I guess it's time for the "yes, but's". 1) first of all, thank you for explaining about opening up the view of the house. I took a walk around the neighborhood this morning, and (finally) could actually see the difference between those houses with "opened up" landscaping, and those houses looking "all boxed in". 2) I went to the gardening center this afternoon. Yes, perennials are on sale now, but shrubs are still expensive. I definitely have to do a lot of reading (I went to the library yesterday for some books) to see what plants I can consider. I want to plan carefully first. 3) We're going to move the sand cherry and Japanese yew to the backyard next weekend. 4) Reluctantly I will remove the arborvitaes - I'm guessing we'll just try to dig most of the roots out somehow after the trees are down. However, the ugly roof support columns (with the ugly 1960's metal swirls) will be visible until something manages to grow tall enough to cover them up - ugh. 5) I cannot bring myself to take a picture of the step up from the driveway - it is just too hideously ugly - old carpeting on the uneven concrete porch, ugly railing, ugly driveway, etc. When I can afford to change it, that porch and railing have got to go, but who knows when that will be. 6) I can demolish the buckthorn, but I have to leave a bed there. There is a gas pipe directly under that side of the house, and I can't dig down to get out the buckthorn roots, so we'll just lob it off as close to the ground as we can and put some plants there to hide any little bit of stump still left. 7) Here is a closer shot of that side of the house. The yellow lines show the arborvitaes of the neighbors - tall past the point of no return. The orange line shows their lilac almost touching my roof (which is fine with me, I like lilac). The white line shows my boxwood and the blue line shows yet another arborvitae. If we can get these 2 (the white and the blue) out without the gas pipe giving us a problem, we will do so. But a path has to stay clear on that side of the house so the guy can read the meter, so no, I can't extend the neighbor's flower bed. The green line shows the 3rd arborvitae. We were wondering, seeing as you've drawn in a tree for that side of the house, perhaps that arborvitae should be left in place to satisfy that requirement? Or should the blue, the white, and the green all go? As always, thanks for your continuing help.

Yep same same up here in Stafford, CT. Down by the center of the 'old'section of town there is a big old 'Mill Pond' and I felt so bad for the folks living around there. The pond went way up and so did the river. There's a guy down there who had a big tomato garden this past summer in his backyard, (a big backyard) which is now not only a pond but also a raging river! Unbelievable. Roads washed out everywhere. A tree fell down because of softened/washed away banks and fell right on someone's house. I drove from WMass down Rte 91 last night and then through Enfield down 190 to Stafford and there were spots where the water was at least a foot or two deep on the road. I heard on the radio today that parts of 91 were closed in both directions because there was - get this - THREE FEET of water on the highway! I haven't planted any bulbs out of sheer laziness/no time, so I guess I lucked out a bit on that. We are on a hill, but there is more hill above us and the water has washed down some of my stone walls... oddly enough the basement which has been somewaht wet in the past is really dry. I wonder if the 'holes' got plugged with mud or something! I'm glad I am not at my old rented house in Sturbridge, MA anymore - that place had a fieldstone basement and a sump that barely kept up with water in regular rainstorms... Can you imagine if all that rain was SNOW?

I've never paired up two vines before and actually have only had 1 rose ever in my yards. I've used a lot of clemetis, but with this area I didn't want to look at dry leaves all winter long (we use the front door a lot). I'll have to claim ignorance about roses and need to know what to expect as far as the winter. Will it be mostly be just the canes? David, I think you may have hit it on the spot for me. Not only will this plant be by the front door, we were going to have to make some kind of space allowance to reach our arm in to turn the hose on and off. What I read it smells delicious, few if any thorns and blooms mostly in the spring and fall, with sporatic flowering in the summer, I'm like SOLD. Where are you at and how have they grown for you? Spring blooms? Fall blooms? Summer blooms? etc Did you get yours bareroot? What problems if any have you had. I just noticed a whole forum on roses (I love GW). I guess I could have posted there too since I was so specific as to wanting a rose, but everyone has been terrific for ideas.

After reading all these educational posts about starlings, I'll add one true life experience that happened to my room mate in college. For the sake of identy hiding, I'll call him "John". John lived at Rantoul, IL, the next town north of Champaign, IL but since room and board was reasonable at the university, he chose to stay in the Men's residence halls during the week. (Mind you, this was a long time ago when such costs were low.) Several times, he go home for the weekend. It was during one of those home visits when he learned a lot about starlings. The starlings had flocked and were roosting at night in the trees at Rantoul. One tree in particular held thousands. The town fathers on this block were fed up with the starlings and had decided to super harass the birds one evening in trying to get them to move to the country side. As dusk settled, a ring of men with their shot guns stood around the tree. On signal, they were to fire up into the tree full of birds. John was curious to see how the barage would appear so stood under the tree looking up. On cue, the guns roared. Every bird took a crap as they hastened away. It rained feces! John took out his hankie, wiped his face and headed home for the shower. His mom would not let him into the house until he removed his clothes.