Bart, first, compliments on your rugged determination: as a woman your age and living in similar conditions, I have an idea what the work costs you. I also understand very well your ambivalence about the gas and water consumption. I hope you maintain your garden and get it into more robust shape; better able to defend itself.

I think our own shade and plant cover around the house have helped make it more comfortable here than if we didn't have them, though, as you say, this has been a milder summer than most. DD gave a gasp of relief when she got home from Modena, where her last day there the temperature was 38C. It's not that the farm doesn't get hot, but inside the house and in the shade it has remained comfortable, and I even need to pull a light cover over myself at night, which is unheard of most years. Probably I'll be back to dampening the bed and my clothes next summer to be cool enough to sleep--but then, next summer the trees will be taller and the plant cover, in cubic meters, be thicker, and perhaps that will make a little difference.

A vacation sounds like a great idea. I hope you get to go.

I was looking at jacarandas as a tree that might be able to handle our conditions, but have doubts about hardiness. Our winters have certainly gotten milder, but a single hard frost could do even the hardier jacarandas in, so probably not a good idea. I did warn you about what all-conquering trees bay laurels are. I'm kind of curious to see if ours will reach a maximum height and then stop: it was in place, a much smaller plant, when we bought the farm in 2000, and has grown every year since. We have a lot of young trees started, but there's at least one area where I'd like to plant some trees, preferably ones with fair ornamental qualities, and really I don't know what would suit. This isn't a front burner project in any case. Though, since it is August, perhaps I ought to at least start thinking about fall plant orders, though we won't be planting until October at the earliest.

I'm still busy with garden cleanup; got the yard in mostly reasonable order--at least, it's much better than it was; there are still a couple of chores--and am now down in the dismaying shade garden, which actually is burning hot in the middle area with the roses, surrounded by trees but not shaded by them, and steeply south-facing. The grass, particularly the wicked Bermuda grass, has made vast progress with the rains, as have the nettles and artemisia. I've been ripping it out and then using it for mulch in some cases once it's dry. I have started trees and shrubs down in the bottom of the shade garden, hoping--knowing--that in time they'll take hold and keep down the weeds, but it sure is a slow process. Anyway, it's possible to clean up the mess, but it takes time. Somewhat easier, and more pleasant, is cleaning up the vast plant of 'Spray Cécile Bruenner' that grows down there; removing dead and old canes and giving more light and air to the new growth. 'Belle Amour' has grown alarmingly: I need to cut old growth out of it, too, but it's so wickedly thorny, and the new canes are so long, I think it's going to be difficult. It's really on the rampage this year: another fruit of the abundant rain.

Rugged determination or just stupid pig-headedness,lol!!! The life of an obsessive-compulsive is hard.

All I've been able to do is work on watering. I can only access the central part of my garden; the rest is closed off by the barrior of enormous, dense weeds. So, another project for the fall and winter: corral off the areas where roses, etc are growing with ropes as you did so I can hire someone to come and whack weeds. Yet another reason to work on "consolidation".

My shoulder is still giving me trouble; I think I just over-did using a hand saw to cut first tree branches, then weeds and brambles. It is SO HARD to remember to avoid using one's dominant arm!

"All-conquering trees" sounds like just the ticket for me! Being broad-leaf evergreens, they should be a big help in the battle against weeds. Jacaranda tempts me fiercely; it looks SO beautiful in pictures! but I, too, am concerned about hardiness-I can just imagine myself spending years getting one to grow, and then-BAM! -a freak cold event, and all the work is down the tubes.

Our house is an old one, too, and remains relatively comfortable,but the heat has been going on so long that even here the temperature is getting too high. I turn on the ceiling fan to "high" in order to sleep;the wind it creates helps keep the insects away. DH sleeps on the sofa; he can't take the noise of the fan and can leave the window wide open at night without being eaten alive by bugs. Luckily today is finally different; we had a bit of rain and it's cloudy,so even though it probably wasn't enough to give much relief to my garden, it has helped the house to cool down.

Good that your house has stayed fairly cool. Most summers ours gets seriously hot, owing to its top two (of three) stories being fully exposed to the sun; then we do the bed-dampening thing. I too need a fan to sleep comfortably. Oh, you are so fortunate to have gotten a bit of rain, and clouds! Sounds lovely.

The problem with bay laurel is that it's a weed itself. All of ours seed abundantly, and the seedlings can finish up a good ways from the parent plant, so that I spend my life pulling them up. Ours unpruned one (I did limb it up a bit, so I could walk around under it) is up to thirty feet or so high and wide; the others I prune once a year or so, which is a fair amount of work and of course requires a ladder. They grow fast, at least, once established they do. They seem not to like full sun, though they'll grow in it, but aren't bothered by poor soil and drought. Plants in adverse conditions can take a while to get started, but they all seem to take off sooner or later.

I think we've talked about this before, but have you considered Italian Alder, Alnus cordata? This makes an eventually large, fast-growing tree tolerant of drought and poor soils, and good looking. It's native to southern Italy, but is hardy in our area so should be in yours. We have some young ones planted but I'm afraid they would get too large in time in the interior of a garden, as opposed to on its border. I have an area where I need a line of smaller, but shade-giving trees, and so far haven't come up with much. Olives?? Wild service tree--Sorbus torminalis, "ciavardello"--which grows here and there and which I admire, and have also tried to get started on our property. Actually, I just checked, and this one may be better suited to your area than up here, though I see occasional trees. This can also get up to a good size, but may not be as rambunctious a tree as you need. I get, I really get, the need for easy plants. I've mooned over Turkish hazelnut for years, but not been able to find it, which may be a good thing, as it becomes large. Oh, well....these passions!

