I have a scar on my little finger......from 48 years ago. I can predict rain. It just feels tingly before a storm. Unfortunately, we have had very little rain.....going into the 5th year of drought. Don't believe Donald Trump......California is drought striken in many parts of the state.

Yes sandyslopes it is hard to predict which ones will be hardest hit. When we had freezing temps on May 23rd 2014 (a really rare occurrence, thankfully) Invincible was hardest hit but bounced right back. Sum and Subtle was pitiful, I had to remove 27 leaves later to make it look passable and it put out next to no new growth. Came back with no ill affects the next year. Blue Angel was somewhat protected from overhead branches and with its thicker leaves it surprised me that it sustained damage. I hope Neptune and others have those bounce back genes. It might be cheaper to buy large Frost blankets from a Greenhouse supply and cut appropriately sized pieces. The ones at Home Depot seem quite small for someone like you with a large Garden. I googled Frost blanket price in Utah. Here is a link Frost Blanket I have not got a new dog yet but clearly I need to. In the last month or so I had been just starting to think about it. Should have done it sooner.... Hope I don't end up with a sweet one that is useless on the deer issue.

mjconti I confess that I also like W2W carpet, I have fond memories growing up with it in the 70s (shag!!). Not necessarily in every room (growing up we had carpet in the bathroom and that was gross). In our place we have hardwood everywhere but carpet in the bedrooms. Not shag. Low pile, high quality wool. The master even has a fun pattern. The master is huge and I don't think we'd have been able to find an area rug to fit. We are a shoe-free house and we run the Roomba every other day. That said I'm going to defend gray: our place is decorated in sophisticated shades of warm and cool grays and beiges, with navy and chocolate brown and accent colors including soft yellow, green, orange, and white walls. We stained the yellow oak floors a medium grey that has blue/green undertones and is very pretty. For us the decision was easy: we'd lived with beiges/warm colors/golds for so many years in the 80s/90s. Then switched to a "riot of colors" -- bold rich jewel tones, red sofa, etc. That was fun for awhile, but we were tired of it!!! Maybe we were ahead of the trends? We were ready to go back to quiet neutrals, but not the beige/orange/gold/yellow oak again. What's more, the sunlight our new place gets just doesn't work with too many warm colors --- which is how it was decorated when we bought it--- the place ends up looking like it's literally on fire! Toning it down with a grey palette works, and does not look cold at all.

<Does anyone else find the MCM and some of the edgy modern to be too much like a hospital that is pretending to be a hotel.> I'm not sure why looking like a hotel would be a problem, but I definitely do not find MCM or edgy modern to be like a hospital at all. Industrial may in some cases remind me of a hospital, but not MCM. What I do find oppressive is Victorian and English antiques - I get a headache looking at them, and I much prefer a less cluttered look, to allow my mind to rest and to meditate. I don't like minimalism to the extreme of causing me to wonder how I will be able to locate a wastebasket, but I do like an overall Zen look to a room. In fact, it is possible that Japanese style might become more popular in the near future. For my own purposes, when trying to predict the future for American design, I look at what is current in Italy, as the Italian are generally a decade or so ahead of Americans in terms of trends, except for the cities such as New York, Miami, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Chicago where trends also catch on fairly quickly. I seriously doubt that baroque or rococo will come back into style, as it has always been intended for the elite rather than for the masses - that is until the Victorians made cheap reproductions of it. I seriously hope that does not happen again. A designer friend of mine told me that he thought Medieval style would become popular, but if that did not happen with Lord of the Rings, I doubt that it will. What is enduring about MCM and contemporary furniture is that it is fairly easy to mix additional styles with it, if one so chooses, especially from other cultures, and I think that a multi-cultural design may become popular in the near future. I have already incorporated that into my own style.