Yes, Soozd, I do invest my time to try to get design jobs (that means I do not charge for initial meeting). However, that is something that you or I would have to do if we had more inquiries than time to invest. It does weed out some good serious folks among those lighter inquiries, but it leaves ONLY very committed people in the market pool and recovers the expense of dealing with those less serios folks. I did work for a LA/design/build company that had a very high profile garden center on the south shore (MA). We had an average of 30 calls a day in the spring from people who wanted us to come out and meet with them about their landscape. When they were told about the $45 consultation fee, 2/3 of them would not continue. That left 10 calls a day to pursue. Those consultations would last about an hour. We often did quick sketches on site with graph paper and Prismacolor, but you could not keep them or copy them. Then we would go back to the office and write up contracts to either do a simple install or for design. That can take considerable time. While this is going on, we were also doing design work for those who hired us for that, and were were managing the jobs that were being built at the same time. When you consider how long it takes to construct a landscape, usually weeks, it should be clear that there is no possibility of constructing all of the work that is asked about. You would be faced with ways of filtering down the amount of work you do at every stage until it is managable at each of those stages. If not, you'd be faced with having three years of work booked in March. How professional is taking work on that you can not do for three years? That was definitely an extreme case, but that system was perfect for them. I worked for, and continue to do some work for, a very high end company that six to seven digit landscapes. The jobs are big and take months to complete. They do not do a lot of jobs each year because they are large, tightly managed, and involved. They don't advertise in a big way, so the numbers of inquiries are low and generally from sources consistant with the market in which they work. In other words the leads are usually of high quality and there are not many of them. There is no charge to meet with clients, although they are generally extremely wealthy. That works just right for that company. But, if you call from an area inconsistant with the type of work that they do, you will be subtly told to go somewhere else because they value those 5 hours of invested time managing the jobs they have and don't really want to take the work crews off of those higher production jobs to do a less productive job if they were to get it. Again, I don't see why someone can not take the time to do a mass email response to people once a week, or to put a staff member aside a time to return calls. However, you can imagine that each person calling wants to make a case for their job or wants some advice. It is rather difficult to make one of these conversations short without seeming rude. Then you have to do it over and over for each. I think I can empathise with those who will blow some of these off, if they are in big numbers. These are just some reasons why some charge for consults and others do not. Everyone's circumstance is different and it is not all about trying to milk as much money as possible. It is actually a way to manage the office's time by affecting the source of the work instead of the production end of it.

Hi everyone. I'm extremely new to gardening and plants period! As any new person, I went out and just bought plants and didn't do any research! However, I bought these hydrangeas at Lowe's and the frist pic is how they looked like when i first bought them. Gorgeous, with tons of potential. Now the 2nd and last pic are what they currently are looking like. I don't know if it's me (which my husband swears i'm killing them!). I mean, the first couple of weeks i watered them well until i felt they were 'established' I've already fertilized tehm because I saw them turning all sorts of ugly colors and they have morning sun and afternoon shade. I'm also not sure if its the barand I bought, which I think was the forever maroon bucket at Lowe's. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. OH and yesterday I dug up my last one which is the one that is the last pic and put it in a container and replaced it with another hydrangea that I bought at Walmart, they were in a blue bucket.

Speaking of the past, here's a link that chronicles (via news headlines) the last boom/bust: Click here. Notice how familiar they all seem now. Here's a sampling: Housing Sales Boom Keeps Inventories Slim DICK TURPIN; Los Angeles Times (pre-1997 Fulltext); Aug 24, 1986; pg. 1 Unlike Stocks, Home Prices Rarely Collapse JAMES FLANIGAN; Los Angeles Times (pre-1997 Fulltext); Aug 28, 1988; pg. 1 J. M. Peters Reports Skyrocketing Sales for Second Quarter MICHAEL FLAGG; Los Angeles Times (pre-1997 Fulltext); Sep 14, 1988; pg. 5 Hot Housing Sales Belie Doom Forecast Ryon, Ruth; Los Angeles Times; Sep 25, 1988; Vol. 107, Iss. 297; 8; pg. 1 (the drop starts, first in sales #s, then in price) State's Home Sales Drop 14% Median Price Tops $200,000 for First Time Crouch, Gregory; Los Angeles Times; May 25, 1989; pg. IV1 Realtors Tackle New Topic: How to Handle Slow Housing Market Myers, David W; Los Angeles Times; Oct 1, 1989; pg. VIII1 Prices Drop, Sales Slow in State's Housing Market TOM FURLONG; Los Angeles Times (pre-1997 Fulltext); Nov 29, 1989; pg. 1 Home Sales in July at Slowest Pace in 4 1/2 Years Furlong, Tom; Los Angeles Times; Aug 28, 1990; Vol. 109, Iss. 268; D; pg. 2 Realtors Hear Gloomy Price, Sales Forecasts Myers, David W; Los Angeles Times; Oct 7, 1990; pg. K1 O.C. Home Resales, Prices Fall Sharply Housing: Realtors group attributes slump in county and state figures to fears of recession. MICHAEL FLAGG; Los Angeles Times (pre-1997 Fulltext); Oct 26, 1990; pg. 5 (are we at the bottom?????? LOL) Reading Signs--Is Market at Bottom? Inman, Bradley; Los Angeles Times; Sep 8, 1991; pg. K1 A sad Westside story: Home prices have declined up to 50% since late 1980s Myers, David W; Los Angeles Times; May 28, 1993; D; pg. 1 It's a Buyer's Market as Peninsula Home Prices Tumble Real estate: Younger families are taking another look at an area that was once beyond their economic grasp. This could revitalize the school district. TED JOHNSON; Los Angeles Times (pre-1997; Jun 24, 1993; pg. 3

So weird, and this is absolutely the truth, I always thought the rug I had was going to stay in the LR forever. The morning when I first posted about this I was racking my brain for a place where the CL rug could live, and just started staring at the LR. Just for fun I got out the tape measure...and wondered what it would look like to have a rug going on the diagonal in the room, to parallel the furniture. I was so surprised to see the measurements worked perfectly. Duh, why didn't I ever try that before? Who knows; maybe a subliminal part of my brain has had something like this in mind all along. Or maybe it's my mom (best shopper I know) nudging me along from heaven. All I know is, if something tugs at you and you can't stop thinking about it, there is usually a reason that will become apparent in due time. It's always worth a second look :)