The best rootstock is Lovell. If you want more than one variety and you don't have a lot of space, I'd recommend you get a three-in-one or five-in-one peach. Those you can typically pre-order from Dave Wilson, and you'd want to do it now. Our nursery here in Santa Cruz doesn't charge extra, it's $19.99 no matter what, but the multiple grafted peaches are more. Citation is better if you want to plant several varieties together, they will stay small enough and not compete, but they will also use more water. I know, lots of choices, my personal recommendation would be to get a single variety peach on lovell, and then find someone from the CRFG who'd be willing to graft additional varieties onto your tree. Carla in Sacramento heard the same thing I did: Baby crawford is supposed to be one of the best, I was looking for that one last Winter, now I just plan on grafting it. Babock is not a good choice if you want something with a bit of a tang in it. Most white peaches are sweet and less acid. White nectarines have more acidity, and yellow peaches have yet more acidity, followed by yellow nectarines, and finally, red fleshed peaches which have the most acidity. Snow beauty peach is truly an amazing peach, it's much more flavored and sweeter and juicier than babock. Dave wilson says this about it: Snow Beauty White-fleshed taste test winner: one of the all time highest-scoring varieties in blind fruit tastings at Dave Wilson Nursery. Low acid, high sugar, tantalizing flavor. Large, very firm, attractive red skin. Harvest early to mid-July in Central California. Tested as 96.5GF330. Estimated chilling requirement 750-850 hours. Self-fruitful. Pat. No. 10175. (Zaiger)

Just saw this in the local paper and thought you might find it useful. SF Chronicle Home & Garden Q&A column, 7/19/06: Q: I have a 'Meyer' lemon tree that produced one lemon. The white blossoms are starting to brown and the other tiny, tiny lemons don't seem to be growing. I have it in a huge wine bucket. I was using citrus fertilizer every 10 days or so but haven't for a couple of weeks. I will buy a water meter to ensure that I do not overwater. If you have any other ideas, please tell me. Also, what flowers would you recommend I plant for color at the beginning of September in San Francisco? My garden club will come to my house then. Some of the flowers will be in a southern exposure that gets warm sun and some in four hours of sun a day. What do you think? A: Citrus trees often don't mature fruit until they are 3 years old, needing the energy to grow bigger first. Fruit drop can also be caused by watering swings. Citrus wants a nice, steady water supply, never soggy and never dry. In a container, underwatering is more common than overwatering, and a water meter is a good tool to help get it right. Assuming your container drains well, water till some drips out the bottom, and then again when it is on the dry side a few inches down (but not bone dry), maybe once or twice a week, depending on weather. The most common symptom of too much fertilizer is brown edges on the leaves, which you didn't mention. For citrus in containers, fertilizing once a month is a good guide, though formulations vary, so it is best to follow package directions. As to having flowers in bloom in September, that should be easy to do. Because you are starting not far in advance, you will be planting mainly annuals. Look in the nursery for long-blooming annuals that are starting to flower now, such as violas, pansies, cosmos, paludosum daisies, callibrachoa, edging lobelia, 'Dwarf Marguerite' varieties and diascias, and choose a few kinds that you like. All of them will bloom well in sun. For shade, you can't beat impatiens, unless it is with 'New Guinea' impatiens, which is taller and often has variegated leaves. Inland, four hours of sun might harm impatiens, but not in cooler San Francisco. In either sun or part shade, consider working some small to medium tall grasses or sedges and some fancy-leaf heucheras into the planting to vary the forms of your plants.

We highly recommend Mark Daley of Woodsong Furniture - he's really a furniture maker who also builds custom cabinets on the side. He's making final adjustments on our house full of inset shaker-style cabinets right now. Several cabinets are custom designed (as in, we needed a solution for hiding dog crates, etc.). He's thoughtful, accomodating and value-oriented (offers options). I'd be happy to answer any specific questions about his work (off line, maybe?). We're really pleased thus far! Here is a link that might be useful: Woodsong Furniture

boy i'll second that, jeffinmonterey. we waited over 6 months for our city to approve our plans and grant us the honor of a permit. they also put us into the design review fasttrack (which dinged us 1800 bucks) all because they couldn't visualize and, ostensibly, are biased against modern design. need to keep the mayberry aesthetic up you know. luckily our architect really pushed us into doing a model early on so when we plunked that down on the table during the design review meeting, the two bluehairs looked back and forth between their bi-focals and said "you know, this doesn't look anything like your drawings." they were wrong, though, it did. anyway, sorry for the rant. we interviewed 4 architects. three i found on the AIASF website and one was a friend of a friend who is a one woman operation in the city. we wound up going with her because we liked her vision and her personality. all four architects came to our house to scope things out and wound up staying between 1 to 2 hours. we did pay a retainer to get things going with the one we chose. she works on a percentage basis, 12% - 15% of the finished price tag. we never felt completely comfortable with that so we agreed to pass the baton after her initial drawings were complete. they were actually very detailed. my husband and i felt we didn't need so much hand holding through to the end and we have brought her in to tweak some things along the way. for that we pay her an hourly fee. we have had some stumbling points when things moved from her to the contractor's draftsman but our contractor is great at working these things out as we progress. it's been about 5 weeks since they kicked us out to start and the framers are really buzzing along. so far i'm quite happy. i'll happily pass on names and numbers if you'd like to contact me directly.