Stephen - please take a lot of photos. I will never have the opportunity to go to one of JJ's events. How sad is that? It would be nice if you could show some of the larger potted plants. Doesn't have to be flowering, I would just like to see plants. For some crazy reason, I love leaf structure. Upright, weepy, curled under, semi-folded.... I know... weird. :) Have fun and buy something pretty!

Custom -- unique -- those can be euphemisms for weird and bad. While this house contains some nice features, it also contains some bad ideas that will not live comfortably -- things no one's going to like in real life. And it is expensive in ways that don't help the looks or efficiency of the house. - The entryway has a barrel vault that leads into an arch . . . and beyond that is a coffered ceiling . . . and then you have another arch off to the left. These are all expensive, showy ceiling features -- but having all of them within arms' length means they will "compete" with one another. One feature of good design is that it contains "enough" . . . without going overboard. Note that your inspiration plan contains multiple coffered ceilings, but it doesn't mix and match ceiling features. Repetition in design creates a sense of harmony. - On the subject of arches -- I love them and wonder why people aren't building them anymore. But they're an expensive feature, and I would never spend the money to build one between the kitchen and the mudroom, especially since it's tucked behind the kitchen cabinets and would literally only be seen as people come /go from the house. Unless your budget is genuinely unlimited, put your resources in spots where they're going to show. - I agree with the poster who mentioned the difficult turns necessary to enter either of the secondary bedrooms. If the aforementioned elderly relative needs a walker or a wheelchair, this will be difficult. It would be easy to move the door to the smaller bedroom to an easier-to-access spot. Will this relative live with you all the time? If so, he or she will probably need more than an 11x11 room with a small closet -- could you happily move all your personal effects into this room permanently? I ask because this was a MAJOR FIGHT with my easy-going grandmother only a few years ago, and she NEVER got over having to get rid of so much stuff. I agree with the poster who suggested making the larger office room a bedroom for the elderly relative. - An ADA bath in a 9x9 space. Is that possible? Okay, it's possible, but I mean, is it possible to do it well? - The master bath is large but contains SIX DOORS. Stop and visualize six doors in this space. The master bath is also laid out poorly: When you walk in, your sightline is the corner of the shower. And the toilet closet is tiny and cramped -- backing into a 6' deep closet and scootching over to the side so you can close the door (plunging yourself into darkness) won't be comfortable. Why plan two sinks in such a small vanity? It means you'll have no drawer space. What is the dry area in the shower? What is keeping it dry? Note that when you walk into the bathroom, you'll have to close those double doors and reach behind them to turn on the light switch. With all this space allotted to the master bath, you can absolutely have something better than this. - The great room is a positive ray of sunshine in an otherwise chaotic plan. Ditto for the foyer. - The odd extra hallway (containing a butler's pantry?) near the dining area is wasted space. Why would anyone walk through this hallway when the foyer is literally two steps farther away? - The kitchen doesn't work on any level. It's huge, but everything is so far apart! Your "major players" -- the sink and the stove and your prep space -- are all disconnected from one another. Why would you want your ovens in the dining room? Look at the floor plan and imagine yourself going through the motions of preparing one of your favorite meals. Likely it's going to include too many "walk across the kitchen" trips. I think you're falling for the oh-so-common idea that a BIG kitchen = a GOOD kitchen, and that is axiomatically false. An EFFICIENT kitchen = a GOOD kitchen. - What you're calling the Hearth Room could be an incredible dining room, and it's completely wasted as a sitting area. Because it is connected to the great room, it has no privacy and serves no purpose as a separate room. - The table, in its current position, is blocking access to the kitchen and the Hearth Room. Imagine squeezing by either end once chairs are in place. - If you move the sink in the mudroom to the same wall as the washer/dryer, you will save significant money. Why? Because you'll limit your water needs to one wall. That means only one wall needs to be thick enough to run water, and the plumber only has to work on one wall. I don't love the island in the middle of this room. This is a storage room / a pass-through room. The island actually creates a barrier. - I personally dislike the "friends' entrance" concept. I'm making the front door nice. I'm arranging guest parking to encourage people to see /enter through the front door. I'm setting up a table for purses/keys, etc. I don't want people traipsing in through the back door where I'm storing plastic bags, recycling, and dog food. And if this is a "friends' entrance", for whom is the front door? Enemies? I don't invite them over. - I agree with the posters who say most rooms are over-sized. You could easily reduce most rooms by 25% and still have comfortable spaces. The exceptions are the two secondary bedrooms, which don't seem to fit in with the rest of the sizing. - The hallways could be vastly reduced, and that could make up the price difference you mentioned -- you need the foyer hall and the two small halls to reach the bedrooms, but the giant freeway running through the middle is just expensive wasted space. I do like the inspiration plan's connection between the mud room and the hallway -- it promotes good flow in two directions, without being over-sized. Were you the poster from a couple months ago who loved hallways because of a wall treatment you saw in a model home's hallways? - A garage sticking out on the front doesn't make for a very attractive exterior. - You're going with a basement AND a bonus room over the garage? I'd pick one or the other, which would eliminate one staircase -- do not underestimate the cost of a staircase. Actually, staircases cost in both money and square footage. Either a basement OR a bonus room will give you a secondary living space. Again, this house has some redeeming features, but they are so buried under the oddities and mistakes that it's hard to find them. I vote for a fresh start. This post was edited by MrsPete on Thu, Sep 11, 14 at 18:21

