Oh, well. At least you know how to kill them. :) Callas do well. I have them on a western exposure about a foot from the house in almost full sun and tucked in behind some liriope and in front of Indian Hawthorne. (Before I had them in a more exposed area and they froze back to the ground and only got six inches tall). They are twelve to eighteen inches high and stay evergreen except for as few months in the summer. (They are evergreen from September through June and bloom in April.) Cannas do well also, but there are the dreaded canna leaf roller caterpillars than I keep fighting. Hostas do much better in pots than in the ground because they get colder in the winter and the drainage is better. I have Patriot hostas and some of their offspring.) You might want to check out the daylily festival in Abbeville. It should be coming up soon. You can grow evergreen daylily varieties. As far as the amaryllis, I have several. You can pick them up at Wal-Mart and Lowes around Christmas for a few dollars a piece. They are evergreen and bloom right now. Also, there are a lot of cool gingers you can grow. Check out gingerwood nursery online. It is located right outside Baton Rouge. Tim Chapman is the owner and he is on the ginger forum and is real good about answering questions. The white butterfly ginger (Hedychium) is really nice and spreads rapidly and is junglesque. I also like crinum and eucomis. They do well. A rapidly spreading plant is mexican petuia (ruellia). I have purple and pink ones that get three feet high and are covered with flowers all summer. I could send you some seeds later in the summer if you remind me. The evergreen dwarf agapanthus are really nice too. Home Depot has them right now. As far as reading, you might want to check out Louisiana Gardener (it is the only magazine I get) and Southern Livings Garden Guide (an encyclopedia of 5,000 plants) and Louisiana Gardener's Guide by Dall Gill and Garden Perennial for the Coastal South by Barbara Sullivan (Beautiful pictures and some different plants)

Thanks! I appreciate the suggestion of the thinner. I hadn't thought of that. It is not unfortunately natural variation in the wood-I think sombreuil hit the nail on the head about too much wet mopping. Oil certainly could be holding dirt-but then wouldn't I be able to get the dirt off? I have tried everything. I did sand a small spot in the pantry and it did seem to come off with sanding, so it's not the wood. Thanks again! I would have come back sooner but I didn't get the notifications that I had replies so I thought no one had any ideas. Appreciate it!

Dear Kim, You are frustrated because to are trying to win at a game but, you don’t know the rules or how to play. If you keep trying the same things you’ll never get different results. If you allow the architecture of your building, your window, and door locations to limit your creativity you’ll continue to produce similar results. Because you become fixated on what’s not working - and blind to other layout possibilities. This is when you’ll need persistence to keep sketching until you finally run out of things that don’t work. Then you’ll discover what does work and a whole new set of possibilities will open up to you. But you must not quit! I can guarantee you haven’t tried every possible combination of appliances and cabinetry that will meet your criteria (what you expect to get from your new kitchen) and perform well for you aesthetically & functionally. So you can get the most value within the space you have available. Our Kitchen Design Ground Rules: The Purpose Every Residential Kitchen is Designed For Is to Provide Food and Beverage Service As Efficiently As Possible….to make your like in your kitchen easier and save you valuable time. All Kitchens Perform These 5 Basic Tasks Storage – Preparation – Cooking/Baking – Providing Service – Clean Up Rules For Kitchen Space Planning If You Want Your Kitchen To Perform Efficiently & Work Intuitively The Appliance dictates the Task & Its Location The Task dictates the Kitchen Items you’ll need to perform that Task The Kitchen Items dictate the best cabinet configuration and accessory to store and retrieve your Kitchen Items most efficiently. Store your Kitchen Items used frequently as close to the Appliance as possible to increase efficiency. Understanding these rules and how to apply them is how you Evaluate how well or poorly your kitchen layouts work once you create them. I like to start with the existing kitchen layout – because kitchen space planning is an evolutionary process – and evaluate it. To discover clearly with proof, Exactly where we’re starting from. What problems this layout has, and what can be done to improve its performance. This initial Evaluation will supply clues to help you resolve the problems your kitchen layout has - leading to other layout possibilities. In my experience Never less than 5 - as many as 12 to 20 different kitchen layouts. Providing you Very Different Results than, “ Here are 2 or 3 similar options pick the one you like best.” As an example of what's possible doing this Kitchen Planning Analysis, these clients of ours got to decide from 21 different kitchen layouts. Resulting in 6 very different kitchen possibilities! And yes you should do the work necessary. If you really want to make the best decisions possible in investing. Both in making this kitchen home improvement last, and making your life in it better for as long as you live here. New Kitchen = New Life...if you do it right. It’s shameful but in most cases you’ll wind up with a kitchen not much different than the one you so desperately wanted to replace...just a new version. I wish this didn't happen to anyone...but this is not the world we live in. Thorough kitchen space planning is how you avoid this from happening to you. Having no conversation with you I have no idea of what you really want to accomplish or what appliances you would love to have in a perfect world. But to get you to keep going I have attached 4 different kitchen layout possibilities 5 layouts in all. Also, You can take pieces and parts of these plans and Frankenstein them together to create still more possible layouts for you to consider. Good Luck! Demand Better Performance Joe Brandao Kitchen Performance Consultant

I'm going to take a different tack. After nearly a decade as a wellness nurse in an independent living retirement community, I see this as a safety issue. Throw rugs aside (well known fall risk), you should be able to theoretically walk around with a yard stick across your waist and not touch any furnishings. If you can't maintain this three foot clearance, then it's too cluttered and unsafe. Clear passages with no trip/fall hazards is a crucial part of home safety as an older person attempts to age in place. One fall can change the trajectory of a life in an instant. There are many good home safety checklists available online with helpful tips and pertinent information (cdc.gov and ncoa.org-the national council on aging are just two). Beyond the safety issue, as a daughter who spent four months clearing out my parents' home (three story home and two story garage) after the death of my mother in 2013 (my father had died ten years earlier), please purge papers and at least some extraneous belongings now. My sister and I had a paper trail going back to the 1930s to review/trash/shred. Our parents dearly loved us and yet we were driven to tears at times that so much stuff had been saved over the decades (and never looked at in the garage attic or house attic again) that we had to physically haul out and either attempt to sell (nearly always unsuccessful), take to Goodwill or the county dump. That experience absolutely changed both of us and we resolved to never put our own children in this position-we've taken steps to purge our own papers and belongings and are much more hesitant when buying more "things."