Weeds are a fact, that's a fact. Tom makes a good point that some weeds here and there are nothing to worry about. Those who say (over and over) that all weeds can be controlled by enough mulch are correct, but a constant heavy layer of mulch is plenty of work to maintain and really is only practical for quite small gardens. In my case, where I want to grow enough crops to provide all my pulse and some grain, maintaining a foot of mulch on over a half-acre is not going to happen. Other ways to keep weeds controlled must be utilized, and fortunately the lore to do so exists and it works. IME, grassy weeds are the main problem, and a heavy continual presence of those despite periodic tillage indicates a mineral balance in the soil that is not close to optimum for crop production. What you want to see is the "fertility" weeds, which are easier to control be mechanical means and are much less onerous for the crops. This is achieved mainly by raising calcium.

I think all paid email accounts include ftp (photo/web storage) space. You have a lot more control and no advertising because this is space that you are paying for. Most people pay for ftp space but many don't realize it is available. My email is with sovernet and I have a (long neglected) web site plus lots of stored photos. I have an inner folder entitled 'post' specifically to contain images for posting to forums including this one. This way the url of any photo stored in my ftp space that I intend to post will have the same url except for the image name and file extension on the end. Flickr.com is an excellent photo storage site without all the 'bells and whistles' advertising of photobucket. Photobucket must have some sort of bandwidth limit because if you post too many images or a photo gets too much traffic, the photo will often disappear from the forum where it is posted. As to actually posting a photo from your web site, you could do this, but you would not want to because it would point viewers directly to your computer creating a big security risk. However I believe that Picasa.com encrypts information so that you can share it directly from your computer safely. I could be wrong about this, but I think this is how Picasa works.

DtD: I thought that I'd covered that in this section: "Desirable sizes are either "thumbnails" which some hosting sites provide, or something close to 640 X 480 pixels. "Medium" or "Small" varies from program to program, so don't rely on it. (see corunum/Jane's discussion in the previous thread)." I'll try to make it stronger in the next revision, probably using the 640 X 480 pixels size as a maximum (unless someone has a better suggestion). Of course, these are just recommendations, and people can't be forced to abide by them. I don't want to make the process onerous, I'd rather someone just get a photo posted for the first time even if it's really big, and then the next ones can be posted in a more suitable size. Once they're past that first hurdle of posting they can work on the details. Claire

These are the specific comments that were posted on the "A new FAQs for Homebuilding Forum! thread. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted by dekeoboe (My Page) on Sat, Aug 20, 11 at 22:05 Claire, can you include information on how to make it a clickable picture? That would help because many times the picture as posted is too small to be able to read the dimensions of the rooms. My response on that thread: dekeoboe: That's a good point, and the needs of the Building Forum are different from the New England Gardening Forum. The gardeners usually want to post pics that show the subject matter clearly, but not necessarily in great detail, and want the pic to fit into the page view without disrupting the text around and after it. This irritates viewers. The building forum, on the other hand, often needs greater detail (to show dimensions, etc.) so the file size and image size can be much bigger. You can always open a large file in one window and then go back to the original page to discuss it. Thumbnails are probably the best option, but you need an album on a webhosting site like Picasa, Photobucket, etc. to provide thumbnails (a thumbnail is a small pic that is clickable and the click directs you to the full-size pic in the album on the hosting site). If you use TinyPic you can't use thumbnails but you can still determine the size of the file during the uploading process. That size will of course be limited by the size of the file on your computer. Posted by Renovator8 (My Page) on Sat, Aug 20, 11 at 23:04 In TinyPic the acceptable image file types are: jpg, png, gif, base 64 encoded image, or bmp. The "choose file" button is now labeled "Browse". When you choose "Upload Now" you will have to enter the scrambled code, then you only need to click once on the top code (labeled "HTML for websites") and it will automatically be copied to your clipboard so you can paste it. My response here: I've incorporated most of these comments in the above text, except that I still see "Choose File" on the TinyPic.com site, not "Browse". Claire