I passed the info on with some sites about control strategies. It sounded to me that she was pulling them out after flowering. She tried mowing while they were small but they came back from the roots early in the year.

Hazel, Squash bugs sometimes get on the foliage of Seminole, but I don't think they have caused much harm. I don't know if Seminole has better tolerance of the diseases squash bugs spread or if squash bugs don't like the taste of their leaves or whatever and just don't stick around long enough to spread enough disease to harm the plants. I do try to kill squash bugs when I see them, even though I feel like the C. moschata type plants can just outgrow them. Any squash bug you allow to live is going to be breeding the next generation and the next one and the next one....and one of those generations will overwinter and attack all your squash plants next spring. I make no attempt whatsoever to grow C. pepo or C. maxima varieties at all, except under netting or summerweight row cover. There is no point. Either the squash bugs spread diseases that kill them or the SVBs get them, so why even plant them and go through the subsequent heartbreak of losing them. However, I got to grow all I wanted for 7 years here before the squash bugs and squash vine borers even found us, and those were the best 7 gardening years of my life because I grew every kind of squash and pumpkin that I'd ever wanted to grow. Bon, It is in the garden that I find hope for the future of this world, but then when I go into the house and hear the news, it sure gets discouraging. Why can't people everywhere just love each other, help each other and get along. You know, it is hard for me to understand someone so filled with hate that they want to kill random strangers. I'd rather be out in the garden any time, but the heat does make it hard. I do love the dragon flies too. I find them adorable and cute, and am astonished how many hang out in the garden with me all the time. They are just everywhere. Our little cat, Pumpkin, thinks I am the worst person on earth because I chastise him when he is chasing dragonflies and if he doesn't stop chasing them, I take him indoors for the rest of the day. He's learned he'd better not chase and catch butterflies, dragonflies, moths, birds of any kind, lizards, frogs, toads and rabbits. He thinks I am mean and ruin all his fun. He's pretty good now about following the rules, and mostly confines his hunting and killing to rodents, but he and I have gone round and round over whether or not he is going to kill indiscriminately. He's not, and he's finally learned that. I think of the garden as a peaceful place, and in one way it is. Yet, within/among all the non-human living beings in the garden, there are lots of life and death struggles between predator and prey. Life in the garden can be pretty violent, in its own little way. Still, I find more peace and happiness there than anywhere else. In the heat of the summer, I feel like I suffer from too little time spent in the garden! Mary, That is one of my favorite garden sayings too! Dawn