Wow, that's a lot of plants! I don't have a list of what I'm growing in my little gardens -- sometimes it takes me a couple of weeks in the spring to realize that that weird looking weed in the corner is something I've had for years. I just assume that more plants than not will grow in this area! One of the more unusual plants I grow is agapanthus. Not a particularly hardy variety, this was simply a florists' plant my mother gave me four years ago. But it's come up reliably every year for the past three seasons in Central Ohio. It's planted against a south-facing brick wall with excellent drainage, and apparently doesn't realize it's not in zone 8+ anymore! One of my mother's more spectacular plants is a 15 year old calamondin orange that arrived as a little "get-well" houseplant. It spends the winter on the unheated glassed in back porch in Cincinnati, and now stands over 6' tall in the pot, and is nearly 4' around. It always has flowers and fruit on it, and we've picked 200 ripe fruits at one time.

You will see, if you read this entire thread, that there is no such thing as the PERFECT TREE (or plant either, for that matter). All have good points and bad. You need to do adequate research and then decide what you want and what you can live with. Of your list, I can speak to three from personal experience. A Natchez Crape Myrtle would be a nearly ideal size for your home and the amount of space that you have to give it. They, of course, bloom (white) in the summer, have nice fall color, and if pruned and trained properly are at their glorious best in their sculptural leaf-bare selves in the winter. Their bark looks like a giraffe's skin before it peels, and the trunks, as they get larger take on the look of human muscle. Your own organic sculpture. They grow fast (a five gallon plant can easily reach 15 or more feet in three years) and are very drought tolerant once established. On the down side, they require consistent pruning, especially in the first few years, but this is not extremely time consuming. Simply choose three or four (or whatever) trunks that you like and keep limbing them up until the lowest limbs are above your head level. Remove other trunks and suckers that inevitably come up around the base of the tree. If the higher limbs fail to branch at a good height, cut them off ONCE and then remove all but two or three branches that form at the cuts the following year. Do not EVER just amputate limbs, or worse, trunks, because someone tells you the tree will bloom better unless you just like the look of a tree that looks like an upside down witch's broom. Give it some fertilizer to make it bloom, and congratulate yourself all winter on the beautiful structure of your un-maimed tree. (Sorry. I just can't help myself. Crape murder is a personal pet peeve of mine.) Anyway, the other downside of Crape myrtles is the blooms can damage the paint on cars parked below them. On very hot days, the blooms just seem to become one with the paint. (Position the tree away from the driveway. End of problem.) And, they create a fair amount of bloom litter over concrete. Careful positioning can solve this, or just be willing to sweep. River Birches are beautiful, multi-season trees. Their peeling bark is a big plus, and the grace of the trees swaying in the breeze is one big reason they are so popular. They are fast growing, and in this case, they tend to be brittle because of it. Expect alot of limb drop in high winds or ice storms. Although most people think of them as small trees, at least some of them can surprise you and get to be quite large. Be sure you know what you are buying. Also, in very moist soil, they can become invasive. I have planted several Red Maples over the years and have a very hard time getting them to establish. This may be because of my incredibly tight clay. I don't know. Check around with folks in your area before plunking down your hard earned money. Most maples are notorious for having very...

Hey Lou! It's so funny you should just mention crossing the inferno strip! I just started playing in the inferno strip with some step stones like a couple hours ago deciding how I want it to look :). It's not really a huge deal to have a path. I'm on a tiny cul-de-sac with 4 other houses. Also, I always park both cars in the garage so everyone uses the driveway. I wouldn't put any plants with thorns or spikes that aren't set way back or potted. I have cactus in pots around baby trees to protect them from dogs. (No dogs will go the cactus btw.) Thorny roses would grab folk's clothes near a sidewalk. Those Maples sure aren't in any big ole hurry. I remember how pretty your maples were not too long ago. I'll bet they'll be spectacular one day. Maple leaves are great mulch for acid plants. The guy next door has a good sized Japanese garden with a water feature and it all in the front yard. I'll ask to take a picture of his gorgeous maple( a curvy Shantung that weeps a bit?). It also has a 8ft palm, a dwarf Pomegranate, and a lot of evergreen flowers and ground covers. It's really neat. He has privets 3/4 the way down for a hedge. You can see them in the last picture over to the left. Those privet are at least 10 ft from his house and lead to his back gate. If you squinsh your eyes really hard you can see his fig tree in front of them. It's small now but not for long! His inferno strip has a brick/step stone path and this very sad, half dead dwarf yaupon in it. Grass looks so crummy here it detracts from his garden. He's thinking about taking out the sod too. A few other houses in and around on other streets are getting in the act with a sidewalk garden. One house has Lirope(sp?) looks pretty nice. Another house has CMs that will look really good when they are bigger. The only other one I can remember has heavy mulch with amaryllis. You KNOW they recommend Trident Maples as sidewalk trees in Fort Worth right? LOL!

Right out of the gate, Greg mills commented that the man sanding may have been used to sanding oaks and maples instead of softer woods. Australian cypress is harder that oak and maple, not softer. It can be fixed, as someone said, it's a resand, not another coat. icutmyfinger showed pics of them sanding. They said they used hummels but they are clearly Galaxy. This terrible sand job was caused by a few things. Bad grit choice that didn't sand evenly. Even though they first cut on an angle , the machine rode the knots and didn't cut them. ( let's put on a used belt, we can save money! ) After the angle they may have run other cuts at an angle, but I suspect this was a 36,80 job. The last cut ran straight and the rear wheel rode the knots and contributed to the waves. Also the machine is probably not well maintained or adjusted so a bad rear wheel, bad drum and incorrect pressure on the drum only exacerbated the problem. A hardplate, trio or similar planetary may have helped but these machines won't fix bad sanding. This is just plain bad sanding. Glennfc made a good point about 'why resand because they wanted a satin finish'. My guess: I'll bet that the owner of Reliable saw the bad sanding and used that as his excuse to resand and fix it, which was good. His second set of guys, who were also $1 a foot subs, did an equally terrible job, probably worse, since they obviously also had zero understanding of abrasives, grit sequence or best sanding practices. Jfcwood is correct on this: it's 100% Reliables fault and it's their responsibility to redo it. I'm sure he's spent a boatload on traffic, but I'll bet he didn't pay either of the subs for the lousy job. So he got his deposit, bought finish, didn't pay the subs and he still made money. Then he walked away. Jfcwood is way off on this: only 1 in 3 will notice. ?? This is a high end home, obviously, in Long Island with huge amounts of light coming through huge windows. His friends and company are used to looking at quality. This floor job is complete garbage and needs to be redone Here's the only exception: If he chose his floor company based on lowest price, then he deserves this. If he talked Reliable down in price, he deserves this whole mess. i hope icutmyfinger got a remedy for this, as it's a black eye on the whole industry. If he didn't and wants to I have 3 friends on Long Island that aren't afraid of "exotic wood" and have extensive experience with best sanding practices and this is my opinion based on 32 years of sanding floors, making mistakes, fixing the mistakes and learning from my mistakes. My math may be suspect, however I was referring only to the remedies suggested, and the causes. Id sill be interested in knowing how this turned out if you guys are in Phoenix, stop me and say hello. I'll be teaching in TechZone