Yeah I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought that, when this supposed tomato book deal mentioned remove all the leaves to improver "circulation.." I don't know bout you folks out there but I have always ended up crowding my tomato's a bit just merely for lack of space ~ Have not yet had a problem with fungus/mold in the past or anything like that?? (Now watch as soon as I say no problems so far as sure as you can guess it I will be this year +sigh+!!) I think my problem with the zucchini has been firmly, hit the nail on the head, with the mention from a previous post of "lack of pollinator's." You know I never paid much attention to that... Granted I work very long ~ trying hours at work, and never paid much attention to it. After all me thinking a lot of tomato's and other crops are self pollinating so why not zucchini??!! DUH. The one thing I have noticed lacking in my yard (although this year I don't anticipate it, was the lack of bee's and bumblebee's in my yard previous years...!) Thank you everyone, I think you have just solved the mystery for me...! I know it's not a chemical thing because I don't use chemicals on my yard/garden at all. Although who knows what the heck they used before me? Although I felt pretty safe when I first started renting here, just because of all the various weeds on the property. Then the owner said to me plant whatever you want... It had been vacant for almost a year to boot. I kept eyeballing the place while driving on my way home to my crummy apartment, and got brave enough to call on it thinking we'll never afford this place!! Thank God I was wrong! I have never been happier, than to get out of those dang apartments!! I have been raised organic gardening from a very young age. Besides chem's/pesticides are way to expensive anyways! The only thing I venture out and buy is some fertilizer about once every 10 years or so. So for me it is mostly compost and natural stuff here for everything.. I figure saving all that money entitles me to buy a plant every once in a blue moon, when there is something I just can't seem to live without! Even then I go home and brew on it a couple of days just to think about it before I buy it. My evil budget has a lot to do with that +sigh+!! So o.k. go ahead and laugh at me when you hear my method... I scrounge bottles and cans from various places to all ready add to my collection of ahem.. beer can's... When I just can't resist the temptations of a plant calling my name, or when I am absolutely desperate for gas $$. I take all those lovely bottles and can's into my local recyclers and cash them all in!! Although I have to admit that this winter sowing gig has put a serious dent in the ol' pop bottle recycling! However, I would rather have the flowers!! I have never been so excited in my life as too see those winter sown seedlings pop up as to say why have you been so stupid for all those dumb years?? Why did you really waste your time starting us indoors only to watch us die off from dampening off?!!! So this year thank you so much to everyone and all. Oh yeah my friends at work look at me like I'm a little nutso' when I say...Yessss!!! I have the weekend off and I am going to spend all of it playing in my garden!! I am going to plant out my tomato seedlings and other wonderful flowers that are growing beyond the bonds of their zip lock baggie homes. I think I am making the one true gardener at work absolutely nuts when I describe my seedlings. I know that for a fact because today she was asking me to tell her all of how/what I do to get those seeds going!! ( I happily did - I think she's a goner!!) Another soul to winter sowing! I am looking forward to an absolutely fabulous garden of flowers that I would never have dreamed of affording. If I had to go out and buy plants for! Winter sowing has shown me the way, beyond my wildest dreams!! Although the one plant that has bitten me lately is this salvia plant called black & blue... I think that it is gorgeous. So if I can muster up the extra $$ sooner or later... I am going to the local nursery and purchasing that one. As I have heard that the seed is apparently sterile?? O.K. you were nice enough to read this far can anyone suggest how deep, or do you leave them at the same soil level as to plant Castor Beans?? They are simply booming along with my blue flax, and Malva, as well as others. I don't want to mess these up! I guess, I can only guess at this point.. However I only have four of the Castor Beans, and they are all up and going. I would like to keep them that way and not mess up on this one... I don't want to plant the seedling's too deep or not deep enough... Do you leave them ate same soil level or??? Call me greedy but I would like to see all of them, grow as I have lots of space to fill... they are supposed to be quite a large plant. It is just getting them to they're full potential in the meantime... Any suggestions would be happily welcomed?!! Barb

Can't really help with respect to cabinets, although we have cherry in our kitchen (going on 5 years), and in our remodeled basement (almost 10 years). Both have held up well. But I can speak to pecan. For some reason my parents loved pecan for furniture, so I have a dining room table and chairs, that are, I guess, probably around 45 years old. And also a twin bed, night stand, and 2 dressers. All solid pecan. All around the same age. All have lived through kids (my brother and I), grandchildren, and great grandchildren. DD2 has the china cabinet that matches my table. All of these pieces have worn really well. One thing I have been pleased with is how well the table and chairs go with our cherry cabinets. Our cabinets are not stained, and have darkened some. And of course they aren't an exact match. We have a lot of differing wood species for furniture, so I'm certainly not into matching everything. But the looks of pecan and cherry are similar.

