dcarch, Thanks for posting that diagram of your 'suspension bridge' tomato support system. We already have the poles in the ground and DH will rig the 'suspension' for 2010. Finally we have a tomato support that will work AND give air circulation to the plants. BTW we grow in EarthBox and will set the EB's right down the middle of the suspension supports - I can see it now.......... Thanks!! natal, Thanks for that photo of your garden. I have wanted DH to put more of my garden in the front yard and after he saw your photo he said "We can do that - easy" We are off to get the fencing in a few days. We downloaded your photo for reference. Thanks!! DL

Our best friends are an uber left couple. We have absolutely NOTHING we agree on politically. That aside, he's the architect I used to design a substantial extension to our home and they are THE couple we vacation with. We just spent four days at a winery festival in north Georgia (Crushfest). The wine isn't going to compete with the west coast greats but the Genesis line is, no kidding, very nice. The things we have in common are much too enjoyable to let the differences interfere. Like us, they are high school sweethearts and, pushing 50, are drinking up a 28 year marriage. Our mutual interests are unending... We know how we differ politically but have an IQ relatively high enough to dispense with that and enjoy each other for the qualities we see in each other. I agree with whoever said that life's too short to spend it with people we find distasteful.

I don't care whether the next panel is coming off of the front or the back, though I somewhat prefer the back ... and it looks to me as though that is the style in the original pic. As for the panels feeding at the front, and there may be splash from the men if the toilet is too close ... train your guys that civilized men sit down to pee. In a discussion at a friend's house a number of years ago, a lady with a husband and a couple of nearly grown boys and a couple of girls in similar age bracket said that she'd told her guys ... that if they chose to stand to pee - they cleaned the bathroom! The problem that I have with many of the holders that have a bump at each end just a bit smaller than the tube of the roll, but a thin bar in between, is that a number of the rolls are narrower than they used to be, and the bump at the one end doesn't hold them correctly, so the roll sits askew, and tends to bind when a person tries to pull some paper off of the roll. I remember a discussion here a few years ago when that narrower roll practice began, people were complaining that some stores (I think a major one being Mal Wart) were selling the new narrower roll, and they didn't like it. If I recall correctly, someone suggested that such rolls appeared to be intended for tight-assed people. When I was visiting that receptacle a couple of dozen times and more per day, back there in the winter ... I became quite concerned about using the paper carefully ... and wisely ... and even learned how to reuse it (should anyone have any interest in such a subject). By the way - do you remember my story several years ago about how some people had learned how to recycle toilet paper ... and then came on to say that I'd used the wrong terminolgy, that "recycling" necessitated some reprocessing, and the situation to which I'd referred was actually "re-use", as no "reprocessing" was involved (unless one called re-rolling a strip of the paper back on the roll as "re-processing")? It had been a different kind of "re-use" that time, though. Hope you all have a glorious weekend. ole joyfuelled

