A few years back, I opened an account with BlueHost.com and registered www.thekitchengardener.com I deluded myself into thinking that I could earn some ad revenue by posting gardening related content and showing ads through Google AdSense. I posted a series of long articles and had plans to host a discussion forum and even make my own movies. I maintained the site for almost a year, but never got enough hits to earn more than a few measly bucks from Google. It finally dawned on me one day that the basic problem is that the Web is up to its eyeballs in content. Youtube was just taking off at the time, piling massive amounts of video on top of all the other content already available. In order to stand out, you've got to do something really unique, or work like heck to develop your own mountain of content. All's well that ends well though. I registered another domain with BlueHost to start selling custom kitchen knife blocks (woodworking is my OTHER favorite hobby besides gardening!), which so far has been far more lucrative than selling ads on a gardening site. A few months ago I accidentally uploaded my knife block pages to thekitchengardener.com - woops! I haven't even bothered to fix it. :-) Anyway, I'm not trying to discourage you, just sharing my personal experience. If you're looking for a hosting company, I would have no problem recommending BlueHost. They are reasonably priced ($90/year if I remember correctly), offer a lot of extra tools to run scripts, monitor usage, etc. etc. Their tech support department has been helpful on the few times I've needed to contact them. The other nice thing about going with a hosting company is that you get your own email addresses - lots of them! I think I can create like 1,000 email accounts or something crazy like that. I only use 2. :-) For software, I use FrontPage. It took some time to get used to, but I quite like it now. I try to keep my websites simple anyway, so I only use a fraction of what FrontPage can do, but I don't like tedious tasks so using an editor is much more convenient for me than coding HTML by hand. FrontPage has recently been replaced by SharePoint Designer, which I have used once or twice. From what I can see it looks pretty similar to FrontPage. Also note that if you want all the flexibility of a hosted solution but don't want to pay a hosting company, you can host it yourself. Recipe: 1) Download a VMWare virtual appliance containing Apache web server. Also download VMWare Server to run it on. Both are free. 2) Configure your cable modem/DSL router to pass port 80 traffic to your virtual webserver. 3) Register a subdomain with a dynamic DNS provider. Most of them will work with dynamic IP addresses (DHCP), and are usually free. You can alternatively see if you can get a fixed IP address from your ISP (they will probably charge extra for this) and then point your domain to that address. This is all free, but there will be a pretty steep learning curve if you're not technical. -Diggity

Carol: Yes, I need zinnias...and more daylilies & salvias, if I can find a spot with enough sun. I do throw a lot of cosmos seed out, but they don't bloom for me till August. Thanks, Annette! Most of my pathways aren't visible from the street, but I've had walkers say that they like the beds they can see. One even brought me some of her extra ferns and daylilies. Nell: Of what you listed, I've got the V. bonariensis, which doesn't ever reseed for some reason. A friend keeps giving me clumps of hers. Also have S. farinacea, which never looks happy. Don't know why as other salvias do fine here. Have a purple leaf vitex (pretty leaves but only tiny flowers) & lots of Katie ruellia--never heard of the Brazilian. Nicotiana is something I've always wanted, but don't think of when I'm anywhere I could purchase it. I love plants that smell good. Will have to look up the rest...except Esperanza which I know of but is a color I try to avoid. bekcgarden: Thank you for the recommendation. I've heard of High Country Gardens but have never ordered from them. Will have to take a look at what they sell. Thanks all for responding. I'm definitely going to focus this year on breaking up the sea of green that I have until the plumbago starts blooming.

Luther, as discovered by Tom somewhere in the posts above, only 20 characters are displayed. In yours, the number "9" is the 20th character, so the "b" is truncated and not displayed. You could abbreviate "zone" to the letter "z" like I did in mine in order to get your zone 9b to properly display. Carol

A2gemini, thank you for the kind words! I love your kitchen and had spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to make the Rixi work as it looks so gorgeous in your kitchen (and Ellendi's!). If you click in the picture, that should take you to a few more pictures at different angles, etc. I also showed some close ups of the edge we switched to which was more of a rounded edge with a flat bottom. We originally had a mitered edge to hide the seam somewhat better than a regular laminated edge as we have a plywood base. What I found out was that some granites chipped more than others, especially when they become paper thin at the 45 (??) angle necessary to fit the two pieces together. JP was one of those granites, so there were more epoxy areas than I had envisioned. It also bothered my elbows when sitting at the island. We also had them match the rounded aspect at the sink edge and the backsplash edge, which IMO, makes it a bit different than the 'norm.' As far as the island, for as many con's were against it, we had just as many pro's for it. I always said I wanted an island in my next house. Well, we've been here 15 years and it doesn't appear that we are moving anytime soon so we made it work. I am so glad we did, it really gets used a lot. We had to forgo the kitchen table, however we still have the dining room table if we need more or formal seating. Resale may be affected down the road, however as there isn't any sink or cook top on it, it could be very easily removed and put back to being able to fit a table. Another issue was with the existing bench seat (non removable as the wall behind the bench does not go all the way down to the slab...association rules against changing any exterior) but it's fine. I am still toying with painting the dark trim piece that is there so it fades a bit more into the background. I got a pretty basket that I set on the bench in the center to hold the daily mail and newspaper....so it doesn't function as a bench but more of an overflow space. Thanks again for your reply! I am happy to say I have not shed a single tear over this kitchen since!!