I am finding more and more students, when I first started in on orchids and started growing orchids I was the youngest grower as far as I knew. This being said I completely understand where you are coming from, I would buy orchids and say well I will eat cheap this week I don't really care about good food for a week ect. Now I am a Graduate Assistant and I have another job at one of the public schools so I have some extra mad money, kinda. I just try to limit my spending now to purchasing at shows and have backed off from random online buying. I actually have a want list instead of just impulse buying. I do however go to the sites and pick out several plants go look in the check out and then think of my want list and how much I would rather have them. Then I go and put all of them in the basket and then the price scares me and I am able to dodge yet again an impulse buy. Anyway it is interesting to have comments and solutions offered by fellow students living in smaller apartments who can not have MH lamps or a greenhouse. I also rationalize because think about how much it would cost to buy blooming plants from a florist , I have had about 14 plants bloom for me this winter. As a low figure say each would cost $30 in bloom at a florist that is $420 and that happens each year.

Does anyone have country/rustic maple or birch flooring? I was in a flooring store the other day looking for character grade hickory and spotted BSL in rustic maple and yellow birch and they had similar contrast between light and dark. I was wondeirng what it looks like in a room since BSL doesn't have any pics on there site. thanks

This is our boxer pit mix. He is the sweetest, suckiest baby ever. Extremely well behaved. Listens to any command in a heart beat. He's almost too well behaved. We used to sit him in the kitchen when we first got our pup and would do our training with her. Every command we gave her, he would dutifully do in the kitchen. Sit, lay down, roll over, get up. Over and over again, even though no one was even looking at him. He loves most people. However we DO keep him away from kids, because he was never around them growing up. My boyfriend got him when he was 15, and had no siblings or friends with siblings the dog was around. We just dont know how he would be if a little one pulled his tail, or grabbed his face. So we don't tempt the unknown. Once again, though that isn't a breed thing, its a socialization problem. Pitbull or not, I probably still wouldnt feel comfortable leaving any big dog alone with small kids, if they'd never been around children much. A touch mischeivious, however. He likes to crawl his old bones onto the couch when we leave the room and then much like a little kid when you come back and ask him just what he thinks he's doing he gives you an "Im not quite sure what you mean..I didnt do anything" look. He IS a touch cranky, however we've chalked it up to old age rather than breed. He did get agitated by the pup sometimes and he would 'go after her' snarling and baring his teeth but he's never ONCE actually touched her. He just likes to scare the bejeezus out of her when she's annoying him. He pretends to hate the cats..but he cleans them and lets them clean him when we aren't looking.

Thank you for sharing your story golddust. I guess I failed to mention that I, too, am a dedicated dog owner, have always had a dog and can't imagine my life without one. Also, I'm probably a little more paranoid than the average person about dog attacks. My oldest child (he's now 13) was bitten in the face by our own dog (shepherd/samoyed mix) when he was just 8 months old. The dog had always been very protective of him but still, we never left them alone together. She had been somewhat aggressive with other dogs and with children outside our family and I'd had some concerns about that. She had never ever bitten anyone before. I'd even told my DH that I wanted to discuss giving her up. He didn't want to and I felt guilted into keeping her when my instinct was telling me she needed to go. My little boy had just learned to crawl. We had a laundry closet with sliding doors in our hallway. While I was standing there doing laundry, he crawled behind me down the hallway and grabbed the paw of our sleeping dog in our foyer. She bit him once, in the face. But that's all it took. He ended up with over 100 stitches and had to have plastic surgery. He nearly lost an eye. The dog's tooth hit the side of his nose, down by his nostril and slid up and diagonally across to the corner of his eye, slicing his entire nose wide open. His eyelid was slit open at the crease, his eye brow was split and he received multiple puncture wounds. The dog had to be destroyed and it nearly destroyed me. I suffered many months of post traumatic stress disorder. My son's scars have faded a lot and thankfully, he has a face full of freckles to camoflauge them. But maybe by sharing my story, you can all better understand my fears of this dog. It's not just that she's a pitbull. I would likely react this way to any dog with the same behavior but I'll admit, the pitbull part does make me that much more nervous. I wish to God I had listened to my instincts back then. The guilt of getting rid of our dog against my husband's wishes would have been a million times better than the guilt I will always have over the injuries to my son.