White chocolate is a scam - it is what is left after the real chocolate has been removed. This statement has as much to do with my original post as many of the other comments posted had. To put things in perspective, only 6 of the 21 people who posted comments on this thread actually responded to my request for suggestions and ideas for using recycled items for edging (my main need) and ornaments. To them, a hearty thank you. Another 6 people went off in other directions. Yes, anyone can post anything they want. But, I didnt ask whether people thought I should put in edging, nor did I ask for design advice at all. I am fortunate to have an interior designer and a landscape designer as friends. For a few cocktail hours and dinners, they have helped me develop my design. If only I could figure out a menu good enough to get them to help with some digging! 5 individuals (2 crossovers from the "other direction" category) posted lectures. As more than one posting said, it is my garden. I do not feel the need to justify anything I do in it. But, to give you a little more feeling for what I am doing I will describe my front lawn. My house is a big old late-1960s brick ranch. There is a large expanse of brick, the living room juts out with floor-to-ceiling windows, then the front porch, and finally garage doors. The lawn is the largest in my subdivision (my house was the top-of-the-line display home.) A street runs right up to my driveway - if you dont turn right or left, youll be getting the cats excited about someone coming to visit. I detest boring grass lawns. So, I have put in flower beds with flowering bushes, daylilies, and cannas for summer. Right now, the first of my daffodils are blooming, and the tulips, irises, and mid & late season daffodils are coming up. As mentioned in my original note, I am doing my best to get rid of the dreadful zoysia and replace it with various types of groundcovers. So, I am compelled to edge the borders of my lawn to keep the neighbors zoysia out and keep my groundcovers in. Im not looking for decorative edging - utilitarian without being ugly is fine. I asked for ideas about ornaments because I find ideas breed ideas, and Im also working on the backyard, which can be a little funkier. I agree there is always room for discussion and debate - perhaps folks might want to start their own strings for topics on which they want input or to present their ideas. I'm sure everyone's hearts are in the right place. It just seems to me that responses should address the original posters question. Happy gardening to all. - Karen

Glad the truck is back in shape & running! That is good gas mileage!Most of my Halloween stuff is old, well about 40 yrs old. But I do have one of those spin around things out of tin with wooden handle, about 4 in. wide, handle on top. Can't even remember what it does. Think it just makes noise! I'm so tired. Made 4 pumpkin pies,2 apple & 1 pecan pie today. DD will be coming for her birthday tomorrow!!She never wants cake for her birthday always pumpkin pies. Of course my folks get some & me too. I freeze mine, just slice it & freeze. Have a fun Halloween tomorrow!! Jan

Tire recycling sounds good on the surface, but it's masking the real issues. Although there are no standard definitions for the word recycling, I'd prefer not to use it to describe materials that loose quality and value like tires do when allegedly recycled. Reprocessed would be a more fitting term. You cannot turn a tire in to another tire, instead it is ground up and the remains used for various things like garden mulch or fillers to bulk out other materials. Since these secondary products have minimal, if any ability to be processed again, and the rubber itself was allready hard to reprocess as a tire and is now further degraded, once worn out these items will go straight back in to the non-recyclable waste stream. Here they will cause just as much environmental damage as the original tires would have if they were throw away in the first place. Tire recycling is waste taking the scenic route to the landfill. Further still, this reprocessing of tires makes it more economically viable to make this waste as it now has a value, rather than do something useful like reduce the number of tires being made in the first place. The reason the tire industry is working hard to reprocess tires, or as they call it recycle, is because it helps hide the environmental and financial damage they cause when thrown away. Instead of consumers seeing a tire mountain and reading grim statistics about the number of tires thrown away or the damage they cause each year, they can read a nice eco-friendly statement about how X percent of tires are now recycled and that tires are a nice industy. After all, we're not throwing away millions of tons of tires any more, we're now throwing away loads of garden mulch, fillers and asphalt, which will somehow be conveniantly detached from the tire industry. *POP* in a cloud of magic smoke, marketing and a bit of deception, the offending tires are gone! As for turning tires in to asphalt, aparently it does use a lot more tar to bind the mixture, but it also creates a much stronger longer lasting road surface, plus it's more skid resistant and safer. Long term the safety improvements and savings from not having to replace it as soon would make it the sensible choice, but here in the UK, as in many places, road works are contracted out. Why would a contractor spend more money to install a better surface, only to be rewarded with not being called back as soon to replace it?

It took us awhile to figure out the style that resonates with us, which is mostly centered on clean lines, without a lot of knick-knacks or decorative froufrous. Gilded baroque is probably our worst nightmare. Our home is sort of a cross between Frank Lloyd Wright and ultra-modern. We also have a few family pieces that have to be fit in because of the sentimental attachment. I do think that any style or look can be done very well, which is how decorating magazines can be a bit confusing. It's easy to go from "I want a nice looking room" to "this room looks great" to "I want this room" In reality a great looking room may still not be the one you want to look at everyday, or appropriate for your lifestyle. It probably took us 20 years to hone in on just what was our preferred taste, as opposed to just what we'd grown up with or saw in stores and magazines. I think that more awareness and consideration on our part might have hurried the process along. At any rate, once we figured out what we really like, and took the time and effort to find it, we've remained quite satisfied with it. It is definitely an ongoing thing. I've never had a house that I consider "done", but I have had rooms that way. A lot of that is budget. I will no longer buy something based just on price and availability. If I don't like it a lot, or have a dire need, it's not worth any price. ----------------- ps.. I bet our feelings on home decor carry over to other areas as well. I would rather have a few nice clothes than a huge wardrobe of mediocre ones. Other people want to be able to wear a different outfit each day for several weeks. I don't think either approach is right or wrong, just right for the individual.