Tammy, definitely back from the window. Laguna Niguel is near the ocean, isn't it? (I forget; I moved from Manhattan Beach 8 years ago, and didn't get to O.C. much.) They like low to mid 70s, bright, indirect light, and a fair amount of humidity. It's always good to experiment. Good luck and have fun! Korina 'If it's alien, it's ours.' ~Torchwood motto

We always plant our garden North to South--why I don't know. Maybe it is the way our lot is or maybe because the flower heads always turn towards the south and the sun. If you are planting corn and sunflowers there will be shade no matter where or which way you plant. You won't be planting just one plant like you would a tree. If I was doing it, I would plant the corn along the back fence where your compost is now. It would get enough sun and not shade anything else in the garden. As for sunflowers With the regular ones they take up room and cast shadows too. In the past few years there has been an explosion of sunflower varieties. Some are relatively shorter than their 6 foot cousins. Whatever you do don't plant them together. Sunflowers are greedy feeders and will sap the good from the corn.

Hello Big Mike and cbars Thank for telling us about the bad storms that came your way, Amen! Because I have family in one of the states in Big Mike posted, and I will stop my busy self to call and check-up on them. I have been very busy with to much work to keep-up with the News, or to answers an posting to me. But when I have a minute, I read some post on this form, but can't not find the time to post hardly. I pray that all forum members are well and safe in the way of these storms, Amen!! And hello everyone mrsjustice

"I designed the layout to have the kitchen at the front of the house......." What you might find helpful here is for you and any other decision maker(s) to sit down with a person of design talent and explore/brainstorm not only your ideas but look at other directions you may not have thought of. I do these all the time and call them "charrettes". They're highly interactive "nose to nose" design sessions that last a few hours where sometimes the client commands the pen more than I do. At the end we have dozens if not a hundred overlays and sketches, some great, others not so great but we've looked at a large range of ideas. I take a clients ideas seriously but at the same time they tend to be preconceived and centered on the obvious. These ideas, or parts of them, may in fact turn out to be perfectly valid but it's my job to weigh them against against other approaches. You don't know how many times a client has said "Wow! We never thought of that!". And when it comes to preconceived ideas, I've quoted these two creative people here before regarding those: Henry Ford observed "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have told me 'A faster horse'" and Steve Jobs mused "Often, people don't know what they want until they see it. Nobody could describe the Iphone before it came out but when they saw it, everybody wanted one". I think you would benefit sitting down with a creative someone for some "outside the box" thinking and to look at a range of alternate ideas. After all you're in an endeavor involving a healthy six figures of your hard earned money where there's no "do overs". So, with that said, I don't know where you are in Illinois (it's a big state!) but there's a talented designer I know that's based in Clarendon Hills, outside of Chicago. If you're a reasonable distance away, he might be willing to have a sit down charrette with you to do exactly what I described above. If you wish PM me and I'll provide his contact info and you all can take it from there. In any event, the best of luck with your build. Exciting times ahead!