hi mark, glad to hear you did well, but i am not surprised, you are a genius at growing anything! now how's that money tree going? get any seeds yet? :) i am NOT a fan of mel bartholowmay (sp?) and his square foot gardening. i know people swear by it, i swear at it! for some things it's ok for others it is a disaster. maybe i did it wrong, any guess what a 4' X 4' square of bush string beans planted 2 or 4" on center looks like? it's a horror show. that said, i'm a big advocate of using 4' sq beds for some things. my garlic did fantastic! i grew garlic in '95 and '96 and it was a small amount, 1st year ok the 2nd was not good so i gave up. this past fall i allocated 4' X 12' for garlic (same as onions). i used my 6" onion planting guide to plant the garlic. i had 10 or 11 rows of music, 5 or 6 rows of german white, 2 rows of georgian crystal, 2 rows of an unknown hard neck i got at a health food store and 2 rows of softneck from stop and shop, the cloves for the sn were HUGE. of the hardnecks, 3 or 4 plants grew funky, maybe 2 or 3 never came up. of the sn, 1/2 did not come up and compared to the hn it did poorly tho ok. i dug it all about 7/25 and dried it in my shed. i trimmed the roots and stalks on friday. i did very well! i did have a problem (only with german white and only 8 or 10 bulbs with about 30+ that are fine) so i went to the farmers market looking for the farmer i bought my garlic from to ask about it but he was not there. so far i have not been able to get him on the phone. i did ask a few farmers why happened and the concensus was that i watered too much. my problem was that only the german white had 8 bulbs that had a white mold or fungus around the stalk within the bulb. the cloves were firm but looked water logged, a sort of translucent pearly grey color. the other 30 or so german white were ok. all the other garlic was ok from what i can discern. i did mulch with 5-6" of 1 or 2 year old shredded leaves, removing all but 1" in late march (which was too late but that did not harm anything). i thought that the leaves introduced the problem but then all the garlic should have had it. these guys told me they do not water their garlic, it rains enough here in the spring and summer to suffice. all the sources i read always said to keep it evenly moist but i 100% discount that now. unless we go for 3 weeks without rain, i will not water garlic again. however, if you saw the size of the hardneck bulbs they were selling you'd laugh. my german white has some cloves that are so huge that 1 clove is 2/3 the size of their entire bulb! i am not kidding you. my music cloves are just about the same tho i think the german white has larger cloves while music has larger bulbs, more cloves per bulb. my bulbs are about 2.5 to 3" in diameter, theirs were about 1.5 to 1.75"! so like i wonder about watering, you know :)! still, one guy told me garlic originated in siberia and they have wicked dry weather so the no watering does make sense. i harvested about 160 bulbs out of about 175 cloves planted. i used 48 sq feet of garden. to compare, i used 120 sq feet for potatoes. i grew 13 superior and 13 yukon gold and got a WHOOPING, SIT DOWN, HOLD ONTO YOUR HAT, 15 pounds of superior and 16 pounds of yukon gold and i use a soaker hose around the seed for adequate water. prior to that, my potatoes were often hollow or very small, so the soaker hose helps. garlic requires only cutting the scape and virtually no weeding with 1" of mulch. digging is easy. potatoes require work to plant, 2 or 3 hillings which is a lot of work in the heat, usually a lot of work killing colorodo potatoe beetles tho i saw only 12-18 this year and no larvae and the digging to get the potatoes is really hard work especially with a soaker hose in there. so i wasted 120 sq feet again! this fall i plan on planting at least 100 sq feet of garlic, NO potatoes, i may plant 125-130 sq feet. i plant 6" on center. i know from experience that if you crowd onions you get small bulbs. my red wings and copra are much larger now that i space them 4" on center vs the 3" i used to use. i suspect garlic is the same. i gather you used 6' too using the crw? storage is something only time will tell. i don't know what to make of the taste of all my garlics. georgian crystal is mild. the others are not like grocery store garlic which is HOT and SPICY. it is what i am used to. some of my cloves have been hot but most are so so. not sure what to make of this. but it is organic, it will be free once i grow enough to plant and eat for the whole year. this is why i need to buy garlic cuz i'd have to plant too much of the harvest based upon the amount i want to plant/grow next season, maybe 3/4! the guy i buy from charges just $4 a pound and he is organic!!!!! one of the guys i talked to at the farmers market told me he wholesales his to whole foods and he is organic and he gets $6.50 a pound, wholesale!!!!! so i gotta find the guy i dealt with last summer for about 30 pounds of garlic and that'd be $120! but i think that would allow me to have enought to plant and eat all year. yes, it was very successful and i am very pleased with the results. garlic is easy to grow. the hardest part is cutting the scapes when it's 90 and humid but anything is difficult under those conditions! as a side note, ever grow grandfather ashlock (i'm on tomatoes now)? i tried it this year and it is 1 heck of a fantastic tomato rivaling earl's faux! tom's yellow wonder was the only other new variety i grew this year and it too is quite good. i am not a fan of yellow tomatoes but tyw is very good. the 1st 1 i ate i would have thought it was a red tomato it had such good flavor. they are huge too 1 to 3 pounds. tom

