Hi Rachel, Sorry - I live in eastern Massachusetts, 7 miles north of Boston and I live in a suburb with a little wooded area bordering my backyard, and a wildlife reservation and ponds about 1/2 a mile away (I am very fortunate!). It has been very cold here the last few days and we got our first dusting of snow yesterday. I have seen different kinds of birds here within a mile of the house - woodpeckers, hawks, swans, geese, the common feeder birds, we even have a heron who flies back and forth over our neighborhood every day - so we do get a variety of birds. We definitely do have house sparrows, but these little guys I saw yesterday were not those. They were just about a solid brown from where I could see. No striping or definitive marks. They just hopped around eating stray sunflower seeds. I've gone through photos of species, both genders and juvenile appearances, on the internet and in my books, and I am not sure what this bird was. The only even remote possibilities I could come up with were: field sparrow; junco; and female indigo bunting. If you have thoughts on this I would be most appreciative. Thanks, Donna P.S. Your last set of photos was, as always, astounding. Congrats on your new lifer!

I was just googling around for rooms with little natural light, and I ended up looking at a lot of finished basement or basement apartment interiors and also high-end hotel rooms. The ones that were the most pleasant and inviting (where the lack of natural light was not a noticeable deficit) had kind of a lot going on. Not in an overwhelming way, but those rooms had curtains and wall treatments and knickknacks and area rugs and artwork -- millions of little decor pieces and several layers of decor interest in most areas of the room. In particular, there were a lot of different textures in most of the rooms. It makes sense now that I think about it -- basements and hotel rooms are very bland rooms -- usually no architectural interest of any kind, including lots of big windows and natural light and moldings and all that. Which means the room isn't really pretty on its own. To make it pleasant and charming anyway, you need to bring in a lot of things that are pretty by themselves. And you need enough of them that you don't really notice anymore that the room's bones are bad. So your home, being a house, is likely a lot better than the average basement, but it still suffers from the same lack of natural light. This leads me to the conclusion that, while I also generally prefer a clean, modern type of design in kitchens, I don't think it will suit your house. It will just be so quiet and minimal that your eye will have plenty of opportunity to notice how dark the room is. Like a plain person forgoing makeup and accessories and wearing a simple beige shift. That kind of simplicity works well for the great beauties of this world, but the rest of us look better wearing cute earrings and mascara. However, on the upside, with all the professionally-designed basement spaces I just looked at, it didn't seem to matter at all if the actual elements in the the design were dark. Usually, there was a mix of dark and light. The bigger thing seemed to be that ALL of those rooms had a lot of lighting EVERYWHERE. Pin lights all over the ceiling, lighting on top of cabinets/soffits that diffused on the ceiling, pendant lights, etc. So: 1) I'd mentally set aside a big part of your budget to add lots of lighting. Have under cabinet lights, above cabinet lights, cans, pendants, a chandelier, in-cabinet lights -- whatever. Go nuts. 2) I think you are on the right track with a walnut floor. Walnut has a really interesting grain. It is thoroughly beautiful in its own right and will layer beautifully with anything else you add. Natural materials in particular are great for adding interest without seeming overwhelming or busy. 3) I would not repeat the walnut on the cabinets because, again, I think the super-layered design approach works better in low-light rooms. Cabinets just another opportunity to add interest, and you should take it. Make them a different color or painted or whatever. Also, think about something other than slab. Your floor will be flat walnut. If the cabinets are also flat walnut, then then that is EXACTLY the same thing. Here is an example of a kitchen with a lot of interest (cool tile floor, two cabinet colors -- one that is interesting and bold, glass cabinets with unusual glass, open shelves, unusual cabinet pulls, feet) that still has clean lines and isn't crazy fussy/busy: That is the kind of thing that will hold its own and still look pretty and charming even in the dark months. Also, it would look great with walnut. :D

That looks like a katydid. It's a kind of grasshopper and yes it will eat the leaves. Neem oil won't do much to kill it unless you spray it right on it, but then you're just drowning it, lol! Chewing insects like this are best dealt with by Spinosad. That's the pesticide's name, look for it in the ingredients in several brands. Bonide's is Captain Jack's Dead Bug Brew, there are other brands too. Spray it in the early evening when bees have gone home. Once it's dry, when the bees come back in the morning, they can walk on it and it won't hurt them. An insect has to ingest it for it to work, so the kadydid will have to eat a little more leaf with Spinosad on it, but then they stop eating and die. Spinosad is good to have on hand too if you get Citrus Leaf Miner, which usually shows up in the fall and spring.

Woot! A positive ID, and such a lovely one too! I look forward to it flowering all summer for many years to come. Interestingly, this is the second potential link I've found to Portland. I do wonder who the rose lover was. On to pink rose #3. This rose is about 6' tall, upright, and shows no signs of pruning. It's quite vigorous and is pushing new canes up from the ground. It's growing in the roots of a Western Red Cedar that is at least 100 years old (we've seen it in aerial photos from the 1920s, and it wasn't small then). Quite thorny, this one is a repeat bloomer that bloomed continually all summer last year and has no hips. It's growing in a different area than the majority of the roses, so it could be from a different era, although so far they all seem to be from around the same time period. The buds are a coral pink, but it blooms out to a somewhat shocking bright pink. Someone who gardened here was a pink lover - the majority of roses are pink as are most of my 30' tall rhododendrons.