Jeff, several years ago I moved here from Canada, so I feel your garden shock!! The clay needs to be ammended with copious amounts of good old organic materials to get some nice black dirt. It's very healthy, nutritious stuff but gets gucky in spring rain, then solid cement in August drought. Leaf mold, manures, composts are the best thing to incorporate. As for roses, I would suggest asking on the rose forum for "Jean's No Spray List". Jean is a rosarian in Tennessee, and also grows roses in heat and humidity. She (usually annually) posts a list of the roses that have done best for her without too many fungal attacks and BS etc. Her suggestions have been very, very helpful. Oriental Poppies do not love our climate. I plant them annually, and get few blooms. They do not perennialize for me right downtown in the city. Phlox do, however do very well and you'll find a host of them that you can grow in both sun or shade. As for perennials to suggest, it depends if you have sun, shade, plan to ammend your soil (or not), and your gardening experience. There are many, many lovely plants that do well here. GGG

Not being a laptop owner I might be talking nonsenses here LOL. However if possible try disabling both webcams for a while and listen to the sound quality. This will help define the issue perhaps. Then enable just one, disable it and enable the other. A pain of course but if it helps pinpoint the issue it might be worth the effort. We find with Skype it is great but on the odd occasion a webcam will affect the speech causing garble chatting. Closing the webcams seems to fix it. Generally this is the same people each time - and of course the problem MUST be on our computers because they tell us so. On the issue of echo we have not had that when talking to people with built in mics on laptops. On a desktop with a standalone mic in front of the speakers it can become bedlam

We used Habitat for Humanity "Re-Store" for much of our "old stuff." They took kitchen sink, some kitchen cabinets, doors from cabinets, closets, etc., old knobs, light fixtures that came down, etc. I was so pleased with how much we were able to donate -- they came and picked it up after we stacked it in the driveway. Old frig. and freezer to local community center; micro, washer and dryer to one of the workers who was living marginally; stove went to salvage for parts -- someone willing to pick it apart and re-use what they could. We saved some of the cabinet doors re-used them in message center area. We also saved tongue and groove wainscoting to re-use, saved many of the cabinet knobs to re-use in mudroom. It was a joke among the crew "Be sure and ask her before you throw ANYTHING away".

Having sat through countless estate-planning seminars (I'm a lawyer), I understand all the arguments for revocable living trusts, but I still think they're *way* oversold to middle-income people who don't have a pressing reason for a trust, such as a special-needs child. They can help minimize federal estate taxes - for people who will actually *owe* them. (The exemption as of 2009 is $3.5 million per person, so that doesn't include most of us.) They can't minimize income taxes, help you to qualify for Medicaid, prevent disgruntled wanna-be heirs from contesting your wishes, or protect you from creditors. They do let you bypass probate for the assets that are in the trust, but whether that's a big deal or not depends on where you live. I gather it's a big deal in California, but it's not so big in Massachusetts, for example, where I practice. And remember, not everything you own is included in your probate estate, only things you own individually and that do not have named beneficiaries. Think of an average couple's assets. They have a house, maybe two, held as joint tenants with right of survivorship - not part of the probate estate. They have some IRAs and/or 401(K)s and have named each other as beneficiary - not part of the probate estate. Life insurance? Not part of the probate estate. Bank accounts with joint owners? Not part of the probate estate. For many people, there is very little that *is* included in the probate estate. I'm not saying that you shouldn't get a revocable living trust, but be clear why you want it before you do. Do you and your husband own most things jointly or have you named one another as beneficiaries? Then when the first of you dies, there won't be much to probate. When the second dies? Well, you don't have kids or anyone in particular that you're trying to benefit, so why spend your money now to avoid probate in the future?