jk96, To put things into perspective the football field was a good example. A typical football playing field is 1.4 acres. And if you want the lawn portion to look that good requires a well trained full time staff of pros. Another thing to note is they donÂt use tractors, they use very specialized mowing equipment like golf courses do. Not too mention the expense of a lot of water and fertilizers. Mr. Hall also pointed out the beauty of the museum again that takes a large staff of gardeners and grounds keepers, which means a large expense. I am a sod farmer, rancher, own a landscape company my family operates, and have a large lawn myself. However I cannot tell you how to lay your grounds out as it is beyond my capabilities. So do what I would do if I were in your shoes, hire a designer. What I can tell you is it is going to be very expensive to construct, and even more expensive to maintain. What it boils down to is you are going to have to have a very brisk biz to break even if my assumptions are correct on what you want to create. So do some homework and really think about the scale of 4+ acres and the cost. Good luck to you. TW

I've never been a big fan of topping bamboo, and avoid doing it unless the plant is really in a bad way. I'm not convinced that topping causes significant rhizome growth that wouldn't occur naturally, and the plant looks butchered. I know that topping is supposed to bring the leaf mass back into balance with the rhizome mass of a new division, but I don't believe this is always necessary. I've made divisions without topping and have even had new shoots come up shortly thereafter. For me, the key is getting the biggest rootball I can. To top or not to top?: that is a question on which reasonable people can disagree...

I have no desire to carry a computer around with me, and so I'm content with desktop. I also have two desktops - one with XP and one with Vista. I've had the XP one since 2000, and it originally had Windows 98. It does everything I want except video editing, and so the second computer is dedicated to that, but I seldom use it. I have Google Earth and Sketchup on the new computer as well, but I cannot print from it because there is no driver for Vista for my laser printer, and the printer is not that old. I'm using an Okidata color laser printer that is on our home network. I've thought about getting a laptop so that I could put my Astrology software on it and rent myself out for parties, doing astro readings, but now that I'm working full time again, I don't have time for that. I've also thought about getting an iMac, but I really don't need it. For my birthday, I bought myself a new 22" flat screen monitor, which I found at a Circuit City going out of business sale for $200. I had to recycle my old CRT, which worked fine, but was way too bulky. I felt bad about getting rid of it because it worked fine and a 19" screen, which was big enough, I think. Last month DB and I upgraded our bedroom TVs to LCDs (32" Sharp), and so we ended up with two TVs to recycle that also worked fine. I kept my large old TV in the garage, and we took my old CRT and Kevin's old TV to the recycling center, where we learned that we could recycle only two CRTs per year, and we've met our quota for the year now. So I guess the other TV will stay in the garage for a while. I might hook a DVD player up to it. Lars

I'll clarify... To me, the Dacor gliderack is a bit difficult to relocate, but perfectly stable and certainly strong enough for whatever heavy pot is being used. As mcmann states, the racks are fine in the extended position. I did have a few small scratches/chips in the porcelain on the Dacor in the front upper corner edges (about where the door's woven wire gasket contacts the perimeter of the oven cavity). I reported on this in another thread and how I touched it up with "Porc-a-fix" for $6. I forgot about this manufacturing defect until rhome mentioned her porcelain quality worries. Of course, it's irrelevant as far as cooking is concerned. We really do like our Dacor. But know that we got a 76% discount buying the display model. The only problem was that our great bargain on the oven made us want to get new appliances all around. So in the end we spent considerably more.