Anyway, good luck with your garden!

Hi, Melissa. Well, the weather has gone from truly horrible to absolutely unspeakable,at least here.Friday is my watering day; in the past weeks I've been able to start about 7PM; yesterday I had to wait until 8PM since it was so unbearable.The forecast is so disheartening, too. I wonder if the theory of relativity applies to time; I bet it does. In winter, a week passes in the wink of an eye,in summer,what passes for a week according to the calender lasts a month. I am so bored and too tired and draggy to do much about it. In order to survive the drive to my land, I wet a cloth hat and put it in the freezer for a bit; I wear that and put one of those frozen blue boxes that are meant for coolers behind my back, wrapped in a towel.

Still I dream of a change in the weather, and am trying to plan on the changes that I'd like to make. I keep going back and forth about some of the moves I'm planning on. At this ugliest time of year I'm really able to see how important it is that I provide shade,but calculating the positioning of trees is tricky: with the sharp southwestern slope of my land,I want to place then so they will throw shadows onto areas that are over-exposed to the afternoon sun . Yesterday I "discovered" a new spot where I'm going to need shade: a small rose called Perfume Flower Circus, which has been growing in this spot for years,is showing signs of serious heat stress. this entire area is one in which I'm having difficulty getting roses to establish; the summers are just too hot anymore. So,should I move it and give up on roses there? OR could I put a tree in on the other side of the road to shade this area? If I do go for the tree idea, it would be placed among roses, so I have to weigh the question carefully.

Actually I don't recall discussing Italian alder-it looks like a potential winner. Maybe the sorbus would be even better. However, I don't think that either would be appropriate for this "new" spot .Maybe it would be best to just move the roses out of there and replace them with a wisteria; this spot is on the hil overlooking the main path to the lower garden, and shading said path would be very nice. But I don't know where to put the roses that are currently in this spot; I want to keep all the little floribunda types restricted to the drip irrigation area. Of course I can't make any real calculations until it gets cool enough to actually be out in the garden.

What are you hoping to plant out in October?

Our weather has worsened, too. I went to work this morning, but had to return after a couple of hours to drink because I was feeling sick, in spite of the water and coffee I'd had for breakfast. It took me seven glasses of water to rehydrate, plus olives for salt. And the mosquitos are annoying. I have to go out in the car two or three times this coming week and I'm not looking forward to it. Unfortunately the forecast is for rising temperatures and no rain, though possibly it may start to cool down in a week or so.

I haven't really made any planting plans for fall. Digging, when I have no energy, and with DH so advanced in years, is kind of a stumbling block; and I didn't do much propagating last fall, though I am thinking about it for this year, roses in particular. I have thought about buying some hedging plants for the northern boundary of the big garden, possibly Eleagnus x ebbingi, and I'd like to get some plants of lentisk, not available from my usual wholesale supplier. And I may get some young trees for the garden. Oh, yes, and we potted up suckers from some of our lilacs as I had an idea of continuing the lilac hedge that forms the south boundary of the big garden. I don't know how lilacs will do with climate change, but the hedge that's currently in place has been pretty happy. I also want to get some fruit trees. How I'll square all this with my stated disinclination to dig I don't know: possibly DH can dig and I can fill, and maybe the results will be manageable. I've been so busy cleaning up that I haven't thought that much about it.

One good thing about all the rain we got this spring: there sure has been a lot of growth. Well, cutting back everything is a pain, but it yields highly desirable organic matter. I've been cutting back trees and shrubs down in the shade garden: the yew hedges, the black locust stumps that require repeated butchering, the encroaching lilac, overgrown pyracanthas, and more. It does feed the soil. A welcome sight down there was 'Primrose' putting out a lot of new growth. This Multiflora rambler is not extremely happy in its hedge, and at times I've worried I'd lose it, but it hangs on, and this year has made enough growth that I can allow myself to cut out some of the old canes. Also 'Alberic Barbier' beside it is romping all through it, but I'm encouraging AB to climb up into the trees behind it, which should give it enough room to roam, and leave poor 'Primrose' alone.

I know you're planning on planting trees and moving some of your roses; what else do you have in mind for the fall?

Good luck to us both with the weather: right now it's not fun.

Melissa, BE CAREFUL. A few days ago I seem to remember that, skimming the news on La Reppublica, there was an article about some YOUNG woman who was out in her garden and got heat stroke or something so badly that an organ-I think it was the liver-just shut down entirely due to necrosis and had to have an organ transplant or something (I didn't read it at all thoroughly; the news anymore is so awful that I just skim through it; only read articles about dumb things like the life-size version of Polly Pocket's house which you can rent for big bucks; a must-miss,lol)

As for other jobs for the fall/winter that I hope to do, the list is long-SO many things need doing out there. I hope to build 2 more tettoias to harvest rainwater. Finish the one I have almost completed. Continue building my rose-support "sculptures" out of tin cans and other Rusty Trash (even when/if I get a camara, I won't be posting any photos of my work on Houzz-ESPECIALLY not since these creepy things have begun to happen on the plain Rose forum). Create real paths in the areas where as of now I can't even pass due to over-grown weeds and neglect. Cordon off the plantings that are scattered around amongst the weedy spots so next year I can hire someone to cut the grass. Finish building my "gazebo". Build steps up to said gazebo, up to hill garden area, and up to water-tank area. Repair gates, cut up the fallen tree as much as possible, finally finish sawing off broken limb from an oak that was damaged by wind storm (couldn't finish the job because my shoulder pooped out. It's still not 100%). And, of course, buy a couple new water-storage tanks for the new tettoias... Is that enough, lol?