Thanks all of you, the blue thing on top of the post is a bird bath/water bottle. Walmart about 10 bucks. The base unscrews and you flip it over and fill it up. then the little basins fill with water. I love all the rock too, except it seems every year, I want it in a different place, and spend days moving tons of rocks..lol This year I will raise the walls to improve my borders. My lot is filled with rocks from small to huge unmovable boulders. Hubby had to jackhammer a huge one for days to get a flat area for our outdoor kitchen. That was not fun. Well, beats buying all those rocks..lol All those daffodils are last years, I had no idea they would come up this year. My favorite flower.

It was mentioned in the papers today that conventional light bulbs are being banned from sale by 2009 in Europe. Another topic being discussed right now is charging people directly for the rubbish they throw away. I don't object to this as such, it just has problems. The likely outcome is a dramatic increase in rubbish being dumped in inappropriate places as people try to avoid the charges, which ultimately causes the general public more expense and environmental damage, which cannot be a good thing. I'm convinced that as all items purchased will eventually have to be disposed of, then it seems fair to apply a disposal tax when it is sold. Pay for its full life cycle up front. And I don't think we should look for the cheapest disposal options either, we should pay for the rubbish to be disposed of properly and safely somewhere as local as possible. Sending waste electrical goods to China or India for dangerous toxic processing is not a good thing, no matter how cheap it is. Nor is shipping vast quantities of plastic bottles half way around the world or continuing to dump TV sets full of lead in to landfills because it's cheaper for consumers. We should pay the full cost for safe disposal of waste items. If anyone objects to paying for throwing away their rubbish then they can just buy less things.

The first CFL that I bought, about 5 years ago, went into a table lamp by the computer, one of the kind that had the shade with a double loop of metal that pushed down over the incandescent bulbs. After some fiddling (and without the extreme solution of hanging it from the ceiling by a thread) ... I got the shade located on the new twisty bulb. About a month later, when I was chasing a fly, it landed on the shade, which I hit ... ... good-bye, compact fluorescent bulb (including the extra price for the extra durability)! When they say that they replace incandescents 4 times as large a rating (i.e. 15 = 60) ... ... I say, "Bull----": 3 times - maybe. I find that they take a second to illuminate (but I didn't plan to do a great number of things in that time, anyway) but mine seem to operate at full intensity from the start. The flickering, if there is some, isn't apparent to me ... and I'm thankful to have had no headache in years. I do dislike some of the type of light, but think that the "warm" or "cool white" or something might fix that. I do have a concern, though. I've heard them advertised/referred to as to be put into a light that is seldom turned on, but stays on for a long time. My landlord says that they have one in a hallway location which they never turn off, and that it has lasted for a long time. But that several that were turned off and on a lot didn't last very well. I go into my kitchen quite often ... was out there a short while ago ... and likely will be again soon (have some coffee that's giving me the "cool" look). The kitchen light is on, at the moment. I'd like to turn it off when I leave (and would like 3-way switches, one at each entry door), but am reluctant if it means shortening the life of the CFL appreciably. But it uses a lot of power when it just keeps running, with no entity to appreciate it but the fruit flies ... which more than negates the purpose for buying it in the first place. By the way ... ... I need some guidance as to how to cut my kitchen/house operations into 30 - 60 - 90 second chunks, so that I can get some of them done while waiting for various screens to load completely over dial-up connection. Maybe I could use satellite ... but I think that a look at their rates would give me a heart attack! I saw the amount of time that I'd been on-line with my service provider a while ago, and it was over 100 hours in a month(and I must confess to not cutting it off when I'm doing other stuff on the computer, or gone to do something else around here) (and sometimes when I go to town ... or go to bed). My friends are complaining that they can't get me on the phone. Life does have its problems! Hope you're enjoying your season. ole joyful P.S. Coffee's cold ... again! Milk, also: warm milk hits the spot in winter ... in a cool house! _________________ Warm again, now (thankful for microwaves) ... light's still on, in the kitchen. __________________ Coffe mug's empty, now. o j

Going to a cooler (higher color temperature) bulb may help a little, but many people find that type of light to be sterile. If you do seek out a daylight bulb, try at least to find one with a Color Rendering Index (CRI) of 85 or more; this will produce a more balanced light. Your basic problem is that your backsplash is a much brighter white than your cabinets. It's probably from the GY (green-yellow) family and very low chroma, so White Dove, which is at 102 degrees in the Yellow family appears a little more yellow next to it. I suspect your countertop is also a cooler, lower-chroma white than the cabinets. The closer anything gets to actual white (or black or gray), the harder it is to tell by eye which color family it's from. This is why a trained color professional can be of help during the process. We can scan these materials to find out their scientific color properties, and more easily hone in on coordinating cabinet and wall colors. But in this case, I really wouldn't worry about it. White Dove is very compatible with the Classic Gray wall color. As you add accent colors, you can give the eye something else to focus on. Another way to downplay the differences in the two whites is by adding more white tones in decor or fabric. That makes the mixture of various whites look more intentional.