Lisa, I am not laughing, but I am grinning..... Somehow, I think your 'Shoal Creek' will be the exact same as the chaste tree you had growing the last time I was at your house. The description of the need to cut it back to maintain the smaller size just reeks of, um....business as usual with any chaste tree. It drives me crazy when they try to present a "new" or "different" variety of a widely-grown plant and we cannot find any way in which it actually is new or different. Maybe, though, when you grow it and can compare it to the chaste tree you already have, you'll see some sort of difference. Let me know what you think of it after you've watched it grow this season. okiegardener, Honestly, I think you could broadcast sow larkspur seed on concrete and it would sprout and grow. This is one of my favorite kinds of flowers----they won't die, you cannot kill them and they readily reseed and come back every year. Well, Lisa may have destroyed hers, but only because she dug up or disturbed the seedlings in the fall. : ) Larkspur will germinate and grow pretty quickly when the soil temperature is in the 50-60 degree range. From new seed, it blooms maybe 50 or 60 days after it sprouts. I think fall sowing is better because you'll get flowers earlier in spring, but if you were to broadcast seed now in the area where you want the plants to grow, then the seeds would germinate in 2 to 4 weeks. So, you'd likely have blooms by the end of May. As long as you keep them well-watered (but not too wet in clay) and deadheaded, they'll bloom well until it gets too hot for them. At my house that is sometime in June or July. The only trouble I've ever had with larkspur in unimproved clay is when we have had tremendously heavy rainfall (12" or more in one day to one month) and in those cases, the poor little plants rotted right off at the soil line. Based on long-range forecasts, this doesn't seem like a year in which you'd have to worry about too much rain rotting the plants, even in the densest clay. I've lived here 15 years and have grown larkspur 15 years. It generally reseeds all over the place, and some years I have to yank out and throw away a lot of seedlings. Since you have the seeds, I'd say go for it and plant them. It would be better to direct sow, but you could plant them and transplant them. However, you'd need to transplant them while very small to avoid disturbing their roots. They can sulk if transplanted once they're big or once the weather is hot. Is there any reason that you cannot go ahead and direct sow them? To make transplanting easier, you could sow the seeds in soil-less mix in paper cups. Poke holes in the bottom for drainage. They need to be cool to sprout, so I'd put them on the porch or something unless you keep your house at 50-60 degrees max. At planting time, just plant them paper cup and all in the ground. The cup decomposes pretty quickly. How long they'll flower this year is iffy and we have no way of knowing because we don't know how long they'll take to sprout or exactly when the temperatures will get hot enough to shut them down. Some of the larkspurs (and poppies) in my garden have formed buds already and likely will begin blooming next week if today's "possible" thunderstorms don't dump hail on them that smashes them to smithereens. So, yours will be a little bit behind, but not impossibly so. I usually have poppies and larkspur emerging from the ground from self-sown seed for a long period of time, roughly from February through April and sometimes even in May. If you want to speed up the germination, soak the seed in a cup of water for 12-12 hours before you sow it. Dawn

I would really consider un-installing Limewire p2p file share is a problem a lot of infections come from here. damccoy is right your best Virus protection is between your ears. SuperAntispyware is more of an on demand scanner when you think you need to run do so by redownloading it and updating it.. Here is what is recommend by the folks that work with stuff. 1. antivirus Avg or Avast these can be you choice, Norton/Macfee frowned upon although these programs work well for some but you have to pay and they don't offer any more protection, the word is if you have strange problems on a pc that can not be explained un-install these products. 2. A software firewall and a hardware firewall like a router is great. Zone Alarm is free and is most recommend 3.Spywareblaster. 4.spywareguard 5. Spybotsearch&destroy, This tool can be used as an on demand scanner and should be run once a week, by using the Teatimer function you can set spybot to run at startup. 6. ccleaner install and use it once a week cleans temp files history. 7. This comes from the professionals and is a suprise to many Do not run registry cleaners on xp including the one built into ccleaner called the Issues button. Windows xp/2000 is not performance degraded by a clogged registry like 98, 95 were. Better to leave the registry alone. Now to get some of these programs go to the link above (help2go) enter the spyware forum no need to sign up, now look for any post by Steamwiz in his signature you will see a link "Ways to keep your computer safe" click it--Steamwiz is Microsoft certified security spyware remover and well known in the Malware removal community.

thanks for the thoughts and suggestions. oaktown and writersblock, I love the idea of a projector! I hadn't even though about that. We're calling an AV person to see if they can help us with that. louisana, you're correct, the wall between the open kitchen/family/dining does not fully separate the living room, so there will be sound transfer. Actually, one of the bedrooms does not have a wall going to the ceiling so there is a lot of noise carrying around the space. Here's how the space is laid out (pre-remodel): ineffable, I'm a TV listener too. We have Sonos speakers we've installed in the house and I could be perfectly happy just listening to Pandora and watching Downton Abbey and SNL on my iPad, but my husband would be so lost without a TV of his own. tom_nwnj, thanks for the recs -- I will check them out. Good luck with the remodel! robotropolis, thanks! I like the idea of putting all the comfy seating in the formal living room and just making the den/space next to the kitchen just a "lounge" area -- for drinking wine, playing games, etc. I think it would significantly enhance our use of the house as we don't currently use the living room. That room is bathed in light most of the day and has the best views of any room in the house -- it seems like a waste not to utilize it. linelle, we were just visiting friends recently and they had a TV (LARGE ones!) in every room, including several of the bathrooms. The owners both work in the entertainment industry, but it was slightly overkill. karenseb, thanks for the nice words. In our upcoming kitchen renovation, we plan on replacing the double ovens with a pantry as we have no pantry and limited food storage space. A tv at the end of the bar is still definitely an option if we can recess it -- we're going to have an AV person come out to measure. If all else fails a TV in the master bedroom is an option, but I'm not generally a fan of TVs in bedrooms.

Moonshadow, I've not looked at the C180, but our daughters first digital was in the C series and it was super easy to use. Hers was purchased with one of Kodaks little printers. The first time she sent home prints of photos she'd taken and called to see if we'd gotten them I asked her why she wasn't using her printer. She said she'd used it. I was shocked at how wonderful this little tiny printer printed 4x6 inch photos with the quality of being professionally printed. I'd recommend getting her the printer also. The print paper and ink is very reasonable and if I remember right costs a bit more than taking the photos to Walgreens, but then you add in the gas and time and it's a great deal. Gosh, I just tried to search for them and I can't even find them for sale on their site. I wonder if they quit making them. Maybe they figure their newer combo printer scanner copiers are inexpensive enough and sell more that they didn't need the little printer docks anymore. If I find one somewhere online I'll let you know. But yes, even my camera which is aimed at someone that takes photos and is close to an SLR is extrememly easy to manage all the buttons and controls.