Hi Dusty, In addition to the other book I posted here, I also have Rock Gardens & Alpine Plants by David Joyce, 1985. It only cost $6.95 but it is a good book nonetheless. It takes you from the construction of a rock garden, to selection of plants, propagation of plants, to how to deal with pests and upkeep of the garden (winterizing, etc.) The reason I bought the book though was because of all the lovely pictures (many) of plants I can never hope to grow in Zone9. Even so, I have a few hens and chicks melting in my back yard at this moment. We not only have extreme heat but we also have extreme humidity! Incidently, I would like to thank you for posting the info about blocked email addresses on your member page. I have been trying to figure out what to do about it and have been searching all over info at the My Yahoo mail site. Now I know I need to change some options on my member page at Gardenweb. THANKS! Barb

My experience with hydroponics is limited to one experiment in highschool something like 20 years ago -- back then I just used information in an Ortho guide and was happy. This month I've just completed building a greenhouse that'll primarily be running hydroponics systems, and while I haven't grown anything in it yet (seedlings don't count), I've been doing a lot of reading and have finished building the first row of hydroponics trays... The best place to start is probably www.howtohydroponics.com which sells a PDF hydroponics book. You can buy the same book in B&N or at Amazon, but the PDF is in color and it's immediately available (though 3-hole punching it and putting it in a binder helped). That covers about everything you need to know, and provides good instructions for building your own systems (including aeroponics, dutch buckets, and NFT systems). The author also sells materials through www.futuregarden.com, though when I found out the fertilizer mix he hypes was his own brand I quickly found another source... After that, there's a green book called "Hydroponic Food Production" that seems to be the Bible of hydroponics -- the guy at the last hydro store I visited said that was the coursebook in his last college course on the subject. Not terribly cheap (I paid $60 for mine), but it's got all the information you'll need, including a number of case studies. I'd still recommend the e-book first to get started, then dig into this one for serious information. Note that there's no single right way to grow things hydroponically, but there's a trend out there to recommend expensive ways to grow. Rock wool seems fine, as does cocoa-peat and LECA stones and the rest. But really, do you need all that? I think it's hard to justify paying $5-10 per gallon for LECA stones (expanded clay) when you can get pea gravel for $23 per ton (assuming your buy from the guy in the telephone book, and not the $4 50-lb bags at the garden center). The difference seems to be that in the middle of summer a gravel ebb-and-flow system needs watering every hour or so, while LECA + cocoa-peat mix can go once per day instead in the same system. I can't justify the added media cost with saved electricity, so that made my choice easy (plus the fact that it seems easy to sterilize gravel compared with the others -- I believe bleach works...) In my case, I built an 18-foot long frame out of pressure treated lumber ($10), bought 7 cement mixing trays from lowes ($4.95 each), a single 320 GPH pump ($40, I think), pea gravel for the whole setup ($6 total -- the guy actually gave it away as he was used to selling in dumptruck loads), some miscellaneous PVC piping ($200, unfortunately), a digital timer ($14), and 2 garbage cans ($8 each). Now, for that outlay plus the price of one more pump and timer (don't need it yet) I've got 2 30-gallon reservoirs buried underground (for temp control and to take up less space in the greenhouse) that will hold grow and bloom nutrient mixtures, and 7 24"x32"x6" trays that can be configured to flood and drain from either mixture as is appropriate. It's not perfect (2 input and 2 drain valves for each tray added to the cost and complexity), but it's certainly cheaper than anything commercial out there. That, and it's rewarding to work perfecting my own design. This isn't to brag or say an ebb-and-flow gravel system is the best way to go. My point is if you take the time to learn enough about how this stuff works, evaluate your priorities, and put a little bit of thought into it, you can put something together yourself for quite a bit cheaper than a commercial kit In my case, I hate to think what 48 square feet of ebb-and-flow surface area would cost me... Same thing with everything gardening related. My greenhouse manufacturer sells a small electric heater for $58 -- I found the *exact* same thing at Lowe's for $13, with a different brand name on it. Exhaust fans for greenhouses are way expensive -- my greenhouse supplier wanted $550 plus shipping for a fan and electrically actuated louvers. We bought a box fan + attic fan thermostat control + auto gables louver system for $50 at Lowe's (though we needed to tinker with the cantilever system a bit to make it open as much as I wanted). If the $10 WalMart box fan isn't enough, we'll install 2 more, and maybe put a screen door on the greenhouse to increase airflow. So far it looks to be a rewarding hobby. I can't wait for everything to finish germinating...

Chris Bohjalian, who's been mentioned already, also had a book out of compilations from a column he wrote when he moved to Vermont. It's called "Idyll Banter," and I really enjoyed it. Right now, I'm reading "The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society," which is a few years old. I'm enjoying it. "The Distant Hours" -- (fiction) about a letter posted in 1941 that reaches its destination in 1992 -- is one of the titles on my to-be-read list. "A Vintage Affair" I read a few books back. Really liked it. A mystery to go along with your cruise theme? Mary Higgins Clark's "Santa Cruise."

I would start by talking to your local building inspector or your city hall. There are codes which are pretty standard, but may vary from city to city. Our building inspector gave us about 6 pages of documents that show how many support columns you need, what the spacing of the joists is, etc. Plus, we are building a pergola on top of the deck and he told us how to do that, because I could find nothing in any books. You might go to your local bookstore and/or HD or Lowes type place and browse through their books for design ideas on railing, etc. Good luck