Thanks so much gals! I am kicking myself for not checking the FAQ's first, I found exactly what I was looking for just as you said. I am not going to try any cold strats this year. Sadly, I just went out and purchased $100 worth of perennials to fill my first lasagna bed which I put in place last summer. I had many questions about what that black plastic in my yard was for. It did look a little scary. hehe When I told them my plans (lasagna gardening and wintersowing), some got wide-eyed thinking I was nuts and some were like, "oh cool! I want to try that too!" It has paid off. The bed is full and beautiful and now I just have to save the babies from frost and watch them grow! So, now I'm going to sow some annuals and fill some pots with pretty flowers for the summer. Thanks for the encouragement and the warm welcome back. Life has definitely happened but my gardening bug is kicking in regardless. Besides, it is the best therapy I can think of and relatively cheap when compared to a shrink's prices! LOL!

Hi Nanabella. I'd probably get sent to time out if I made a direct link to another website, but there's a popular TV-based decorating board that has almost the exact same discussion this morning, although there it comes from the other side--the DIL--and at this point she still has her MIL's table. This is what the Generation Gap is about: not pot, not sex. Furniture. All I can say was I was fortunate to be born with ancestors who had decent taste. Either that or I inherited their tastes along with their furniture. I think the real issue is not DIL's taste--or lack thereof--but her cluelessness when it comes to money. The table is just a symptom of the larger problem. If you don't like something, that's fine. But selling it for almost nothing is simply stupid. Let's hope your son makes really good money. He'll need it. Regards, MAGNAVERDE.

That picture looks pretty much identical to the Worm Factory in size and design, although I think it's a slightly different brand. It is very irresponsible of the public agency that provided it to give you only 150 worms and tell you it'd be ready to handle a household's waste in a few weeks! That is so outrageously inadequate! You need 1000 worms to properly start 1 tray of that type of bin. You *could* start with 150 worms in a bin that size and eventually get it fully populated - if you were willing to feed it a very, very, VERY small amount of food every few weeks or so, very gradually increasing for...maybe 18-20 months? And even then the waste of a household of 4 people would almost certainly be too much for it. I am a household of 1 who eats a lot of fruit & veg, and I have a Worm Factory that just about handles everything with four trays completely populated (it came with three and I bought and added a fourth). At full capacity, you would expect each tray to have about 1500-2000 worms in it. At this point, if I were you, I would try fluffing the bin contents even more and airing out aggressively, without letting the contents dry up all the way. I would pick out any visible chunks of rotting food but leave the original bedding. The coffee grounds can't be removed at this point but they should not cause further harm if they are mixed into plenty of additional fluffy bedding. You said you're adding cardboard, but not whether you're adding it in big chunks or fine shreds. Fine shreds are better if you can manage them - either paper or cardboard - to add a lot more air pockets throughout the material. You want things as fluffy as you can to soak up excess moisture. Finely shredded newspaper, torn up paper towels, etc. If you have some peat on hand that would be good to add. (Normally I don't advocate using peat as worm bedding - it's a waste of resources and shredded paper is perfectly good - but in an emergency peat might help, as it is extra-absorbent.) Make sure that any drainage that is running off into the bottom chamber is draining OUT of the spigot and not sitting there as a stinky pond. (I put extra dry bedding into the bottom drainage area to absorb extra moisture.) I'm hopeful that you still have a few live worms in there and that they'll hang on. If you can get more worms, try to do so, but in the meantime just keep things aerated and moderately moist. The bad smell should dissipate with airing. Moving the surviving worms to a new, smaller bin is also an option, but that would mean you'd have to find them all and pick them out. If there are worms still alive in there, keeping everything quiet for a while should allow them to recover.

JMCK, that is true. I am getting used to being tree-less. Sort of. The other element is that I will have to choose my container wisely since we get freezing temps and it can crack. Lastly, I have to admit that I like trees in containers best when in multiples. True, we are currently thinking we will put the house on the market in ~3yrs. And this is the most time I've spent at this house in summer (my kids are taking courses locally). My poor tree measured out at 32" diameter, and the ivy vines were several inches thick; it wasn't hyperbolic to suggest they held the poor 'ole tree up! When it is ground down, I actually have one or two things I could put there in the interim, an antique metal armillary or a white painted white cedar obelisk. In the meantime, DH switched out the long rectangular table for the round one we had in the craft room and we now have our "summer set up" for the DR. I have really enjoyed my "screened porch" sitting area. Hearing the birds and the fountains and feeling the breezes.