Dawn, you're more than welcome! You were one of the people who helped me have success with my first veggie garden a few years back (2009) & I'm honestly just in awe of your knowledge & experience. As far as I know from reading the threads of the forum, we live the closest to each other & if it wouldn't seem like a strange thing to offer, I'd love to come help you in your garden if you ever needed help. You seem to really know your stuff & be very interested in your plants, planted & native to your property alike, which I think is awesome. I'm always checking out interesting plants in my yard & in the woods around here on the refuge. I can only hope one day to be the expert that you certainly are. :) I had never seen the Lunas before, but they are very beautiful. My son finds them fascinating & my dogs try to catch them, LOL. I'm pleased to know there is an upside to the spikey balls from hell, besides the fall foliage show. The one in our new yard must be very old, it's so huge that I can't wrap my arms around the trunk & the roots wouldn't be that far exposed if it wasn't, I don't think. It's roots run the entire length of my house. I ran into some when I was hoeing out the side & back flowerbeds & was like "Wow, that's an impressive root system." I think that commelina would be an ideal cover for the shallow soil & I certainly know that it would grow tall enough to cover up those roots. My mom's goes crazy every year & she's already griping about it's height. Usually, she has her yard guys weedwhack it down several times a summer. I told her to let me do it this year & take the cuttings. I'm kinda wanting it to be semi-invasive, because the section I want it to take over is beneath that tree & also the other side of my front yard in the shade of the tree, which is all infested with sticker grass. I had ambitious plans to dig it all out by hand b/c I'd heard that's really the only way to get rid of it...until I realized that about 500,000 of them were scattered all over the whole yard & digging them up is no easy task. They have underground spreaders that break easily & each new place I broke has, within a week, sent up new spikes. Grrr. I've read that stickers don't do well at all with competition, so hopefully the commelina will outcompete & do what I want it to do. I figured I'd try it, anyway. What have I got to lose? It's all free, so no waste of money. This post was edited by faerybutterflye on Wed, May 1, 13 at 9:50

@Ashley P Here is an interesting article about range hoods that might help you understand how helpful they can be for homeowners. I am beyond grateful to have mine. I had to change my kitchen around a bit. Its too bad you couldn't switch your island range with your sink. Stove Hoods To Keep Pollution Out Of The Kitchen Hot summer days often mean air pollution warnings in big cities. But the air inside your kitchen can sometimes be just as harmful. Cooking fumes from your stove are supposed to be captured by a hood over the range — but even some expensive models aren't that effective. Jennifer Logue spends a lot of time thinking about what happens when she cooks. She's a research scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, where she studies indoor air pollution. "You spend 70 percent of your time in your home," says Logue. "And what you do in your home has a huge impact on what you're exposed to." Cooking on a gas stove releases some of the same pollutants that you find outdoors in smog. Logue looked at homes in Southern California that cook at least once a week, and found more than half of them were above the outdoor health limit for a pollutant called nitrogen dioxide. "If you exceeded the standards outdoors, it would be a really big deal," she says. "But if you exceed them in your house, nobody's paying attention." Homes with electric stoves aren't in the clear because cooking the food itself creates air pollution. Sauteing fats produces a lung irritant called acrolein. And cooking puts off fine particle pollution. Just like smog outdoors, these emissions increase your chances of developing long-term respiratory and heart problems. If all this sounds a little scary, Logue says there's a simple solution: a good range hood that vents outside. But, she says, "Not all hoods work the same and currently, unfortunately, there's no way for people to really know how effective their range hood is." Inside the test kitchen at the Lawrence Berkeley Lab, Woody Delp, a building systems engineer, and his team are trying to figure out exactly that. Some of the hoods he's tested are only 15 percent effective because their fans aren't as powerful. Delp says when you're buying a hood, that's labeled as air flow. But the shape of the hood also makes a big difference, like how far it reaches over the stove. Delp and his team are developing a standardized test to measure hood effectiveness. It's being reviewed by an international testing board, which would allow manufacturers to voluntarily label their hoods. "Unfortunately there's not really a state or federal agency that has comprehensive authority over indoor air pollution," says Peggy Jenkins, who manages the indoor air quality program at the California Air Resources Board. She says there are strict ventilation rules for other gas appliances in homes, like furnaces and water heaters. Stoves and range hoods have been largely overlooked. "In a sense it's low-hanging fruit, but it's not really simple," she says. Jenkins says there's growing interest in changing California's building codes around range hoods — but it would take a number of state agencies to do it. Meanwhile, for we home cooks, Logue has a few tips. She says use the highest fan setting on the range hood and put pots and pans on the back burners. That's where hoods capture the most pollutants. Simple changes, but effective ones, Logue says. The hard part is remembering them. Cooking Tips -- Always turn your fan on -- Cook on the back burners -- Use highest fan setting -- Clean grease traps periodically -- If you don't have a hood, open windows Tips For Buying A New Range Hood -- Look for one that covers the entire stovetop -- It should move 200 cubic feet of air per minute, certified by the Home Ventilating Institute -- Choose a noise rating of 3 sones or less for a quieter fan -- Choose a hood shape with a hollow space underneath for collecting fumes Source: Lawrence Berkeley Lab one idea

Materials that you use will depend on if you want to be able to walk/sit/play on it or just use it for esthetics, you growing zone will also be important to factor in to the design. If you google images for Zen gardens you'll get all kinds of photographs that might appeal to you and your needs for the space.

L'Occitane is known for their shea butter hand creams. Shipping is free with a $25 purchase. Over twenty years ago, L’OCCITANE created the Shea Butter Hand Cream: Dream Creams for Hands with an incredible 20% shea butter. It quickly became a worldwide best-seller. Today, one is sold every 3 seconds around the world. Spoil yourself and your loved ones this holiday season with L’OCCITANE’s exciting selection of iconic hand creams - the perfect presents to spread joy and delight around you. https://www.loccitane.com/en-us/hand-cream-bouquet-NAOCVKI002188.html