pippi21 - I only cut the balloon flower down to 8"-10" the last week of May each year so at that point I'm cutting it down just about by half the height it gets by then. If I left it alone it would get about 36" tall and flop all over the place. There are purple balloon flowers growing where I work that I plan to harvest seeds from so I can grow shorter plants like bev2009. I do collect seeds from the blue as well as all the others every year and each year they produce more and more. My camera is a little point-&-shoot Nikon Coolpix S10 and it takes terrific pictures. I bought it 3 years ago and have been very satisfied with its performance from day one. Something I did a few years ago may help explain why my flowers look so healthy--I did a shade study of my little green acre to find out where it was full sun/partial sun/full shade/partial shade & how many hours of sun each area of the yard gets. June 21 is the longest day of the year so that's when it's best to do the study. Most everything growing here is planted in its optimum light conditions. I've considered a worm farm of my own but don't think I'd be able to devote as much attention to it as needed. I'm still thinking about it. There may come a time when my flowerbeds are pretty enough to show in pictures but IÂm a long way from that point. I practice "bare spot garden design" and am amazed at some of the lucky combinations that I end up with. I really love the gaura/wand flower & Russian sage combination but only planted the wand flower a couple of weeks agoÂin a bare spot! More toad lily buds are opening today so IÂll try and get more pictures of those.

Water, water, water! Tom: as for the water soaking in. when I planted mine I created a "berm" about one foot from the tree all around--for 90% of them. The other 10% take as long to water as all the rest of them. The main batch that don't have a berm are the last ones I planted--the extras or potential replacements. I was in a hurry to finish up. DUMB! A few others the berm I created had a gap or two. DUMB! Those with a good perm, they get the water as fast as it can pour out of the jug, the berm holds it all and it soaks in, in its own good time. The others take forever--pour a little bit, let that soak in, pour a bit more, let that soak in. When I am doing this I pour some, set the jug aside, and go to another tree, pour a bit, to another tree, etc. etc., then back to the first one, pour a bit more. AAARRRGH! Sometimes I have 10 or more jugs going at one time in this "replacements" area. Never again! Anyway, with the trees with the proper berm, each watering, including filling the jug and getting the water to the tree, takes maybe, at the most, as much as two minutes per tree. It took me an average, all parts of the process included, 30 minutes to plant each tree (not counting fencing, which was extra time). So I could water each tree 15 times and not spend as much time as I did planting. I guess so far I have watered each one 4 or maybe 5 times. And even if only 30% would have died, timewise I am way, way ahead. And, the watered trees, now with really nice looking buds and thickening leaders will grow beautifully next year, cutting down the time I will have to look after these trees. Water!! But, Tom, where you are where it is much cooler and not quite so drought prone, in a good year you should not have to water. I never did at my timberland. But of course there were three years in the last 20 or so when watering was necessary--one of those years--1988--I planted a lot of seedlings--mostly larch that year, and I don't think any survived. Pam, in places like where we are, we can almost certainly anticipate that we will need to water every year if we want to avoid losses and/or weakened seedlings. If a little tree is struggling to stay alive, it is not really growing roots very well, and not creating the strong top foliage that is necessary to manufacture the elements that go into growing roots the following year. --Spruce

Based on what I am reading, I would get just the barebones (but done well, of course) heating system, since your primary rational is for the insurance discount. I ran some numbers for the Mobile Habitat for Humanity and the cost to heat with gas vs. heat pump is nearly 2x as much. But since you are not going to be using it that much. I hope you have done some comparison shopping. For the size house you should be looking at 1.5 (to 2 ton max) even if it is generally poor construction - that hits the typical rule of thumb of 400sf/ton which is generally oversized anyway. My point is - for this equip your quotes seem high to me. Ans $1k for upgraded service seems high as well. Two items that may help - Verifying Manual J - http://www.acca.org/Files/?id=68 and the contractor scorecard below Here is a link that might be useful: Residential Quality HVAC Installation You Should Get What You Paid For

I'm late getting back to this thread, but, Nik, I'm sorry for your heat wave, and hope it has passed! No one should have to deal with temperatures in the nineties this time of year. The weather here has finally turned kind in September. Rain, clouds and sun in decent proportions, liveable temperatures. I'm gardening!! Planning on transplanting peonies today (and having a look at the long-neglected big garden). I've been working on a series of holes that, once the rocks and clay that got dug out of them have been amended with organic matter, will get planted with trees of various sorts. Associated with this project is brush clearing and further soil improvement and, one hopes, an improved tiny patch of Planet Earth. On the other hand we're going to be putting about thirty-five miles on our gas-fueled auto today, having unavoidable running around to do, and so will be dumping more carbon dioxide in the air. My family is part of the problem. We need solutions on the national level, and I'm glad some governments realize that.