I'm all the way across the country, but you can start anything now. Seeds don't come up until it's warm enough, and while the milk jugs and such create a little hot house, it's only a few degrees warmer. So unless you get a warm spell of considerable length, nothing's likely to come up until it's ready to survive. Exceptions are usually in the warmer climates of the south or southwest, although last winter threw most of us in the mid-atlantic for a loop -- i'd never had to cover my sprouts before last march because I'd never had any that early that weren't cold hardy. FWIW, I've never ws peas or beans -- always direct sow them because they grow fast and I'm not sure how well they survive transplanting. Caryl

If your current washer has been repaired and is working, why replace it now? You've already invested in the repair, I'd suggest continuing to use the machine until it develops another problem. Payback on energy/water savings depends on individual usage characteristics and local utility costs. Payback time at average of four loads per week likely will be longer than you expect, unless your utility costs are very high. Keep in mind that just because a frontloader (or any washer for that matter) has an exceptionally large capacity doesn't mean all your laundry should be bundled together so as to always run the largest load possible. Sorting according to color, soil level, fabric type, and special care items is still important, and even moreso with the newer HE-type low-water and high-spin-speed machines that are less forgiving at mismatching the cycle selection and load type. The wrinkle-prevent (or wrinkle guard, finish guard, wrinkle free, etc.) feature on dryers sometimes lead to misunderstanding of what exactly it does. It's intended for situations in which no one is present to immediately unload the dryer when a cycle ends. What it does is instead of the machine shutting off and sitting there with the clothes crumpled in the drum, it runs an unheated tumble for an additional period of time (either intermittently or continuously) to keep the items moving and fluffed-up. If you normally unload immediately when the cycle ends, the wrinkle-prevent function won't really do much for you.

So you def love Awakening! Do you have experience with New Dawn? I don't know if I'd pick Awakening again because I think there are better roses out there, and she is so very thorny. OTOH - she's healthy, doesn't black spot, and doesn't require much intervention on my part. I think I might just get a welding apron and some leather gloves though just to make pruning her easier. I don't think I'd have it on a porch if I had children, so now the pain she inflicts is more of an amusing novelty for visitors. On still another hand, she has a good fragrance (Apples) to me and since that and blackspot resistance are my two biggies she's been a good rose. As to rebloom I haven't found this rose to ever really stop and it has a good flush in the spring. I do not really keep up on deadheading, really I just rip old roses off as I walk by. If I had to pick again, I might go with a rambler in that spot and weave in a different climbing plant for later flower. An additional consideration for me was winter hardiness. I live outside of Phila in the last bit of zone 7a, and, in my opinion, we still get the occasional zone 6b winter. May of my other plants are protected by a long hedge which I've found further insulates my plants and helps maintain the temperature in the rear garden but the climbing roses climb above that protection. I'm not a woman who will go out and bury my rose canes in the ground (I have a fig tree that's on its own in the winter some years we get fruit, some years it regenerates from the base). So in additional to all I've written above I also wanted to consider a tough plant that would shrug off ice storms and the occasional freeze to 0º.

In your shoes ... knowing I am likely facing cost and time over-runs on the project ... I would ask myself what it's worth to have a better functioning temporary kitchen now. If you need quality and you need it fast, the rule of thumb is that you will pay extra for it. But if you can improve your temporary situation to the point you don't feel like you have to rush then you can remove rush charges (and probably save yourself some mistakes along the way). So - do you still have a working dishwasher & sink? Can you get them back if they were removed? Of course, all of this is assuming you didn't have to pay a deposit to WoodMode - if you did then my first concern would be getting that money back. If you paid something to the KD to send to WoodMode, it's reasonable to ask "I paid a $10k deposit and I would like to see information about how much of that deposit was your commission versus what was sent to WoodMode." I'm sorry this is happening to so many people right now, it is so much money at stake.