Oh wow, Sue, I hadn't seen those LP pics til now. Beautiful!! I assume you'll get one? Gee, I wish I lived closer to Sebastopol & Petaluma. I've been to the old Vintage Gardens place a couple of times back in the 90's, and we even went to Garden Valley Ranch when it was still Ray Redell's. Got to see the test garden there, but the main garden was not in bloom. I think the first spring flush had just finished and they had deadheaded everything. What fun to be able to go there and shop anytime you want! Sorry your friend has gopher problems! That's worse than my mole problems. At least the moles don't eat the plants. They just loosen up the soil. Yes, I used to have ALL my roses in pots. But that was back when we lived in the mobile home park. Imagine having 600 roses all over the tiny little space around a double-wide mobile! I had to pot them because there were three fruitless mulberry trees on our space, and the roots are extremely invasive. Plus I knew one day we'd move outta there, and I wasn't about to leave ANY of my roses behind! When we moved, we moved everything ourselves, and my husband and his sister took about 20 or more trips loading and unloading the pots in his big truck while I worked inside the house. He joked about how it took more time and effort to move the roses than the entire house full of stuff. It's taken me these 7 yrs to get most of the roses planted in the ground. There are a few sections of the yard than have to remain potted due to trees or other factors that make it not worth planting in the ground. One being the hypericum that simply will not die in one spot, even tho it's been sprayed and covered with plastic and gravel. That stuff is horrible! And as to your question about my opening up my garden for visitors.... anybody that wants to come is welcome. Just let me know ahead of time. I had one Forum member fly up from SoCal to get cuttings from me a couple yrs ago. The roses weren't as big and full as they are now tho, so he missed out on seeing better plants and blooms. I've had a couple others ask to come and visit, but they never made it. I'm probably a good 2½-3 hours from you. If you ever want to come, just send me a private message and I'll tell you where I am!

Calshep, In a nutshell, the big advantage of starting cuttings from current plants is that it gives you a larger plant earlier and it is a faster process. From the time you take the cutting until you can put the cutting-raised plants in the ground can take only a couple of weeks depending on how long you hold the cutting in the shade so it can make roots without fighting the heat and sunlight at the same time. The disadvantage is that if the plant has any disease or pest issues, they may develop on/in the cutting raised plant too. With seed-raised plants, the advantage is that there are not any pre-existing diseases on the plants (assuming the seed is not infected). At this time of year, you can go from seed to transplant size in 4 or 5 weeks quite easily if you raise the seedlings outdoors so they are exposed to the heat. Otherwise, if raised indoors, you need another week to harden them off when it is time to move them outdoors. I usually start from seed because I am planting different varieties for fall. I did start a couple of varieties for fall from seed even though I have those same varieties in the ground right now and could have used cuttings instead of seed. My plan is to take cuttings from those varieties a couple of weeks from now, root them, and then plant the seed-raised plants right beside cutting-grown plants of the same variety so I can see if there is a difference in the way they grow and perform. Another reason I tend to start from seed for fall tomatoes is that most of my spring-planted tomato plants are mid-season or late-season varieties that take 70-90 days to produce ripe fruit. For fall, in order to get a good harvest from the fall plants, I choose varieties with shorter estimated days-to-maturity (59 to about 75 or 80). There's nothing worse in fall than having half-ripe green tomatoes all over the plants when the cold weather arrives, so plants with shorter DTMs can help you avoid that. Dawn

The thing that your inspiration kitchens lack is any dark tones that would lend them depth. They are kinda flat because of that. I would do either the island in a dark tone, or do the perimeter counters in a dark tone. The counters would win out in my book because dark horizontal surfaces move your eye about the room and actually make it look larger. Dark vertical surfaces are stopping points for the eye and grab a lot of attention and have a lot of visual weight. BTW, he does NOT get to give you the job of designing this house with no help at all. This is YOUR house too. For maybe 1K, you could find a designer who would help you to develop a cohesive color pallet and design look for the house. Then you just steel yourself to not choose anything outside of the design box. It would be money WELL worth spending to give you the confidence to choose things correctly. There is nothing worse than trying to pick out bits and pieces to make a whole if you don't have any idea of the vision of the whole from the beginning.

You have an older model wall control. I can no longer remember the color coding but you will end up with 1 or 2 wires not connected. If the wall control is working as it is presently wired you can just leave it that way. If not you need to try different combinations but it will need take 2 of the wires.