Hi, MeMo. It's so nice to hear from you. This is the first time I've visited this gallery in a few months, and what a surprise it was to see this post right on top and your recent post added to it. I'm always interested to see what hollyhocks I have each year, as they are never the same twice. If they are good, I'll throw another picture up on this thread. Meanwhile, Hollyhock, Hollyhock, Oh Holly, Holly, Holly ... TM

Can you draw a sketch of the general building area--the road, driveway, garage, outbuildings, and how you would orient your present house plan? I spent a little time this afternoon looking at your plans and trying to think of how to improve them, but I keep getting stopped at the thought of all of that hot sun in the summer. The screened porch just seems to be on the wrong side to be useful. We had a deck on our previous unshaded south side, and from about 10 a.m. to dusk it was too hot to be out there in the summer due to the heat radiating off the floor boards. We now have a patio facing NW, but we took down 4 trees to open up the back yard some more and the SW sun on the pavers makes it impossible to use the patio from about noon to 4 p.m. Now that the lower branches on the adjacent trees have space to grow, we will have shade on the patio again in the not too distant future. I think that you will use the front porch the most. Ours faces SE so it is cool at all times of the day. Also, the prevailing summer breeze is usually from the SW, so it blows across the porch. Have you had a screened porch before? We thought about whether to include one, but decided that the summer would be too short and too hot to get much use out of it, and the spring and fall would be too cool most of the time, and therefore we put our money into other parts of the house instead. Seems like a year round sunroom would be more useful. But maybe since you're home all day, things would be different for you. I know you specifically haven't asked for comments on the other half of the house, but I hope that you won't mind if I make a few. When I think of a farm, I think of dirty work boots coming in. Is the office for your husband to use to keep track of the farm, or is that elsewhere? Will he be coming in with his dirty clothes directly to the laundry, or will he be using the powder room? If any of these are true, I would not want the dirt in the hall to the MBR or main living area. I'd want the laundry, powder room and office with doors opening into the mudroom. When we were building our house (we were owner-builders), we were a mess at the end of each day. We were renting a house that had a huge mudroom/laundry with a bathroom with shower right next to it. It opened off the garage and the driveway and we were able to keep the mess there and not transfer the dirt, sawdust, etc. into the rest of the house. For layout purposes and traffic flow, I think I prefer the first plan. Since you're home with 2 children, you must be in the kitchen a lot. Do you can things in the summer/fall? Do you store a lot of things from shopping or gardening? Do you have other family members visit a lot? Could you put some measurements on the screened porch, kitchen, and dining area in the first plan? There should be enough space to improve the kitchen here. Anne

So far, no 'Monaco' bulbs here. One 'Jewel of the Night' bulb flowered beautifully like Maria's and Tsucath's. The color of this little jewel is truly noteworthy, but it is impossible to capture the true color with my antiquated 2004 PowerShot camera. Another bulb labeled 'Jewel of the Night' produced yellow flowers. The first scape and its flowers were severely damaged. They were not worth photographing. Another scape is coming. The last two bulbs labeled 'Jewel of the Night' bulbs are starting to produce scapes, but the bulbs are noticeably larger.

RE: solar potential in the Midwest. We can actually get very little sunshine in the winter and early spring and sometimes can go a month at a time without hardly seeing the sun. The upper Midwest is the second worst place for solar potential after the Pacific Northwest. Even so, apparently with photovoltaics becoming more affordable and efficient and the amount of sun that we do have, it's becoming more viable to use them as an alternative energy source. I'm seeing slightly different statistics than David on electrical and natural gas home fires. It looks like there could be as many as 500 deaths caused by electrical home fires each year, with over 50,000 total fires, meanwhile roughly 2500 home fires are started by natural gas. The number of at home natural gas related deaths was a little less clear. I saw the 10 per year number, but that seemed to include all natural gas fire, not just in homes, and that wouldn't account for other natural gas deaths. Though in either case while the probability may not be as little as 1000:1, the chances of a natural gas fire as compared to the total number of dwelling units in the United States is about .002% each year. Also another factor in the sustainability equation: currently most of the power in our area is produced with coal. Until that changes, which is hopefully in the near future, it could be considered more environmentally friendly to continue heating with natural gas.