What a nightmare you are dealing with, Skybird! I hate to think about the roots under my yard and in my neighbor's yard as well.-previous owners planted a white poplar in the front yard - a close relative of the cottonwood. Or, what is more than likely considering the way the rest of the yard looked when we moved in 20+ years ago, the previous owner allowed a volunteer white poplar to take root. There are several other of these beastly trees in the neighborhood. Like most - all?? - poplars, it suckers all over the place . I have tons of suckers that came up in the darn crawl space under my house - they have all died due to lack of sunlight, but..... The first few years we lived here, I was chopping out suckers that were growing from the roots that had reached the back yard; they no longer return, but the darn thing still suckers in the front yard. Oh, these same previous owners allowed a Catalpa to grow right next to the house. Literally - the trunk is about an inch from the wall at this poing and still growing. Both trees need to be removed, but they are huge, I can't afford to remove them. We have spent probably about $3000-4000 through the years - just guestimating - having the dead stuff removed from the poplar, but never have enough money at one time to just have the tree removed. More dies off every year, so by the end of the season after having the tree trimmed, the tree has just as much dead branches as it did before. Like the cottonwood - poplars are fast growing, brittle, trash trees, IMHO, like Siberian elms and so many of the other crap trees that we easterners in our vast wisdom planted here on the plains so that we could have trees. Ha ha! - I knew I would get a response from you, Zach, regarding my suggestion of scrub oak. I know you have had bad experiences with it, but I have had no problems at all with it here in my yard. I love oak trees but don't have room for the really large ones. I now have a small oak grove consisting of two Gambel Oaks ( I allowed one sucker to grow into a tree next to the original specimen,) a Mongolian oak and a couple of semi-evergreen Wavyleaf oaks (Quercus undulata) that I got from Harlequin's in Boulder - these last two are only about 2-2 1/2 feet high, very slow growers, perhaps rather more shrubby than trees though they have a single trunk. Anyway, the Scrub oak only suckers right close to the trunk and the suckers are very easily removed in the spring; I don't find it a problem at all. I doubt that they are better behaved in an urban garden, but perhaps just a lot easier to deal with as a single specimen as opposed to an established grove out in the wild. Sorry that you have run into some unpleasant "my way or the highway" gardeners, texasranger2 and Skybird. We all have opinions, and, of course, our opinions are bound to be those that are most correct for any situation, lol, but most of us don't think "opinion=absolute truth, opinion=fact." There are a lot of jerks in this world and somehow the anonymity of the Internet seems to bring out the worst in some folks. I wouldn't presume to tell other people how they should garden or what they should grow; if I am asked, I will give my suggestions - and opinions - but, to make of the cliché "beauty is in the eye of the beholder," if someone prefers plastic flowers to the real thing, that's their choice and it's their yard and I can avert my eyes if the sight displeases me! Holly

Hmm. Dogs. We had a medium small poodle named Tappy growing up. Once while dining Sunday dinner, something came on the news in the other room. The 5 of us, for some reason, hurried in there to hear whatever. Came back to find Tappy on the table, actually standing on the roast chewing as fast as she could. We laughed so hard even the dog was confused. Me: You know those chocolate covered espresso beans? Well, about 25 (or more) years ago I decided it would be totally cool to have chocolate flavored espresso. I should have known it wouldn't be wise when the beans clogged up and stopped the blades in my little bean grinder. Nonetheless, I packed them happily into my little Krupp's espresso basket and fired 'er up. As I was doing dishes next to it, I noticed steam coming out of the top of the machine. "Hmmmm..." I thought again. I heard a noise out the window and turned to look out. At that moment, my espresso machine exploded, blowing the screw top up into the bottom of the overhead counter, and the grinds basket down through the carafe and the little espresso machine bottom to put a bull's eye slammed dent into the counter below. Cats ran everywhere and my heart about stopped. Minutes later, as I was wiping up the water and crap from the kitchen, picking glass shards out of my sweater, I was on the phone to BB&B to tell them I needed another machine because mine had just exploded. I left out the chocolate covered coffee bean part. Ironically, just this morning I was making espresso (you can tell I've been devoted for years) in the replacement machine, and I realized it was probably 25 or so years old. No planned obsolescence here! - - - - - - - - - - - -> Another good one is my former SIL. Speaking of Joy... Her DH didn't like soap bottles on the sink, for some reason. Fine. Everything else in the house was covered with ... stuff ... but he didn't like the soap bottles. She put the soap in some nice bottle thing by the sink. One day, she made her wonderful homemade bread. Warm and crusty, a perfect loaf came out. Her family, however, actually spit it out on their plates at dinner. Evidently she'd grabbed the soap bottle rather than the oil bottle and made bread with liquid dish soap. She bemoaned that it was the best loaf she'd ever made. She did, though, tell her DH he could stuff it and went back to safer plastic, labeled bottles for soap. He evidently did stuff it, because a few years later, after being together for 30+ years, he realized he was gay. Left her, their 2 adopted daughters, quit their church, moved to another state (nearby enough to commute) and lives with his boy toy. I wonder if he makes bread?