Send me your address, I have a few spare cuttings of an unknown that I believe to be a Sal's fig or atleast similiar to it. Click on my name to get my email.

the yellow clematis: clematis tangutica. i had one in a big vessel on the balcony but had to plant it out since the vessel still was not big enough after the plant reached the age of 3 years. it is well usable for your zone, blooms a lot and has fluffy seedheads and a lush growing habit. but i think it would not reach more than 3 meters in height. so if your trellis is higher maybe you should think about planting a combination. for the "body" of the vine i would use a white flowering wisteria (blooms in may) und planted a meter apart the clematis tangutica (blooms from july till september). and if you cut back the clematis after the first frost or early in spring (cut all down to the height of your knees) you will have no problems with them two plants because they may well scramble together and rests of the cut-back clematis won't bother the wisteria.

I've posted before that I once asked DH to pick up some heavy cream at the grocery, and he came home with a container of Cool Whip. I don't know how I was supposed to make a sauce out of that. One of the absolute weirdest experiences I ever had at a grocery store was when a woman, riding one of those mobility scooters, asked me to help her find a jar of cloves out of a wall of spices. Asked her, did she want the ground cloves or whole cloves. She looked puzzled and said, "I'm not sure". So trying to help I said, "well, what will you be using them in?" She looked embarrassed and said, "My neighbor told me to put them in my pooter." I was just about to say, "I beg your pardon" because I thought I heard her wrong. It took me a few very long seconds to realize that she had been instructed to use them as a suppository. I handed her the whole cloves and excused myself to continue shopping. I'm not sure whether her neighbor was having some fun at her expense, but I didn't want to hear any more of the story.

I'm wondering if he just used a very unfortunate choice of words to express the idea that it takes him time to do an estimate and that's a loss if you're a casual inquirer. Is the same as the "qualifying" process idea, but any craftsman, designer or similar person just has to have some kind of sequence of involvement that they can rely on that saves them time but still attracts new customers. I don't know how this works, of course, since the problem is, with many such efforts, you can't come up with an accurate estimate unless you know most of what you're being asked to do, so if it takes you 30 min, even, to figure that out, and you do that several times daily, and the return is low, you're broke. If someone is well-established in a fairly high end business, he might well charge a fee just to talk and see your wish list and give an estimate, and then that cost will be applied if you buy. For cabinetry, I would wonder if the person could have any kind of brochure or book of work with some example prices, even if price range was kinda broad and there were multiple disclaimers about "prices subject to change". I mean, you might be trying to figure out whether a custom built-in hutch costs $3k or $30 k, or whatever. My point is just that, it would be more straightforward to be told it'll cost me to sit down with the guy and get an estimate, since that is just the business of how he values his time, and that would not be offensive, as I can then make my decision about whether I value it the same amount, and includes the sensible idea that people agree on fees before doing any level of business, compared to the "if you have to ask" approach.