clematis BC with a groundcover or other perennials might work if you have another spot for the roses. Also, clematis have a difficult time growing on lattice, so you may want to add a trellis or strings or netting to help her climb, something smaller than about pencil diameter. Clematis climb by winding their leaf stems (AKA leaf petioles) around supports, so the lattice usually doesn't work for clematis. BC also gets quite a bit taller than your fence, and would flop over if not given a taller support. I would be worried that the roses will be smothered by her. I grow BC and love her flowers, but she isn't a good match for this space. The green text is a link to the International Clematis Society which has an article about Clematis Betty Corning. It describes Betty Corning as "Vigorous and rather long-limbed, it can put on ten to fifteen feet (3m-4.5m) in a season and achieve considerable volume" I don't grow any of your roses, but you might want to be sure that they will all fit in that spot if you have somewhere else for the clematis, such as against a large blank wall. There are a large number of smaller clematis if you want recommendations. For groundcovers, look at Veronica 'Georgia Blue' which is evergreen and has blue flowers in spring along with a few in fall. The most common Stachys, lamb's ears, often has times during the summer when the leaves get unattractive and need trimming back, so I don't think I would use that. I like the suggestion of Geraniums. There are a number of smaller ones that might work, including Geranium sanguineum var striatum (not regular G. sanguineum) or 'Orkney Cherry' and several others that are shorter like those two that will fill in at ground level but that I don't have experience with. Lady's mantle or one of the smaller Nepeta may work, but I think that 'Walker's Low' may be too large for this space as well as it can grow 2'-3' in all directions By the way, you have a good eye for color combinations.