Hello, may be you can help me to answer the following question. My neighbor put a fence and removed the pin. Now I can not find out if the fence installed correctly. What should I do? I called the city and ask if they are allowed to remove pins and they sad " Yes". How can I check if the fence is done right and where is my property line? I am not very good with survey. mocropot You can get a ball of string and mark it off in 1 foot or more marks until you get to the width of your lot. (You can also buy a 100 ft tape measure but that would be more expensive.) Then find the pin on the other side of your lot and attach your string to a stick in the ground at that point. Measure to the other side as straight as you can to the fence. That will give you a ballpark idea if the fence is in the right place. If you think the fence is on your property no worries. You can politely ask your neighbor if they had a survey done to locate the fence because you "think" it might be on your property. Why "no worries"? Because if the fence is on your property it belongs to you. However you shouldn't do anything drastic (like removing it) until you can actually prove where your property lines is. If it was installed by a professional fence company it is very likely in the right place. They wouldn't stay in business very long putting fences on the wrong property. We did the measuring thing with our first lot many years ago on a day when no neighbors were home. It was very interesting because our lot turned out to be bigger than we thought. We didn't put up a fence but did start planting trees on the property line to remind us where it was. So did one neighbor lol. Denise

Thanks for your answers. Some research that I have been doing indicates that rice water used as a base liquid and combined with other natural materials may be more effective treatment for various plant diseases. Evidently these are very ancient techniques and I was hopeful that someone on this Forum might have run across reference to them. Rice water could be made in three ways (I think). The first would be to soak unhulled rice grains in water for two or three days, strain it, and I find indication that this may possibly be a control for root knot nematode. Also, some experiments allude to faster, stronger seedling growth when watered with this type of rice water. The second method would be water poured off from cooked rice water. Yes, Scott, I know about the recent postings of using milk to control plant mildew problems. Wonder what happens if we combine it with cooked rice water? The third method might be rice flour whisked into water. The last two methods produce a starchy water which may just act as a 'paste' to adhere whatever to a plant surface....i.e. compost tea water + a bit of rice water may yield interesting results. I will stop rambling on the subject and begin experimenting when growing season comes around again. Hopefully you all have found the book LANDSCAPE AS SPIRIT by Mosko and Noden. Beautiful book! May help out those of you working on rock setting projects.

My opinion is that mold means moisture, and if the mold came back after you bleached it before, perhaps your drainage isn't quite as good as it could be. We have one house we own that perennially has a problem with a light covering of green mold on the north side of the house - all outside, mostly on the windowsills but occasionally even on the sidewalk or brick wall and even in the very flat or slightly-tipped-towards-the-house lawn, where it is shaded almost constantly. Nearby, my old house also has a north side that is almost always shaded, but no mold. I think the lawn slopes ever so slightly away from the house and that helps moisture dissipate. My own current house's north facade has never had mold issues (knock on wood), and I live within a mile of the first two houses but I also have gutters and french drains that help direct water away from the house, even though my backyard slopes down towards the house. So those would be my suggestions - check slope of your yard, add drainage in the form of French drains and/or gutters. Otherwise I think you will be constantly fighting it if you don't address the root cause.

Sometimes the biggest risk in decorating is to go the safe, neutral, 'in-style', paint-color-of-the-year route. Now, there's nothing wrong in painting your living room the same beige as the model home you fell in love with when you bought your house. There's no harm in getting a microfiber couch that will stand up to the 4 kids and clean up well for company. There's no foul (yes, you know how I want to spell it...) in buying a beautiful painted rooster for your kitchen island because it ties in all the colors of the adjoining great room and you also have a set of chicken plates somewhere. There's not even a good reason to pull down your own mullioned, (as the case may or may not be!) ginormous mirror that just fills up that zooming wall in the entry and gives you that satisfied feeling that you found just the right piece for Your house, and looks very real since it's up way too high for your own visitors to suspect that it's anything but the real deal. Why? Because a risk for you may be entirely different than a risk for me. Painting a nerf football and using it as art would not be a risk for me. It would be an act of insanity. I can imagine visitors to the house of MV coming innocently close to the giclee-nerfe' and only thinking... "How cool is that sculpture?"--but in my own far more pedestrian/subdivision/cookie-cutter house setting saying... "What the hey?? What were you smoking when you painted a sponge football, Red?" And BTW, have you seen the football in question? Or the plastered table? Bet you could scroll through the photos fast in the link below and not spot it immediately. I've seen it before in the magazine and had a hard time picking out the makeshift art from the artist-painted. Fabulous. No, taking a decorating risk is not the sensible thing to do for everyone. And my risk might make you snicker. Your risk might make me shudder. Beauty is most assuredly in the eye of the beholder. And sometimes beauty is found more plentifully in areas where the shopping is more limited. I know for sure that my house in a small town in New Mexico, at the edge of the desert, next to a Walmart, had more interesting, 'found' items, than any place since. I had few options for furniture or accessories. Now, with stores surrounding me, and a truck to haul things with, I find myself bringing home a lot more cheese than I ever thought possible. Thankfully, most of mine comes with a return receipt and rarely makes it past the first few hours in my house. And interestingly enough, the things I find in the corner of a barn at an estate sale out in the country, are usually not risky buys at all. I know that old piece of rusted iron will work somewhere. The aging needlepoint with spider webs on the edge will make a great pillow. The chipped cobalt and white clay vase will be wonderful on the dresser. No risks and no regrets. It's the stuff I get the register receipts for that always prove to be the the question marks. Right now, I'm working on my own art project. I'm applying plaster and a coat of pink latex paint to a bottle of Nyquil. Then, when it's dry and perfect, I'm going to send it to a good home in Chicago. Watch for it next year in Expensive Home Magazine. Red Here is a link that might be useful: from Apartment Therapy