dd, the good foliage you see is in full sun next to heat of a sidewalk. they don't like real dry as we found when we lost a number to 'square peg/round hole stubbornness disease'in our dry shade area. best, mindy ******for those of you who want more info and photos, i strongly suggest you post your requests on the GW shrub forum. Also, it's easy to see catalogue photos of a huge variety of woodies, w/ accurate descriptions, on the encyclopedic forestfarm site.********* Here is a link that might be useful: forestfarm, the most encyclopedic U.S. nursery catalogue for woody plants

Stephanie, I don't know that one color of soil is any better than another, based solely on the color of the soil. Having said that, I prefer dark brown to black loamy soil like we have in our woodland where decades of decaying and decomposing leaves and wood have given us a beautiful layer of rich topsoil. Unfortunately that is not the kind of soil we have on the higher land near the house and garden---it is red clay with some medium-brown silty sand cutting across the property in a couple of places. Most of my soil is red clay and it is very mineral-rich and nutrient-rich and I have no complaints about its fertility. It is highly fertile. Plants grow like crazy in it once I've added enough organic matter that their roots don't suffocate in the dense clay. I believe that the color of soil is linked to the types of proteins found in the soil. Red soil often is higher than other soil colors in iron, for example. Brown and black soils often have that color because they have a higher percentage of organic matter/compost/humus in them, but not always. Where I grew up in Texas we had blackland clay that was beautiful to look at, but which also needed to have tons of organic matter added to it in order for plants to perform to their best potential in it. Just the fact that it was black did not mean it had good tilth. For what it is worth, I don't buy topsoil. In general, most of the topsoil you buy in bags is worthless crap that needs tons of amending before anything will grow well in it. If I am wanting to buy something to fill a raised bed, I buy organic matter (composted cow manure from a reliable company that never has sold me herbicide-contaminated compost, pine bark fines, mushroom compost, humus, soil conditioner [it usually is a combination of humus and pine bark fines] and rototill it into the native soil to create the raised bed. I'm not sure why you're buying top soil, but I hope it isn't for containers. You don't put soil in containers, you put a soil-less mix in them. Having said that, there is one time when I think bagged top soil can be worthwhile. If you have very sandy soil that drains very, very fast and you cannot get it to hold water, you can fix it by adding not only lots of organic matter but also by adding some cheap top soil that has a high clay content. The clay content when added to sandy soil plus organic matter can help you turn the very sandy soil into a beautiful sandy loam. Enjoy being new to gardening. There's nothing wrong with being new to it, and you can garden your entire life and still experience new things in the garden, yard, etc. every year. That is part of what is so fascinating about gardening---there are so many variables involved and so many issues that can arise that you're always learning, always trying new things, always figuring out that there is more than one way to skin a cat (with apologies to any cat reading this and saying "yikes!"). One of my favorite all-time gardening quotes is from Thomas Jefferson, who said "Though an old man, I am but a young gardener". Dawn

I came from polished AB pre-remodel and have now put in another black granite - not AB. I love black granite. The one i have now (blues in the night) is a black granite with cobalt blue flecks in it (like the gold flecks of Black Galaxy) and a few clear quartz veiny bits here and there. Yes, in my experience, black granite shows dust and crumbs. The AB showed it very clearly - it is slightly less clear in this new black granite because the flecks can disguise some of the crumbs. Personally, while I love my blue-flecked black granite, the polished AB was easier to maintain. Why? Because it showed the gunk perfectly and so it was easy to clean up. It's a kitchen counter! It ought to be clean! I don't like the idea of cooking on a grimy countertop. In my house, surfaces do get dusty (we probably need to vaccuum more often but we're not home enough to do so) and it is easier if the dust and grime shows up clearly so that it can be attended to. I clean my counters a lot more now because it is a touch less easy to tell if the counter is actually clean. NOt only that, but I wipe the counters down, obsess over a spot that turns out to be a granite inclusion, conclude as much, step back to see what I might have missed, revisit a few spots - oops this one's an inclusion, nope this guy was an actual crumb, bend down to change the viewing angle to find another perspective from which to find unattended areas - wipe down the areas I missed ... . Do you see what I mean? If you want your counters actually clean rather than just looking so, Absolute Black tells you exactly where to focus. It was easily the easiest counter I've had. I love Blues-in-the-night and would get it again and again and again because I adore those cobalt confetti-like inclusions. But even it - for all its black graniteness - is more work to maintain than the AB, in my own experience. A more detailed, dirt-hiding granite would make my head explode, I dare say.

I bought the glaze at Lowes (Valspar brand) but I'd imagine you can get it at SW or BM, General Finishes may sell the water based as well, I don't know. It's milky white but dries clear, you mix a small amount of paint into it, the container will give suggested amounts of paint (20 - 50% I think) less to let more wood grain or cabinet color show through, and then 3 or 4 coats of Polycrylic. That was harder to work with than the glaze, it's thin and wanted to drip, sag and dry faster than I could brush them out. And with a thin glaze coat underneath, sanding between coats was too risky, imo. I wanted mine to keep the stained wood look only more brown (but not nearly as dark as java) and to fix some finish damage, here's a before and after of the sink run (I dislike the counters but haven't convinced hub yet that they need replacing, along with the double bowl sink which I also detest lol):