Yesterday was an awful day: gray, hot, and very humid (not as bad as in DD's town down in the Po Plain, where it was similar but even hotter, with a high in the upper 90s; and air conditioning is by no means universal in Italy). However, today dawned somewhat cooler and drier, and the sky clear. It became evident to me that this was a morning to work outside, so I rousted out DH and we gathered tools and went down to a portion of the big garden where we had been busy the day before. This is a steep area of poor ground--what else?--which we've been fooling around with since 2006, mostly with not much to show for it. The area is bounded to the east by the first drainage ditch, to the west by an unsuccessful rose bed, to the south by someone else's property, wooded and brushy. The lower part we planted with fruit trees in our frequently scattershot fashion; the ditch is lined with shrubs and volunteer oaks; over the years it has grown very well. Some years ago I added a peony walk. Peonies are tough and these survived, but the grass wages war against them. I need to do something about the grass. There's a top boundary of this orchard-and-peony area of a pergola with a couple of roses.

The area has improved. DH mowed the grass with the motor scythe while I ran around marking off the peony beds with rebar stakes and rope; then, when I ran out of rope, I cleared grass and weeds, sticky bedstraw in particular, from out around the trees.

What is quite exciting about this area is that it is finally starting to cohere. This has been a grand year for rain, and the abundant growth and continued flowering of the roses show it. The hedge along the drainage ditch is full and handsome with its variety of plants: purple hazelnut, privet, forsythia, and the young oaks. We have a leaning pergola there with nothing on it: I need to find a rose or other climber that will be happy there, preferably a variety that gets huge. Also, it needs propping. The peonies are all alive; I want to add some more on the north side, moving my P. peregrina there and perhaps some more European kinds. The surviving fruit trees, a couple of sour cherries, several figs, a hazelnut and a quince, are pretty well; the apricot died, but then it was never happy. I need to add a couple of trees, possibly two more sour cherries. The grass looks good. I can't say how much chopped up brush I've brought up over the years to spread around this area for soil improvement, but it seems finally to have had a effect. The shade, the mown grass to sit on when I rested, all felt quite luxurious. Summer really is an amazingly rich season.

'Cl. Mme. Caroline Testout', a champion for toughness among roses, has put out new growth and has a handful of blooms; the puny-but-alive 'Blush Noisette' has a single cluster of flowers; 'Marie Pavié' is growing in the shade, unfertilized and unwatered, but looking cheerful enough. There's more work here, and more still in the upper part of this section, where we haven't crossed the hump and don't yet have the garden working for us, but still, it's coming along.