You're all wonderful, ten times over! Melissa, boxwoods are a no (they're all over the place here). I did plant some 'Soft Touch' Ilex Compacta, desperately hoping my neutral pH won't kill them. I think they'll be like 3x3 balls of tiny leaves if they survive. The others you mention (rosemary & lavender) get so big here - not enough room, but definitely good suggestions. "1) the garden won't break; and 2) the gardener will have periods where gardening just doesn't have any appeal, but enthusiasm will return the first warm and sunny day." Excellent words! I planted some things today. Two double salmon hibiscus 'Jane Cowel' along the white fence near Anna Olivier & Perle d'Or even though they will get HUGE (hack, hack), a strawflower, two Marguerites - rose and yellow, some glad bulbs. None of which will add to the winter garden. :(( I fed the front and got about have of it composted. Just putting the dark compost down makes everything look better. Budeyes are swelling all over the place. Thank you, Gean my friend, you're always so positive - except for the hurricane part. lol That's such a big no-no here. Our insurance rates go up if you even whisper it - or the company drops you. :(( But you're so encouraging. Ingrid, I like reading your lists of excellent plants. I dearly wanted two 'Sky Pencil' Japanese Hollies, but I can't get my pH low enough in a million years. If these Soft Touches work, I'll be getting more of them. They're not unlike box except a deeper green & denser. You know, when I had my rosemary, it never bloomed, and I had it for a year and a half before it died. One day you'll have to gently ask your plants if they like 60% humidity and torrential downpours a couple of times a week. If they say yes, let me know! holleygarden, do you have Hermosa? Run go check it out if you do. Mine are loaded with buds, just starting to show dark pink/red. I have buds scattered around on other roses. It was a wonderful day - maybe 70. Cool enough to have long sleeves on and pants. A neighbor came to visit my next-door neighbor while I was out there. She told me I have a beautiful garden. I thanked her very much, but why do I want to argue with her? It occurs to me that others don't think it's as bad as I do - even the sticks, probably. And I guess they know what time of year it is. Thank you everyone. I feel much better for all your kind words. Sherry

Most of what I'm doing is not exactly eradication, it's more trying to control rampant growth. I'm trying to limit Virginia creeper and meadow phlox to a reasonable section of the garden. Virginia creeper is fine in the woodier areas, but not everywhere where it can trip unwary passersby (and me) and smother other plants. Meadow phlox too is wonderful in bloom and the hummingbirds love it but the roots become deep and broad and woe to other more modest plants in its vicinity. A byproduct of this selective removal came yesterday when I started pulling out the meadow phlox under a rose where I was trying to establish some new daylilies. Mixed in with the phlox were were some plants with tiny white flowers that I'd never seen before. I left them there thinking they were native but I checked the Connecticut Botanical Society's Wildflower site and I think they were the very invasive Garlic Mustard which I've never seen before. I say were because I watered them this morning and then carefully pulled them all out along with their roots. I put them in a bag along with the poison ivy seedling I found the day before. Like PM2 I use the pooper-scooper technique of grabbing the poison ivy plant with the plastic bag on the hand and then inverting the bag to cover the plant, which gets inserted in another bag and sent to the trash. Claire

Summers that DOES sound like a dream home for sure. That is going to be spectacular. You can set up a green house and have all kinds of awesome things also in there. What a lovely place that is going to be. I am super excited for you. Vapor unfortunately Kew gardens does get BS here when I don’t spray. To be fair it keeps blooming and I do not think 🤔 i has completely defoliated but not clean like Darlow’s enigma. It has few thorns and it forms a very nicely shaped bush. I will stop spraying it and see what happens and report back. (I have quit spraying certain roses to test them in order to determine if they will qualify to be added to my no spray small garden at the lake). So far spirit of freedom, Olivia, Bathsheba, Claire, Wollerton old hall, Emily, Roal Dahl and Wedgwood are clean enough to get a spot. I much as I love gardening I can barely keep up with one so the other place needs to be lower maintenance.

When we first moved here there was not a back fence, so we naively planted the very thorny, reputedly highly fragrant, Nova Zembla, a blush white sport of the pink Conrad F. Meyer hybrid rugosa. It is a monster, with very thick10' to 12' canes loaded with big and little thorns sharper than the sharpest razor wire, with blooms at the tippy top. We quickly realized that, like a loaded gun, this plant was much more of a danger to ourselves than to any possible intruder, especially since our garden is only 20' wide, and we got rid of it. Nova Zembla (New Land), comprising two islands, incidentally, is the north-easternmost place in Russia, and the name, I read somewhere, has come to signify in popular parlance, "the ends of the earth". I think it might be best grown there, or in Alaska. Years ago the Brooklyn Botanic Garden used to have several specimens planted near the entrance of its Rose Garden and pruned to an inch of their lives (that is to say, to about five feet). This blog writer, by the way, says that Conrad F. Meyer (and NZ presumably) are among the few thorny roses whose vicious thorns actually repel deer -- but so does dynamite, probably. He also says, mirabile dictu, that it is not very vigorous when competing with grass. https://kansasgardenmusings.blogspot.com/2014/08/conrad-ferdinand-meyer.html