Thanks for the replies. Paul, the ironic thing is that I was on Safari when I read your post and I couldn't click on your link. When I try to log in on Safari, I get a grey screen and nothing else. I had to get on Firefox to reply to this thread. I have a retina display screen on the MacBook, and Firefox looks horrible on it. Safari is (obviously) the optimized browser for this computer, although I have used Chrome too. I don't know how much I am willing to participate; it's a pain in the keester to have to switch browsers just to view links and post replies.

Autum it can be staggering on the cost of lots in some areas. We are really low end here from about 12K for a city lot which are 50 by 150 ish. They vary. We bought half an acre for 19K. Wish it was smaller but to get what we wanted on the lot we needed this much because it is a triangle. So we ended up with more dreaded lawn than I wanted. My friend has two houses one huge at 6 bedrooms two story.Daylight basement being one of the stories. Barns out buildings and a second smaller two bedroom house all on almost 10 acres for 160K. So on the other end of the scale there are places going pretty darn cheep. Certainly more than we want to deal with no matter how inexpensive. As far as DIY it is so much harder as you say the older you get. Some thing that I could easily do in an hour and not even batting an eye takes me so much longer now and I some times have to think if it is even worth it. And with my DH 10 years older then I am I can not always ask for his help now as I need to consider if it will cause him as much pain if not more than me. I was just thinking today to get it all done as fast as I can now or seriously consider hiring some one to help me. I just hired a guy the other day to lay some pavers in the dogs yard to lower the mud level in the house this winter. There was just one little corner needing to be finished filled in.He lifted and carried four pavers at a time when I would struggle with carrying ONE. And my knee does not work=bend like it should any more. Needs surgery I have to wait on. My ankle is still healing from a fall a year ago.I struggled to carry an end table this morning to move it from one room to another. A few years ago it was not hard to move.And I still have not finished painting the inside of our house and usually I have a house painted inside and out in the first year. This was a new house but builders paint is crappy. NOW the outside needs painting too. Next year and we all will get to decide what colors. So glad this is a small house. The cost of paint is staggering now and where I buy it in Oregon they added two dollars a gallon fee for?? some thing about the environment.GGGRRRRRRRR

A lot folks grow Asian vegetables. But I think a lot of Asian folks just do not read this forum and this site.

Apparently it is not fixed, because I went looking for a Native Plant forum to direct a new member to and couldn't find it in the directory. Neither was there a link to it under the only forum about natives that shows up in the directory, the Native Plant Exchange. Another member had to post a link to a thread for it.