I put in a few hours of cleanup down in the shade garden, along with the escarpment in front of the house, which had a fair infestation of the obnoxious sticky bedstraw and was overgrown with flopped-over annual grass plus money plant. The roses have more sun now: 'Agathe Rose', 'Belle sans Flatterie', 'Le Président', and there should be a plant of 'Tuscany Superb', but I didn't see it: perhaps it got definitively smothered. 'Félicité Perpetue' above, looking for new worlds to conquer.

My helper came yesterday, and I set him to work mowing in this area, where the grass was nastily overgrown and thick with unpleasant weeds. He did a good job, though missed a couple of spots owing to my sketchy description of his task and the general chaos of the whole area. Most of my maintenance was focused on one corner of the shade garden, where a couple of decades ago I planted several roses, a pyracantha hedge (never do this!) and other odds and ends. It hasn't had much attention for a few years, and it was interesting to see how it had changed.

'Penelope' has stretched out and started to climb a bit to get to the light, a habit I hadn't seen in it before. Poor 'Francesca' seems to be gone entirely, though fortunately I have it elsewhere, grown from cuttings. I remember it in its glory days, ten feet wide and luxuriant with flowers and foliage. 'Vanity', on the other hand, forced to climb into and through the pyracantha hedge, has turned into a substantial climber. Here it is, though the shot is poor.

My beloved 'Cornelia' is fading, possibly from too much competition: I need to find this variety a home elsewhere. Surprise, though: the totally overwhelmed 'Koenigin von Daenemark' is suckering out! spreading into the space formerly occupied by 'Francesca'. I certainly didn't expect this, as this variety had never suckered, and I've found it hard to root from cuttings, too. Well, maybe desperate times, desperate measures works for roses, too.

The second shot is of a clematis, I'm not sure of the variety, with 'Rose de Rescht'. The colors go really well together, not that you can tell from the photo, but especially noteworthy is that the clematis was planted years and years ago, in terrible soil, and has always been a thread of a plant. Well, it has finally reached maturity.