I put moss rose in the zip lock bag, close it and give it a few shakes, seeds fall to the bottom. Milkweed can be tricky, I pick up the pod with seeds holding them both together, then place inside the baggie, hold the seeds and pull them off the "silky stuff" before it unfolds and flies all over. I used to open each of the white seed pods of Night Blooming Jasmine to get the black seeds , but have been told it is best to let the pods with seeds dry out naturally. Easy to germinate no matter. Trying to think if there are any sticky ouchy seeds to gather, nope...Guess I don't grow it if it isn't easy. later Bea

I'm growing greens in large stock tanks this year on a deck, so can get some free from slug and vole predations for the first time. The lettuces are perhaps too crowded to form big heads, the arugula and the baby bok choy is bolting. An unusual green I'm enjoying is Brassica juncea, Ruby Streak and Golden Frill, from Evergreen seeds. The Ruby Streak is bolting, but the Golden Frill is larger and not bolting yet. It is making long leaves with lots of frill, finely divided, so it is quite crisp, yet still tender. I'm going to have to keep trying on the lettuce. I've found that some greens like Wild Red Kale, and turnips left in the ground for spring greens, need to be planted by July 15 in order to get large enough to make it through the winter. I had some excellent bok choy one year planted in the fall, but can't seem to duplicate it. It won't make it during the winter, though. A wild green I enjoyed up until frost last year and in early spring this year is Sheep Sorrel, for a sour lemony taste.

Xc60, I am so jealous of your drawer cabinets! I planned on 2 drawer bases, but had to sacrifice the smaller 24" one for the microwave drawer, although I do have a nice, big drawer beneath it. And having the microwave drawer was definitely worth the trade off, solved several problems and I love it. The only drawback to the microwave drawer is it is expensive. I do have a 30" 3 drawer base and I love it! I really wish that my 33" base cabinet was a drawer base also and I am seriously considering ordering 2 drawers for the 15" base cabinet that is next to my range. I keep my smaller pots and pans in there and drawers would be so much nicer!

I'll definitely 2nd the completely separate laundry, I would have liked our laundry room to be a bit bigger for a table but just the fact that if I'm crazy busy and can't do anything but wash the clothes and they stay in there on the floor and I just close the door, it's SOOO nice, greatly reduces the stress that endless laundry brings. We also put our main laundry upstairs with the kids bedroom and added a separate washer/dryer hookup in our master bedroom closet for a small stackable. Our house build I also love that we have a an island big enough for 5 chairs and our breakfast "nook" (which isn't really a nook, it's just in between the kitchen and the family room) is big enough for a dining room table and we can also add a foldable table for when we have large family gatherings. Everyone can be in the same room, which was never possible when we had a formal dining room. We also put in an attic fan or whole house fan. It's great for energy savings if you want to reduce your a/c usage. At the end of the day when the kids finally go upstairs to get ready for bed we open the tops of all the windows and turn on the attic fan and it pulls in the cool night air, cooling it down fast. We also put in a full freezer and full freezerless refrigerator in the kitchen, side by side so it looks like one unit. We can fit everything we want and not constantly losing stuff in the back of those super deep fridges. We also had insulation put around our 1/2 bath so that we can't hear people in the bathroom and it really works!! I really, really wish we had done that around our master bedroom so if one of us has to get up early it doesn't wake the other still sleeping. We really like our blue star open burner all cast iron rangetop. We just take off a grate and put in a round bottom wok and we're stir frying. Blue Star is a great price for what you get. The cast iron stays looking better than stainless steel and we love the open burners. I love the layout of our kitchen. The kitchen is mostly used for those quick and easy meals, like cereal, sandwiches, or reheating leftovers. We really thought about that in the design. We open the fridge take everything out and put it on the island right next to it. Then we have the microwave in the island and the pullout trashcan right under where we put things. So it's easy to brush trash and crumbs into the trash and heat stuff up and our sink is close for washing. But for more involved meals we spread out from there which really works if there is more than one person in the kitchen. That's where our sink in the island comes in. We've had 6 or more people in our kitchen preparing food and there was plenty of room. We have a place for a formal dining room but we made it big enough to be a formal living room which is how we use it. I love it, I sit in there for some peace and quiet while the kids are in the family room. It's close enough to keep tabs on what it going on but separate to relax. I could go on, but I linked some pictures to my house we built, we since added some things, like built ins in the family room. I do wish our mudroom was bigger and had a door b/c it needs to be completely functional and it's always messy. I think I would have liked to have a desk in there since that is where mail ends up, oh and a table or something for all those kids crafts that are messy and don't get cleaned up right away.