Things are going quite well in our house/greenhouse. WeÂre glad itÂs been a cool summer here in the North East. WeÂre able to keep the greenhouse temps only about 10 degrees above the outside temp. Cabin stays cool  just like any other house, you close your windows/curtains in the morning. Plants seem to be thriving (blossom end rot on tomatoes  weÂve read this common on trellised plants). Bit of an aphid problem (on the hard shelled gourds), maybe IÂll try oak leaves. Now we just let the daddy long legs do their thing Âgood way to spot bug problems (look for the "good bugs" as well as the bad). Trees are doing their job  filtered shade through the morning hours, then starts again around 2:00 p.m. If itÂs a sunny day, we mist and water down the floor (gravel) mid-day. We wrestle with the divide between trying to grow most of our food (a noble, yet lofty goal) and using the space as living space. Next year more space will be allotted for veggie production, but the ping pong table has got to stay. More work to be done (isnÂt there always?)  automatic watering, permanent planting beds, replacing the fountain with a small pond and waterfalls. WeÂve just finished splitting 5 cords of wood for this winter and weÂre already thinking ahead about how to best subdivide the space for overwintering (our aim is to keep the temp at a minimum of 45). All in all, itÂs been a great experience. Here is a link that might be useful: GoodGreen House

All of which goes to show....do what it takes not to fight with your neighbors. They may be unreasonable (one of ours called the cops to report an abandoned car parked in front of our house....that belonged to my daughter who was on vacation). They may be dead wrong (one of ours thought that, because their property is subject to an easement for use by their adjoining neighbors, they had an easement to use my property). They may even be right (when we were first married more than 30 years ago, another of ours objected that our dog, who we had trained to retrieve the newspaper, was taking their paper. She was.). We have learned to be considerate. When their wishes infringe on our right to live as we please, we set down boundaries, explaining why and what we are doing, accommodating what we can. Neighbor doesn't like cars parked in our driveway? Too bad. We have friends. Neighbor likes to spray the property line with Roundup? Fine, so long as not one drop gets on my plants planted along the fence line. Neighbor doesn't like the view of my yard from their living room window? Fair enough. We do what we can, planting screening to soften infrastructure installed by the developer. Of course I wonder why they didn't do the same on their own property. But I screen nonetheless. It's all part of being a good neighbor. Funny how barking dogs and trash containers get people nuts. We have neighbors who seems to think that leaving the emptied trash containers up on the street for an hour past trash pickup is a sign of poor breeding. Oh well. The green can is so heavy that I cannot wrangle it up the driveway. I get half way up, and it rolls me right back down. So when my gardener fills it, he also does the service of putting the green can up by the street. Neighborhoods used to be organized with those wonderful alleyways at the back of the property. We don't live in that world any more. As for dogs, there's a big difference between a young dog learning to enjoy staying in the yard alone for the first time and a dog that barks all day, every work day while its owner is at work. But not to my neighbors.

Pal - I liked your comment on the earlier post that there are some people that you use as a negative feedback mechanism. I hadn't thought about it that way but you are right - had she loved my wallpaper then I would know that it needed to be removed immediately. Actually I don't particularly care for it any longer myself but several realtors have said that it's not worth removing - it's a fairly subtle tone on tone in the foyer and hall. We have removed wallpaper in the dining room and our bedroom and bath and the rest of the house is just paint. We have an estimate on removing the foyer and hall paper and are willing to include that in a negotiation. Obviously if it proves to be an onerous selling point we will have it removed. So far it doesn't seem to scaring anyone off. So far 2 couples have been through 3 times each. One put in a very lowball bid and we countered but they ended up buying a less expensive home in the next suburb. The other couple loved everything except for the 120 year old structural fir beam in our bedroom and wanted to know if we would have it removed. We told them they we could give them the name of a good contractor, structural engineer or architect but that we weren't going to remove it. One other couple said our house had everything they wanted except they didn't want to move back into this neighborhood. They lived a few streets away and just sold their house because they had serious issues with their next door neighbor. I'm not really sure why they bothered coming but they may end up changing their minds if they don't find something else they like. Pal - I think if a realtor knows you and your interest in homes and interiors he would value your knowledgeable opinion on a particular property. And now that your SO is a realtor I'm sure you have ample opportunity to see all the unique or historic places in town. Selling real estate is not as easy as it might appear - it's a tough job and I hope your SO loves it. Two of my kids have purchased homes in Philly within the last 2 years - and the third one just left for a leafy, fenced in yard in the suburbs. I wish I could have given him our home but he couldn't afford the taxes and maintenance. Thanks, Maire

@ GGal - You do recognize my screen name right? [g] Yes, I’m aware that you have been here for 25 years. I’ve been here since 2002, so that’s 22 years. It may have been an ongoing issue to you, but it hasn’t been for me. I’m happy to see old threads resurrected. And either it is of interest to me or it isn’t and I ignore it and find something else to read. I’ve resurrected old threads plenty of times intentionally and unintentionally. I don’t see a problem with that at all. So we basically just disagree on the subject. That is inevitable on a public forum. I’m not following you GGal, about the confusion issue. What is the issue about confusion? The only confusion I see, is when someone clicks on a link that Houzz has intentionally put adjacent to a new thread that they have not noticed is an old thread. Why does Houzz place them in that way? Because they think that all their “old” content is valuable to them as a garden discussion website, I would assume. You evidently don’t agree with them. And going by my own experiences with old threads, once you have commented on an old thread unintentionally a couple of times, you figure it out and only post to old threads intentionally after that. It seems a problem that takes care of itself. And I am happy to hear that anything that was perceived as disrespectful was not intentional. I certainly post pretty direct and strong worded comments some of the time and do my best to communicate in a way that is respectful but you don’t always know how something you say is going to be received, all you can do is remind yourself once in awhile to do your best. As for the different forums…. Landscape design forum - I would assume gardeners and professionals gravitate to that forum and try to offer advice. That doesn’t limit the input you get to professionals. And are you referring to all gardeners who do not garden for a living as ‘hobby’ gardeners? [g] Anyway - to me it’s simple. You want advice on landscaping your yard, you go to the Landscape forum and you get all kinds of ideas from all kinds of gardeners and you thank them and consider what appeals to you and go away happy. Whoever started this thread chose to post it in both the Landscape Design forum and the Home Decorating and Design Dilemma forums. I think the OP would soon figure out what kind of advice they would get from each forum.