Thanks Carla, I'm able to get on now if I type in gardenweb.com. It brings me into the gardenweb site, and then I can click on garden forums to get to all the rose forums. It's not as nice as before, when I could type in gardenweb.com/forums, but it works. I haven't checked today to see if I can get into searching the old threads yet, but I did see yesterday that the gardenweb put up a notice that they were working on that issue. Roselvr, we use comcast. I had a lot of trouble initially getting on this site, but as noted above, since I changed my method of logging on, it's been O.K. I'm glad, as I'll have some questions to post, I'm sure, before too long. I've been really ill for the past month, so I've only been dabbling here and there. Sandy

If your neighbors ivy butts up to you place then go with the ivy. Otherwise all your gardening time is going to be spent trying to keep the ivy out of your yard. Don't plant right after using round up. If your using a spreading juniper you may have room for some annuals in the early years but after a while all you will have are junipers.

I agree- the landscape fabric should go. You need to have a DENSE planting scheme to hold the soil in place. There are so many potential varieties for your area- both native and non-native. What would be great to see are a few waves of ornamental grasses on the hillside- any variety of Panicum (switch grass) like Northwind, Cheyenne Sky, or Rostrahlbusch would be fantastic. Also some evergreens that will spread out would be great. Daub's Frosted Juniper or Golden Joy Juniper for bright color, but would also be great to see some dwarf upright pyramidals (I was thinking bright blue dwarf spruce cultivars like Sester's Dwarf or Zafiro). If you're looking for something different a few patches of Sorbaria 'Sem' will give a great effect for the first few months of the year. Keep in mind it will spread so in a few years you may have to keep it in bounds. Other good shrub options would be Panicle Hydrangea cultivars or Smooth Hydrangea Cultivars. They take a few seasons to become well-established on a hillside but thereafter do very well. For perennials other than daylilies and iris you could look towards native Amsonia varieties. The native varieties hubrichtii or tabernaemontanta var. salicifolira would give good flowers, foliage, and fall color. The shorter variety 'Blue Ice' will spread and hold the soil in place very well- it has very nice blue flowers and golden fall color. The native Aster 'October Skies' is also a spreading variety which has blue flowers but much later in the season (August-September). Other perennials would be native Baptisia (false indigo) or Agastache 'Blue Fortune' which would give you great flowers over a long period. Add some Rudbeckia 'Viettes Little Suzie' in front of that for a nice effect. Really you have a ton of options. Put the hillside on paper and see what you can come up with.

First, I would declutter. Second, if, after declutering, the two wall mounted shelves are still necessary, I would move them to an accesible location, such as putting both of them lower down on the wall to the right of the washer dryer. Both of them appear to be so high up the wall you must have to stand on something to reach them or you are over 6 feet tall. Are you able to raise and lower the clothes pole over the washer dryer? If not, your next move would be to add a useable clothes pole, if you really use one. Given that this area seems to be some distance from where the clothes will end up, you may want to consider buying one of those carts with a clothes pole on top so that you can put your folded clothes in the cart and the hanging items on the pole and move all of it easily from one area of the house to the other. I cannot tell what is going on with the whitish object on the left, what is that? Will it be staying? Do you iron? I see one in the picture. Where do you usually iron? Is there a TV here that you can watch at the same time your ironing?