Those are yews and they look good - they dont look overgrown either. Those hedges could grow even more vertically and provide even more privacy for those folks (or items!) on the verandah. Yews are slow growers and they can be pruned back but will take a while to fill in. A compromise might be to add interest by leaving the end plants (thats four of them; two either end of your two small "hedges") and prune back the tops of the middle of the hedge. You could interplant between the (temporarily) bare bushes with flowers. I used this approach with a foundation planting of old maxi rhodies - rather than pulling them out I cut them back a bit and interplanted with new small hybrid rhodies - as a result I needed fewer new material and it saved me money. After a year or two it looked terrific and the old rhodies were just a hardly noticeable part of the "visual" and I gradually removed them altogether. In my case what I would do now if I had to do that over would be to interplant with Otto Luykens laurel. This is a low habitat laurel and its easy to shear as well. If you remove the yews this somewhat narrow house will look unbalanced initially - most importantly what kind of surface is there BEHIND the yews. Whatever that is you will be looking at that surface - probably just rough concrete - full in the face for a long time while any replacement plants grow.

I am looking for technology solutions. Now that 4G is available where I live (boonies), I am ready to ditch my land line and possibly my satellite internet. AT&T offers a great wireless gateway that will allow me to port my home number to my wireless AND connect my cordless phones to it. BUT... How do I handle my telephone connection to my Dishnet receiver? Do I really need that - do they use it to call my receiver or is it just to purchase movies? How can I handle my remote gate entry call box? The landline runs through my gate box so that when people press the call box, it rings on my cordless phone and I can buzz them in. How do I handle the alarm system: I am looking at an interface box that would allow me to use the Internet to send alarms instead of land lines. I have satellite internet but can now get high speed internet on my iPhone over a 4G network. The problem with the cell phone approach is that if I am away from the house with my phone, there would ne no alam system connection to the internet. Could I just buy a hot spot device and leave it in the house all the time? Thanks for the help

As an add on to this conversation regarding emergencies. Make sure your cell has reverse 911 (if available) for city/county emergencies. We lost many in fires who did not have this and got caught in fire storms and mud slides/flash floods. In these situations the danger was known, news reports gave information that the location was far enough away to give them some time for getting out, albeit a very short time. Emergency personnel going to so many homes was burdening the ability to get to all and in some cases not possible to do so. You need to sign up for reverse 911, registration should be for each phone. The use is for more than just natural devastations. Once the call/message is answered it won't repeat the information. Our city just started this last year due to the floods and fires. Most land lines already had the option. Check to see if you have this available, many cities are still working on activation. Also, somewhere in the last few years I remember having mobile phones connected to a main unit inhouse. Nothing worked when electric went out, so yes to the battery backup or the wonderful phone you found. I also took out the kitchen unit for tiling and it shut down the other connections. So make sure you don't mess with the main line, perhaps just cover it up with something that matches the backsplash and can be removed. Landlines are not available in my neighborhood area either, connections are strictly for electronic use. I never considered this until mentioned here. And now remember when my kids told me it was time to just go cell and get rid of the landline. But I'm not good at knowing where the cell is most of the time and unless it rings couldn't tell you on a moments notice. Doesn't bear well for emergencies either way since I'm the only one here. Tethered is not going to happen, out of reach does me little good if there were an emergency. How do others handle this one?

I am really sensitive to noise, so I feel for you, Florantha. I hope that the solutions you're exploring end up being straightforward and affordable. Noise is a big issue in our entire downstairs, not because of plumbing, but because the main air conditioning panel is in our living room, halfway up the wall where the stairs lead to the second floor. When the blower turns on, we have to turn the tv up 2 or 3 "clicks" in order to continue to hear dialogue. Plus, the washer and dryer are just behind the stairwell, in the hallway between the garage and the living room. DH and DD are constantly forgetting to close the door that insulates the living room from the washer and dryer noise, even when both machines are running. At cooking time, sometimes my DH and my DD get into a "sound war" without being conscious of it. She turns the tv up because he's turned the vent hood on, and then he turns up his radio in the kitchen... rinse, repeat, till he calls her to set the table and she shouts "WHAT?" Meanwhile, I drive them both crazy by turning the tv off, the radio off, and the vent hood down. That's me, the sound-sensitive one! Oh, and they feel slighted when I retreat upstairs or outside with the cordless phone, because I cannot concentrate with the tv or the radio going in the background. One really nice thing about our new kitchen is that our vent hood has four speeds instead of two, so it's not necessary to go to airplane-turbine levels of sound just to boil some water. Another odd thing -- we have an undercabinet radio (with a CD player and an audio in thingy for the iPod). We had a mixup with the undercabinet lights, and at first there were fluorescents installed. They caused tremendous interference with the radio! We had them swapped out for Xenon lights -- no interference. Of course, we got better sound quality, but worse energy efficiency, by making that swap. (The Xenon throw off a lot of heat onto the counters, like halogens.) I'm hoping that since we love the kitchen so much, we'll spend more time in the family room together, and less time in different rooms with noisemakers going!