tropicaliste, i think my fave stall is at the corner of canal and mulberry but im not sure if thats the corner- it could be mott- she has the largest stand of any of the canal st stands. but i always check the other stalls as she is usually a little more expensive than the other stalls- i just walk up canal from center st to where the citibank is- about 300 yards and check the selection and price then i walk back down again and do the buying. maybe you saw the frozen bags out of season. season will begin in a couple of weeks and last thru most of august.

This property dictates a multi-level house whose orientation and footprint is long and narrow, to parallel the contours and minimize the grade differential, front to back. Indeed, the architect's sketch calls out living spaces only at grade and doesn't deal with sleeping spaces which one assumes are either above or below the living level (the close spacing of the contours makes enlarging the plan at grade extremely difficult and challenging, as in very expensive). This sort of house may not sound like much of an issue, but take a look at most plans posted on this Forum for comment, and most stock plans in the plan factories. The vast majority of these houses are designed for perfectly flat, limitless sites, and the houses are at least 2-3 large rooms deep and often close to as deep as they are wide. In other words, most of these bulky house plans are the extreme opposite of the architect's sketch of a narrow, long house. Stock plans which are large and bulky simply won't work with this particular site. Further, as shown in the architect's sketch, the lower level is spproximately 12' below the living level. That's a full floor height with an 11' ceiling (for what equates to a basement)! It also means any habitable space on the lower level will only have major windows on the south facing elevation. This is a site that really calls for a special, site-responsive custom designed building. It may be of any architectural character you may desire, but it's going to be a long and narrow footprint as in the architect's sketch, regardless of the architectural character. If you want a large consumer-styled 3,500-5,000 SF house with very large spaces as typically found in the stock plan factories or want more occuped areas than the architect's sketch shows on the grade level, this will be a very challenging and expensive site. In such a case, this may not be the right site. The other critical issue for building on sloping terrain is the soil characteristics. If the soils are highly rocky, then excavation will be an issue. If the soils are highly expansive, then proper soils testing and foundation design are essential. Not going to be an inexpensive site to develop. Running utilities to the site will be challenging and expensive if they have to come up from the road at +40'. The cut for the access road, for example, may have to be stabilized and the road itself may need special treatment to prevent erosion during heavy or continuous rains. Have you considered all of this? Good luck with your project!

Mary - We Californians are still waiting for an apology. In the wake of the awful fires that recently ripped through Southern California (I'm in San Diego), your comment seems particularly insensitive. I don't know if it was a lame attempt at humor, but it would be like my wishing a tornado would blow through your town, or hoping for a hurricane to hit New Orleans, or another terrorist attack to take place in New York. Horribly insensitive to say the least. " I'm with Talley_Sue on the aging in NY thing. New York City is - in my opinion - a wonderful place to spend a significant part of one's early adulthood, esp. if one is single/newly married (no kids), starting a career and/or in graduate school, etc. It's not such a wonderful place to: (1) grow up in (I did), (2) have kids in (I didn't, but know plenty of people who do with whom I spend a significant amount of time with when I frequently visit with my 9 year-old daughter), or (3) grow old in (my mother is 86 and lives in Manhattan). Unless you're uber-rich and have private cars with chauffeurs, and people to schlepp for you, public transportation requires a level of mobility than many aging people (or younger people) do not have (lots of walking and lots of stairs). Talley_Sue's adjective is spot on: NYC can be a harsh place (Having grown up in NYC (Manhattan) and having lived there all of my childhood and most of my early adult life (I left at age 35, but had lived there pretty much continuously with the exception of college and study abroad), and as someone with limited mobility who visits frequently with a young child, I feel that I'm qualified to pass judgment on this. (Unlike patty_cakes, I'll never "take the beach, weather, and other things for granted," and beg to differ that it's "over-rated." Besides, compared to NYC, it not any more expensive and the quality of life is *way* better) The chances that I would want to a small town in rural America for more than a day are somewhere between slim and nil. But different strokes for different folks, I suppose.

Wow! That was really interesting. I passed it on. Our house has "happenings": Master closet light turns on and off in the middle of the night. Master bedroom ceiling fan goes off and just before it stops, it comes back on. Master bedroom door to outside, flies open by itself. Our heat, which is never turned on, came on, making the house like an oven. Water hoses with old fashioned fire hose nozzles on them, come on. Sometimes you catch a glimpse of something rushing down the hall out of the corner of your eye. The washer (front loader and new) door will open and close. Sometimes you will feel a slight breeze on your neck, like someone is blowing on it. Our cat will sit in the hallway and stare at "something" and meow really loud. When we did our final walk thru of the house, before taking possession of it, we noticed a room in the garage, that we never noticed before. We walked thru this house at least a dozen times before we bought it. No, I am not crazy. LOL