Perhaps this would be more technically a reversion to Dick Koster since it was the sport parent-but it could be a new sport since Dick is a sport of something-well I think it goes back 3 or 4 generations of sports to Tausendshöne. Polyanthas are famous for sporting but are seldom stable. How very fun that you got one to stick. I had Dick for awhile and it was very cherry syrup pink. It did not survive the dirt mover guy who could not resist taking out the tree it was growing next to. What is it with guys and earth moving equipment? patricia

The trick to designing a site is making it flexible enough were it looks generally how you want it for everybody who looks at it, but where people with special needs can still use the site without much trouble. If you want an image lined up vertically beside a text string done as a graphic, and the two sets balanced on the page taking up a certain portion of the width (horizontal) screen space, then its better do place the graphics with things like a table set to 90% screen with, centered, and the images in the cells themselves arranged with centering and justification commands, becasue those are goingto keep things in the same *relative* positions no matter what screen size the end user is viewing with. Absolute positioning using DIV tags makes a screen that looks great for one screen size, ok for the few sizes close to that, but it can create some truly unreadable websites on older browsers, non-Windows operating systems, browsers for the visually or physically impared, and people with significantly different monitor resolutions than the one it is designed on. DIV tags should only be used as a last resort, and then only for formatting major sections of the screen, and using smaller tables after that to handing particular strips of horizontal and vertical alignment. I did use DIV tags on one page of my employer's site http://windhamschooldistrict.org/index.php and I had to go back and tweak the code very specifically at least a dozen times after viewing it with about 8 differnt browser & OS combinations in order to get results that looked better than laying it out in a table and living with a little extra whitespace. But without viewing it with both Netscape and IE on both a Mac and a PC, I could not tell how my choices for the DIV positionings and style tweaks were blowing up or causing text overlaps. It took about a week of tweaks before I was satisfied with it, and I've been designing web sites since before you could put pictures on a webpage. Lazygardens *is* giving good advice. I always start my client's sites by laying out the content and the functional aspects. On the last site we did, the shopping cart and storefront was built before we even decided on a color scheme or a logo. Only after we laid out what we wanted the site to do, what we wanted it to say, and how we were going to lead their customers through the site did we start putting in bells and whistles. Why? Because the bells and whistles are secondary to the site content. Not everyone can hear background music or see images (some people block them from downloading to save bandwidth on slow connections) Everyone that browses the web can benefit from text. Even the visually impared can get benefit from a photo album with creative descriptions of what you want the image to convey. If you have company staying the night, you want to put clean sheets on the bed before dropping a mint on top. If you put the mint on the bed *before* changing the sheets, it only gets in the way while you are trying to get the truly necessary stuff done. I'm not oppossed to putting fluff and frills on a page, *IFF* its something that enhances the page content instead of being something that intereferes with the real content of the page. Content and functionality has to come first, otherwise visitor set off looking for a site that's less of a pain to use.

Flowerlillies: I have seen this before. It appears to be scale. Get several Q-tips and a bottle of Isopropyl alcohol. Pour some of the alcohol into the cap of the bottle. Dip the Q-tip into the alcohol. Now, wherever you see those white, powdery patches on the leaves and stems of your plants, rub the Q-tip on them. Make sure all the white patches are dabbed well. If you've already done this and still need help, you will not like my next suggestion. You most likely have them on the roots of your plants which is why you are seeing deformity. They are literally, slowly, eating the plants alive. What I have done in the past is re-plant any and all plants in the affected plants vicinity. I took no chances. I know this is a pain and labor intensive but being on a balcony actually makes this easier to do. If you have a lot of container plants, work them in batches. Unplant 3 or 4 of them. Make sure to do it over a box or trash bag to catch any of the possibly infected soil. get another plastic bag and gently wrap the roots of the plant and carry it over to the sink or bathtub. Submerge the entire plant in luke warm water with a mild dish detergent. Use just a capful of detergent. Dunk the entire plant, count to ten then do it again. Do this with the rest of your plants, again, working in batches of 3 or 4 if you have many. Before you re-plant make sure you use fresh, new soil. Discard any old soil you've had. There is obviously something in there that is attractive to this pest. Also, what I do is take the soil in batches inside a large plastic container and Nuke it in the microwave for at least 1 minute. This will kill nearly anything such as larvae living in the soil. When the soil has come back to a normal temperature, I mix in my fertilizer, perlite and any other additive. But, more importantly, I spray the soil with Neem Oil. Spray liberally and mix it into the new soil. Make sure to wash your containers in hot soapy water. Now you can re-plant. I would spray the plants with Neem oil at least every 7-10 days. Once this infestation is over with, I would still as a preventive measure spray them once a month and lightly spray the top part of the soil as well. Hope this helps, best of luck- NJC

Thank you everyone. I read your replies last night before going to bed and that was the first time I shed tears over this whole thing. We need to keep our perspective because we don't NEED to sell this house. So all the never ending projects are done and now all we have to do is maintain and enjoy this house. I think we're going to have a party just because. Allison0704 "I can't believe you are selling - saw your post on house thread. I can't believe we are considering moving either." I know, I guess we get the itch on the same schedule! (Allison and I were building our homes at the same time, back in 2006.) lukkiirish "As an ex-realtor, my RE experience has me guessing that this buyer would have been a real PIA anyway." Well, he is a lawyer. ;-) kswl2 "I don't believe home sales are governed by fate, or any kind of divine or otherwise cosmic direction, so the phrase "it wasn't meant to be" is meaningless to me. There is a known cause and effect here, one over which you had no control. It's a shame they backed out, better luck with the next prospect!" I tend to agree with you unless I'm the one on the receiving end of those phrases. They sure mean a lot when I'm down in the dumps! The control part is what we are having a hard time with the most. The buyer relays info to his agent, the agent relays to our agent, then our agent relays to us. There's bound to be a loss of communication down the line. Plus, add in the HOA secretary, HOA president & HOA ACC - lots of people involved and talking to the buyer. Who knows what was really said. MtnRdRedux "LOL, KSWL does not mince words." No she doesn't. That's her best feature! "...useless, self-pitying carrying on and wild, fruitless speculation..." I read this to DH and he wants to know if you were hiding behind a bush in our backyard, while we talked for two hours on our back porch! Wild, fruitless speculation indeed! arkansas_girl "It seems as if, unless these people could find a place that already had the building they need in the back yard, they will not find anything that will give them an approval on a phantom building?" Apparently, they have given up. Their agent said that they have their eye on some commercial property for the workshop and then will buy a house separately. That seems very odd to me. Also seems that their agent might bank a little more if this were the case . . .