ginamarina, I just saw your cat enclosure, and I had to laugh. I have one, also. My cats have the use of an enclosed porch, and outside of that I fenced in an area 16 feet by 8 feet with chickenwire, so they can go watch the birds. I live only 40 feet off of a busy road, and they would get run over if I let them go out on the road, so I gave them some fresh air room! Looks just like yours!! Some of them actually have house privileges, cause they are good, and some do not, cause they pee on anything. :( If they were all good, they would all have house privileges. I have 17 cats that have found their way to my home one way or another. Five are outside all the time, cause they never go near the road. I made the enclosure when one of mine got hit, and the vet bills came to over $500.00. He is fine, now, but does not have yard privileges!! Wish I was way back from the road. BB

Pieter, Nematodes do travel through wet soil and hibernate in soil. They do need plant tissue to live. This is why I suggest that when hostas are determined to have a virus that "nematacides" be used in conjuction with killing the plant (removing the required source of food). Perhaps a better way to approach the problem would be to perform the nematode testing to determine whether they are evident first. In many cases Nematode damage is readily determined by characteristic elongated brown streaks. If there is no nematode infection then using an insecticide would still be a good idea as it would be difficult to determine the thrip or other insect population and spraying would be "cheap insurance" to prevent transmission to other plants. In any event a combination of a non-HVX virus with nematode or thrip infection would be a difficult situation. I think these are the only practical ways to approach the problem. Extensive and expensive laboratory testing may or may not determine the virus or other disease involved, but that still leaves the problem of treating it when the plant is in a bed which you are trying to preserve. I don't know of any other prudent next step other than killing the plant, in situ, and ensuring it is completely dead. Killing it before taking steps to address nematode or thrips first or concurrently will speed up the spread as we know that nematodes or thrips live on tissue and killing / removing the plant alone will simply cause them to go elsewhere. If the action where taken with ground freezing immenent, then your suggested scenario of hybernating nematodes infecting new plantings may be possible. I think this would be a very unusual and improbable situation as hostas would be dying off before any real ground freezing. There are no over-the counter approved nematacides, however cholinesterase, the ingredient in Bayer Systemic is listed as a nematacide and might work as well as anything available to the homeowner. Of course bleach and ammonia will kill them undiluted, but the problem of how much to use and preventing damage to neighboring plants is a big problem. Spraying with a 10% solution of ammonia is done for slug control, so this might be an option to help. I simply don't know of any sure-fire nematode control other than professional treatment. Jon

I think this is one of these things that should have a "post-game analysis" of sorts. I don't mean to be critical, but this will be analytical and it may help someone else who builds a house in the future. The idea here is nice, and the essentially linked windows are similar to a true palladian window, with the tall window in the middle and subordinate windows on either side of a height equal to the bottom sash...fine. But you've kind of backed yourself into a design corner because these particular windows need to be covered, and yet you don't want to cover them too much, or all the time. A palladian window in an 18th or 19th c house would be treated like this: The walls would be thick enough that shutters would fold over the small windows and fold back into shallow pockets in the jambs when you wanted them out of the way. The larger window would be elaborately draped because of the curve or possibly mostly left bare,depending. If you were to design this over again---or if your architect does do this again in another house---a peak that was wide enough to allow a single rod or top mounted treatment that was wide enough to cover all three windows completely should be one thing considered, or more room for shutters to be folded back would be another, a shorter or differently proportioned window in the middle another. I think that windows are often designed as if they can all be left uncovered because nobody's windows need to be covered for privacy or light control. And really the opposite is true. Almost Every window should be designed if it will need to be covered for privacy or light control, and if it doesn't great, but if it does you are not faced with several less than ideal options and possibly some really awkward options but no perfect options.

Here's a more encompassing view. It was planned in that I planted the sedums in the moss on the nurse log. The trees are Western Hemlock. The log is an old Douglas Fir. Sedums are usually associated with bright sunny places, not where moss grows. I got the idea to plant sedums with moss after seeing it grow on north facing cliff faces amongst the moss in the Olympic Mountains here in western Wa. St.