I enjoy ordering from a variety of seed companies for a variety of reasons. The biggest reason is that no once company has all the seeds I would like to purchase. Yesterday I ordered from Value Seeds. They have a great shipping rate, a few seeds that I have been wanting to try, and wonderful prices. I ordered Pineapple Ground Cherries, different variety of dianthus, and an unusual woodland poppy. At .49 to .99 cents a pack, it is a great sale! I am told this is a clearing house for T&M seeds. I JUST LOVE T&M! They have the half price sale and the .99 sale! I did well at both, although I wish I had waited a little longer before purchasing from the .99 sale. I think the pages on sale went from 14 to 49, or something ridiculous like that. Just recently, I ordered from Spring Hill. They sent my order with a nice, personal note AND EXTRA PACKS OF SEEDS! The seed picks were nice too! They obviously based the bonus seed packs on the ones I had purchased. It was a big surprise! I order from other companies as well. A few on EBay have extra large packs such as the butterfly orchid I plant. Also, I zoom around every seed rack in my town. Lately, I have hit Kmart for their Martha Stewart collection. I did not buy immediately, but then realized they discount the seeds from the price on the pack. Still I need some seeds. I don't have Icelandic poppies mixed colors for next year yet. Lol. :-D

You might consider joining a local affiliate of Cactus and Succulent Society of America (CSSA), which I joined in 2009. Local clubs usually have a library of books you can borrow. Local participation is a plus, because nearby growers share techniques adapted to your local climate and available materials. CSSA publishes Cactus and Succulent Journal which is mailed together with their newsletter, To The Point. Occasionally, articles will touch on growing techniques, though most articles are descriptions of plants in habitat. I'm currently reading Succulent Flora of Southern Africa by Doreen Court. ---DC in L.A.

I've been booking online for years - that the only way I do it anymore. I use cheaptickets.com. None of them charge you anything, just like a travel agent would not. There aren't any risks as far as I'm concerned. Just use one of the major travel sites like Travelocity, Expedia, etc. Any way you book a flight is going to go through an online computer system, whether it's through a ticket desk at the airport, by phone to the airline, with an agent, or through an online service. In all of the cases, I would call the airline directly to confirm your reservation a day or so later. You can find out about seat assigning at that time.

If you like Southern Living type homes, why has SL not been your first choice for looking at possible plans? Several of them are designed by well known architects and are quite good for mill plans. Many of the architects of those plans offer revisions to meet local codes for a standard fee. Changing them to meet your local topography of the lot itself is quite a bit trickier. Mill plans from every source are almost universally assuming that you will be building on a dead flat lot, and that the front of the house faces north. If the lot faces west and has a steep slope from front to back, you will have a very difficult time finding something among existing plans that can deal with that challenge. What happens when you try to make a plan designed for one situation fit another? Lots more money to excavate or to have fill dirt brought in is one thing that happens. That can be a very large budget buster. Especially if the lot is rocky, in a seismic zone, or has access Issues. Then there is the added concrete for the taller foundation that is needed, and the stone or brick cladding for that additional exposed foundation. Now you have to figure out how to get people access to a back yard that’s 13’ down from the kitchen. That means some type of deck with stairs. All of that from a house designed for a flat lot being placed on a slope. What about that Western sun beating into the front of the house? Thst means more overhang to help with that, and better windows too. That still won’t help at 6:00 pm in the summer. If you have the formal living and dining rooms facing the street, that may not bother you as badly as if your master bedroom faces the street, and you have a shift worker who needs to catch some sleep before being due in at 11. But there won’t be any dinner gatherings in the summer in your dining room. It all be too hot and glaring. So that means maybe you go more casual. It’s summer, after all. Now that bare minimum deck that you put on the house just to have back yard access isn’t going to be big enough for your Labor Day party. And those mosquitos aren’t helping things either. How you arrive to a home, bring your groceries in, and go out into the yard matters. Where and how your family gathers to eat and socialize together matters. Being able to stay up late with the kids for old movies in the summer and not disturb the person who has to be at work at 6:00 am matters. There are no unimportant parts. There are no unimportant details if those details force you into adapting with a negative behavior pattern that you would not otherwise have. The best houses seem effortless and “right”. Because they fit you. You’re not giving up family Sunday dinners in the dining room because it’s too hot and too glaring to occupy at dinner time. You’re not giving up a quick after work barbecue meal because it’s two flights of stairs down to the ground where it’s actually safe to put the barbecue fire rather than put the grill on the deck. Generic houses that get placed on lots often have these kinds of issues. The expenses associated with you adapting to the house’s demand to need a flat lot can often pay a good deal of an architect’s fee to create something that actually fits the property and your family. Keep looking at plans and noting what you like about each. Start to develop a library of ideas that you would like to have. Keep it simple. Don’t be blinded by the “cool hidden door pantry” that costs 6K when you could be wanting an east facing breakfast room with lots of windows to start off your day with the family. Home features impact behavior. But also look at the homes that local architects are producing. Houzz is a good place to look for that. So are Facebook groups too. Talk to a few architects. See if anyone gets what you mean by your collection of ideas. A free initial meeting to see what their process is, and how that might work for you, and to look at some of their past projects that might echo your wants is a good educational field trip. Think of it as exactly that: an educational field trip, just like junior high. Instead of going to the space center to learn about rocketry developments, you’re learning about what it might be like to have a home built for you. Do the same thing with builders. Look at their projects. Have a 15 minute meeting with them to see if they are someone you want to have a year long relationship with. It’s like speed dating. You don’t want to waste their time, and they don’t want to waste yours. But you both need to see if you are compatible as the very first step. At the end of the discovery process, you should have 3-4 plans that you like a lot, and 2/3 architects, and 2/3 builders. Then it’s time to decide what approach you want to consider. Just go into it with an open mind, learning as much as you can from everyone you encounter. Your decision might not be what someone else would choose. But you will have researched enough, and from enough different sources, that you won’t feel like you’re going into your build completely blind about how the processes work.