Late night ramblings: Oh, good grief! Did I never show you the 95.5% finished work? Yes, you know it's not 100%! MrHunzi still hasn't put in the counter and the sink for the coffee bar. He has a good excuse, by the time we were ready to do it, the stupid virus was upon us and we couldn't invite his work buddy over to help, and then the next shiny object took over... the BIG RENO - The BIG RENO is all the super necessary and completely unsexy stuff we've put off doing for a decade or two or three. So far, we have spent 3 yrs sucking all the 100yr old insulation out of the attic, spray foaming the roof deck, upgrading the electrical panel, burying the service lines, trenched and burying the roof runoff system, fixing a bit of masonry, cleaning up a few thousand feet of wiring, installing a 1100sqft of plywood flooring in the attic during the height of the pandemic (I could have floored it in gold bullion and had it be cheaper), putting in a pulldown sliding attic staircase, tearing out a few tons of lath and plaster (3.25tons to be precise) from the upper and lower halls, cleaning and adding meeting rail locks/latches to 16 huge double-hung windows and installing interior storm windows to tighten up the envelope, and pouring a concrete utility pad for the reason we've been doing all this work - getting HVAC installed in this 140yr Shrine To Our Lady of Perpetual Renovation! (cue angelic singing). Yes folks, in a few weeks' time, the window air units will be no more! (Well, except for the converted side porch office, that's a whole other problem for another time.) And we're getting a whole house generator to boot, because, go big or go home. Anyway, I promise as soon as all the piles of stuff that have nowhere to go right now are gone, I'll take some lovely photos and show y'all the BabeCave. I'm about to reopen it to clients after all the hot mess of 2020/2021 is done. (I am about to have a breakdown over this part of the reno- the absolute CHAOS of everything everywhere. This is the part that breaks a lot of DIYers, and I know we'll get through it, but it's tempting to say eff it and start over with something that's "turn-key". With all the other projects we've done, 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, LR, DR, Library, they have been easy to compartmentalize and keep the mess to that location. Y'all! There is no part of the house that isn't getting touched and there is no refuge from piles of tools, stuff that has been moved out of the way for something and has nowhere to go, oh and there are literally 17 giant bales of insulation stacked in my dining room and it's 2 weeks till Thanksgiving. No turkeys will be sacrificing their lives for us this year! Oh, only 5 of those bales have immediate use after the ducts go in, 4 more are holding for when we do the bathroom because MrHunzi is worried we might damage them somehow when demoing that ceiling if we put them up now, and the rest...there was somehow a mad rounding-up error on how much was required, so yay, I'm going to have the privilege of dragging them down into the basement, putting it up in the boiler room ceiling, and crawling up into the 2ft high crawlspace ledges and scootching around on my back to insulating them with Rockwool, because waste not, want not, and I have 8 bales to spare.) It's all good - the goal in this house is always to stuff every possible accessible space with Rockwool because fire is the one thing that is super scary in an old house like this - if you've ever tossed a stick of lath into a fire and watched it go WOOSH and contemplated, my whole house is made of that stuff, you too would be willing to backcrawl in dirty, dead mouse filled crawlspace ledges with the goal of not making your house fireproof, but to at least buying you an extra minute or two to make it out. And this is the one time that MrHunzi gets off easy - he can't work in quarters that tight, and while I'm no skinny mini, I can, so yay for that. But I know it will get better. As soon as the ductwork (and insulation for the hall) is installed, I'm planning to call in my fabulous assistant and we are going to organize and PURGE like mad, then I'm going to call in the Stanley steamer guys to clean every floor in the house, and beg my housekeeper to come back to work. I'd really like to do it now before the contractors descend on us right after T-Day because I'm actually horrified to ask anyone to come work in this house in this condition - I'm not sure they won't think we're hoarders. Isn't there a DIY show on TV like this right now? Where the DIY got out of control and the homeowners are a full hot mess and need to be rescued? I feel like someone could nominate us for that show. We are currently the poster children of why not to live in the renovation. Contractors will take photos to scare their future clients out of ever attempting DIY with tales of our woe. Oh and for extra fun, Thanksgiving weekend, the Mini-Mes are coming to stay with Nana for several weeks, because it's not chaotic enough without throwing two small children, 4yr (girl) & 8mon (boy), into the mix between Thanksgiving and Christmas. I think I was fine until I realized there will be a point while the HVAC guys (arriving Monday after thanksgiving) are working here for 2 weeks where I will need to remove ALL THE FURNITURE from the nursery and ROLL UP THE CARPET, so we can put the ductwork in for the DR below, while I have infants/preschoolers who need to sleep in that room because the other guest room is 6ft deep in all the crap from every other place and will have the nursery room furniture piled in there to boot. Everyone be sure to say your prayers and light your candles to Our Lady of Perpetual Renovation for us. We're going to need them! ;-) Once the HVAC is done, a brief interlude for celebrating Christmas, and the purge and cleaning have commenced, it's drywall, paint, add more fancy applied moldings on a huge staircase wall, and we'll pour a concrete driveway big enough to land a 747 (well, maybe not quite that big but at least a 7/11 parking lot) and that will probably mushroom into more landscaping. And then maybe by this time next year, we can declare victory. For five minutes at least. And then, we'll see if there's anything left in the tank to work on that truly evil old converted porch/office reno - that thing is going to mushroom like a nuclear cloud. And then there will only be some minor drywalling, install a window and pocket doors for the dining room, the 2nd-floor bath (only bathroom on the 2nd floor shared by 3 bedrooms so making it master-bath nice is the plan), and the kitchen to do, you know, nothing major.... But I promise - photos soon.