The title of the thread describes much of my soil improvement. I trudged out this morning, in spite of the heat, because I had to get out and piddle around for a while in the garden or I'd go mad. The weather has been miserable. According to the weather forecast, temperatures are due to drop tomorrow at last, and even some rain fall, I hope less disastrously than during the hailstorm that walloped us at the end of August. I'm still waiting to get my car back, meanwhile catching rides down to town with an obliging neighbor to buy groceries.

It is very, very dry. Nonetheless, much of the garden doesn't look that bad. I'm patting myself on the back for having planted so much small-leaved privet and photinia through the years, along with symphoricarpos, forsythia, lilac, hazelnut, winter honeysuckle, and cotoneaster: all quite drought-tolerant, at least in my heavy soil, and mostly looking quite good even after all this heat. These are my taller hedging plants--I aim for about 5-8 feet--that I've been cutting back while I look around and see what's going on. They do the soil a lot of good. Something I learned early gardening here is that if you plant a shrub, you get a tree. The protection from sun and wind, the organic debris, provide an environment in which trees sprout. This is how most of the young oaks in the garden arrived. And I want trees, more than ever with the ever-higher temperatures and more intense sun.

Much of my work was cutting back the privet. If left unpruned the fruiting growth will take over and the plant look ratty, but, cut back, it makes plenty of fresh green foliage and is quite attractive. And then I have abundance of pruned growth to spread around the hedge, or other areas that need more organic matter, which is most of them. Prune and feed, prune and feed. As the years pass, it makes a difference.

Some of the baby hazelnuts I planted in a double line last fall have died. Most of the flowering ashes, even the ones I forgot were there and so didn't water, are alive. I haven't found any dead roses of those we planted, but haven't looked hard. There is an exceedingly bleak area that badly needs, well, everything. My helper dug planting holes there, but I'm kind of afraid to plant even the tough dry-climate plants--phlomis, Mexican sage, shrub germander--that I put in the front row, roses behind them. There are some stunted shrubs and climbing roses in the very back, but I think I need to get some trees started if I'm to have any hope of anything surviving. Or I may risk it, trying to get life and growth started.

About the roses, most of the established ones that were in good health are okay. I've been cutting old growth out of them as well, but concentrating on the hedges because there I can work more in the shade. I may go out later and see if clouds are arriving. Cooler wetter weather will be such a relief after all these months of summer.