Thanks everyone. Smick, the roof is polycarbonate panels from LHS, they come in clear, white, smoke and green. dcarch, we hope for snow and hardly ever see it here in central Arkansas, Sorie,the southeast, Sunnyca, it's not real square, but the doors and vents work fine and with a lot of caulk and paint on my part it looks fair and I had thought of the sign over the door idea, DH suggested "The Win-Door Astoria", since it's made from windows and doors.Thanks for the ideas. Syble

Hello everyone and many thanks for the compliments. I'm starting to prepare to pull plants. I've got three plants of Cherokee Purple, 2 Red Brandywine, 1 Yellow Brandywine and one plant of variety 444 that are ready to be pulled up. By the end of the week, I'll probably add Champion, Viva Italia, Jet Star and others to that list. Early Goliath has set 6 more fruit within the past couple of weeks so that will be one variety that should be around for a while. figfarmer, as a rule, tomato plants are done in June where I live. Tomato plants will flower throughout the summer but they will not typically set fruit. The temperature and humidity stays consistently too high for any fruit production to take place. We would have to experiance an extended rainy/cloudy period during the summer for any kind of decent fruit to be produced. gardenmommy, I grow at three different locations but at home, I grow about 100. The numbers above are from 52 plants. Regarding dehybridizing, it all depends on your interest....getting into this area is really all about what your goals are. You need to be prepared to grow out a large number of plants and then select for traits that you observe to be desireable. This can take a few years to end up with a stabilized variety of choice. I'm attempting to dehybridize Big Boy. Regarding Brandywine and other late season varieties, I don't let the difficulty factor stop me from experiancing those varieties. In fact, I've had very good success with Brandywine....some years are great and some years are so-so. It looks like I will only harvest 10 fruit from Brandywine this year but that's okay with me. I've had one weigh just over a pound. It all depends on where you live in Texas. Texas is such a large state that it emcompasses many zones and can climatic conditions can vary widely. Emily, counting tomatoes on a variety such as Sungold can be quite the task (LOL). But really it's not that difficult. I only count when I harvest them and you would be surprised how quickly you can pick a hundred or so. By the way, I harvested 608 Mexico Midget at 9.1 pounds so far. Probably still have another 150 to 200 on this one.

This would be the perfect question for the inspector over at hearth.com Look for elk, he has experence building masonry chimneys and inspects them, he goes by Elk.

We had about four different types of foam sealant. The DAP water-based stuff was the easiest to use overall because it didn't expand like it wanted to take over the world. But it does set up more slowly and it was the most likely to fall off the ceiling! I found that doing a little bit at a time helped. Big heavy wet globs don't stay put. Smaller ones do just because there's more surface tension, or something. The other brand was the "Great stuff" or something like that---the 'big gap' sticks well, I think because you just spray the normal amount but then it expands a LOT. I think it skins over as it's expanding so it sticks way better. It seems to set up or dry a lot faster than the DAP stuff. The one for windows & doors is about the same as the one for big gaps as far as sticking well and the rate of expansion. The thing I don't like about the ones that expand a lot is that it's really hard to gauge how much to apply. I usually overdo it and then have to trim off the excess after it's set up. I use a serrated bread knife to saw it off at the ceiling surface and this is tricky and tiring. But i'd rather spray more than less and not have to worry that I left any little gaps.