Thumbtacks... I use Weather Underground, though their new and 'improved' smartphone app is really starting to get on my nerves (lots of hang-ups, time outs and no quick reference for forecasted Lows. Weather Underground tends to be close, but there are still times when the margin of error seems a bit wide. I use it for getting a general idea and then figue in +/- 8F. Still, it only forecasts about two weeks in advance and anything beyond tomorrow is likely to change on an hourly basis. AccuWeather has a long-range forecast for checking a month ahead, but it is mostly based on averages of previous years, so not very reliable.

'Don't know the parents health issues but perhaps you should inform them of your problems. Put their childs behavior back on them. Perhaps they can talk to her or start paying her rent etc.' 'Let her parents deal with the concept of whether or not she can live with them--this is not your child, not your parents, not your problem.' 'Children never learn to tie their shoes if someone is always doing it for them.' This is true... but someone has to show the child HOW to tie them first. I've realized that she was denied this as a child, I only wished I had seen it sooner. The problem with her parents is not simple, and I suppose more info would have been appropriate in my first post... they are not together to begin with, but on top of that each of them has had their share of substance abuse problems. Her mother lives with her AA sponcer. Her father lives in a one bedroom trailer on disability, also a recovering alcoholic, and I know that his new wife abuses prescription drugs daily. Her (my roommates) mother actually took her out of school when she was a child and she was eventually taken away from her mom, this is why she cannot take care of herself. As a foster child she didn't have a real caring parent to make sure she learned important life leasons. Her overall education level is maybe 6th grade at best, my guess. I would like to thank both of you for your advice, different points of view are important. I know it seems I am being taken advantage of, however I can't just let her go the way she is, my conscience won't let me. So I talked to her last night, explained the strain she is putting on us, she seemed to understand. She gave me copies of her pay stubs, so I know when she will have the money to pay us back. Although she doesn't know it yet, when she finally does pay up we are going to put it into a trust account for her so that she can have a deposit and first months rent on her own apartment, we don't need the money like she does. Hopefully we will help her out of our home this summer, maybe spring. We told her there will be no more help from us (money, late night rescues, food, etc) she is on her own, but can stay for now because she needs a stable home for once in her life. She actaully bought dinner last night (it was mac'n'cheese but we liked the effort). She has been restricted from unlimited internet use, her online curfew is now 10pm and she only gets 1 hour a day, this seems to keep her in check. We can't keep her from going out, but I spoke to some of her bar buddies and explained the situation, that she shouldn't be out everynight, and I think we might get a little help from a few of them. I'm proud to say that after talking with her a lot of what I told her seemed to sink in... she didn't drink at all last night (keep your fingars crossed that it lasts). We still have a long ways to go with her, and I realize how unfair the situation is to me and my boyfriend, but for this family heart comes before finances. Again, thanks for your thoughts... at least now I know that I'm not being unreasonable.

Thanks fastonetime, so glad to read the review. This is my first choice washer/dryer when my now 15 year old top load Whirlpool dies. Cool to hear how the washer creates steam and that things are working great and your happy with your purchase. Have you used the More Water option and does it add more water to the wash AND the rinse or just one or the other? Just a heads up for others, there is an updated version to the Wavetouch coming out this September (I got that info. from Chris Polk). He said and I quote: "We do have a new line of laundry products that are scheduled to launch by the end of September. These will feature much of the same appearance and design, just a few additional cycle and setting choices that what is currently offered." Thanks for the review.