CEF, Molly is adorable! I want to kiss her snout. She sounds like quite the little rascal. Love it. You definitely are a busy one, I am so impressed with all this building of things. Are you self-taught? I wish I knew how to do some of that. Kitchen cabinets! Awesome. Our kitchen is original (not a good thing, 1973) and I'd love new cabinets. Reworked, recycled, whatever! Just different, pretty and CLEAN. I planned to paint ours when we moved in last year-- bought all the supplies, watched some videos... just never did it. I underestimated how long EVERYTHING would take. Every room had wallpaper and I figured I'd take a weekend or two before we moved our stuff in and get that out quick. HA!! It took 2 months, just to get it all down. And half the walls still have spackle. It's been 13 months and we have two rooms done. Two! Whatever. I'll get to it. I am a hairstylist and only work Fridays and Saturdays (til the kids are both in school anyway) so it's difficult to take time off. I do it now and then though and if I'd known about this plant swap sooner, I probably would have. Is there a website I can bookmark so I will know early next year? Our rancher is brick. I'll post a pic of it when we bought it, with the row of yews. I couldn't wait to get them out but now that they are finally, I'm a little overwhelmed at how much work it is to get that area in order, long before plants will even be concerned. Right now the dirt is all turned over and weeds are everywhere-- I pulled up all that I could see last week (almost a full day of weeding!) and then we had that crazy rain and few days later, weeds everywhere again. I posted about it on the soil forum but nobody responded so today I went out there with my pump sprayer full of vinegar and covered every square inch. I know that can kill the stuff I want as well but there's nothing out there but weeds so I figured I'd give it a go. Edge out a bigger bed tomorrow with my new edger (SO EXCITED) and then maybe mix in some topsoil and turn it over before mulching. I may not plant anything this year after all. Use containers so I can make sure the soil is good first, move things around for a bit til I get a feel. Who knows. I want to paint the shutters too, not liking this green. Medium-darkish taupe maybe? With just a hint of green/blue? Leaning more toward the brown, less the grey. I'm off to research fertilizers for my new maple, and perhaps my Mikawa Yatsubusa, if it's not dead yet. I know Al has some good stuff on here about it, found another member recommending him when I was google searching a few minutes ago ; ) oh and p.s.- you mentioned liking the weathered look, have you considered making raised beds out of pallets? Saw something on pinterest about that and it looked great, plus they are usually free somewhere.

I'd try getting as much root as possible, rather than trying to get a perfect rootball. 1. Start new hole (final size determined by how big plant turns out to be). Wide and shallow. Dirt on tarp. 2. Start digging next to tree. When general perimeter to be used is found, dig trench. Again, focus on root retention rather than undisturbed soil ball: due to limitations on size and weight that can be handled successfully, most soil balls on purchased plants are too small, barely have more intact fine roots than barerooted stock from a warehouse. 3. Undercut, drag onto conveyance (tarp, cart...), replant asap. Mulch and water well. You should have forks for exposing roots, spades for cutting them and shovels for moving soil. I would try to split the difference between intact soil ball and complete barerooting, forking dirt off the outside to retain long roots but leaving core undisturbed. For one thing, there may be an original clay ball left from when the tree was in a nursery field. Get this job done promptly, some deciduous trees and shrubs are swelling already. Original edition of TREES AND SHRUBS FOR PACIFIC NORTHWEST GARDENS said Feb. 15 was the winter transplanting cutoff around here. Lately the growing season has been 2 weeks longer than in the past, due to global warming. So, if you add a week to this end of the growing season the dormant transplanting season would be over next Wednesday! Plants are sure acting like it. (Varies with situation, of course, some plants bud out much later than others, some sites much colder and wetter than others).

As far as water hardness, it depends where in the Bay area you live. If you are in San Francisco or south til about Palo Alto, your water mainly comes from Hetch Hetchy and is pretty pure and soft. If you're just south of there like me or beyond including San Jose and Silicon Valley, much of your water can come from groundwater sources and is pretty hard. I just put in a water softener last week - they seem uncommon for this area even though water can be fairly hard, but I learned about them visiting my parents in Las Vegas where the water is very hard. With zero hardness I may even try doing without rinse aid altogether. Our friends were admiring one family's brand new Miele from a just-completed kitchen remodel. One couple with a Bosch weren't happy with the (lack of) condensing drying on their plastics, and admired that the new Miele pops open the door automatically to help with the air drying. So amongst our friends, two happy Miele owners and one somewhat dissatisfied Bosch owner. For ourselves, unfortunately we had a top-end Maytag carried over from before our own remodel - it is a fairly mediocre performer but just refuses to die (even when it was left in the yard for a year during the remodel). I do hope it does die prematurely, admittedly it mostly works OK as long as I clean out the holes in the spray arms from accumulated gunk about once a year.

You say you want readily available, but I live near a HUGE area with tons of granite yards and I've never heard of either of the ones you mentioned! You say you cannot find one you both love. Is this based on you guys walking through stone yards together seeing stone in person or is it based on pics on the internet? You will find lots on the net that is hard to come by in person. Also, do you guys have a shared vision for the space? If not, you need to be on the same page. If he is picturing a darker, "manly" space with dark woods, dark counters, metal and you are picturing light and airy and white and bright, you will NEVER agree on anything. Do you want the backsplash to really stand out, the counters, the cabinets? What about the stones that you like do you like about them? You say you don't like "crazy amounts of movement" but then you mention Danby Marble, which has TONS of horizontal movement. If you cabinets are cream, counters are light, then what will your backsplash be? To me, it would be rather monochromatic to have all light, "stale" surfaces. Would you want the grey, green and blues in the backsplash? What about a beautiful glass mosaic b/s and a solid color granite/Ceasarstone counter? The sea and green/grey/blues matches perfectly with slabs of Fusion quartzite I am hopefully getting, but it is on the high end price wise. Super white may be of interest to you.