Oh man, my sides are hurting from reading this thread... and hubby keeps rushing in here to see what I'm laughing at. "Are you watching babies on youtube again? Your GARDENING forum??? omg" I am cheap when it comes to what I spend on individual plants. I once wondered up and down the aisles of a garden centre for 30 mins trying to courageously part with $25 for a sunset echinacea. I just couldn't. I've always been like that, can't think "BIG" unless I've carefully planned a budget in advance, and I'm too disorganized to do that. I am guilty of hiding plants from hubby. You know when you were a kid and parents were forcing you to eat everything on the plate and you spread the cold vegetables around with the big bits of potato? SO SUBTLE. Well, I spread my groups of pots around in a similar way. "Oh, those? Those over there behind the shed? Heck, they've been there for months. Yeah, they'll keep. Yeah, they can be planted any time. No, I have lots of Astilbe. They spread fast. Feel like a nice cup of tea? $10? Nah they were marked down. You put the kettle on and I'll come in and make it." Whew. Interrogation over. Then one day I bought 5 tiny cedars that were on sale, $5 a pop, thinking I'd strategically plant them in a place where I wanted a small line/border/backdrop. It was in my mind to eventually border the property with them but way way in the back of mind. Well, my non-gardening husband took that idea and ran with it. He was extremely excited, breathless, and made me take him to the nursery to get 25 more. I was in anguish. "NOOOOOOOO.... That's going to cost us $125!!!!!" But I couldn't talk him out of it. Next weekend, back for 50 more. "Nooooooooooo... please, omg, this is too big a project for me... hundreds of dollars!!" 100 cedars later, lines of string, measuring tape, and a back injury... all that money gone on a hedge that will grow one foot per year. And despite his back injury (it was a BAD one) he loves the little things with all his heart and waters them daily. They look nice but I still break out in a cold sweat when I look at them, and I think of that bank card sliding slowly across the counter to the checkout girl. Sigh.

Edna -- Greyhounds are just wonderful house dogs! Because they race everyone thinks that they are high energy. They actually like to sleep about 20 hours a day on a big, soft dog bed. Charm doesn't jump (her kennel was a lower one, so she never learned) on furniture after owning her for 5 years. Others that had top kennel cages will jump on furniture. They run about 41+ mph for 31 seconds! They are sprinters, not endurance dogs. Very little shedding and no body fat means that they don't smell bad. I have to brush her teeth everyday as they do have bad teeth from being fed poorly on the track. The brushing keeps their teeth from decaying and therefore, keeps away doggy breath. They are not aggressive by nature. Some of them will chase small animals (as in chasing the mechanical rabbit at the track). The rescue kennel will "cat test" them to let the owners know whether or not they are safe around a cat. Charm does NOT have a high prey drive and is safe around small animals. Our cockatiels can fly around the house around her and she leaves them alone. Greyhounds have very sweet souls. They make eye contact with you and learn to read you like a book. They KNOW everything that you're doing and figure out what you say, too. Their whole world revolves around their owners. Charm has learned such a big vocabulary that we have to spell all the time as she listens for cues about what we're going to do FOR HER! LOL We play "20 questions" with her to figure out what she wants. When we ask the right thing, she barks. The only time she barks is when we ask her questions or when she's playing with us. She NEVER barks at any noise, person, or animal. Charm raced for 4 years (maximum age) because she was a winner. Losers are retired much sooner. At the time we adopted her, there were 50,000+ greyhounds euthanized after their racing careers had ended. Adopting one is really saving a life. Okay, I could go on and on and on about greyhounds. They're very special. Cameron

Ok, three of my favorite voices around here--Palimpsest, Ideefixe and Oakleyok--have pretty well covered all the bases, but just to recap... The three biggest causes of Decorating Remorse--other than watching TV decorating shows & wishing you had done something other than what you already did, I mean--are Being in too big a hurry & buying something just to have something (rather than have nothing), Worrying about inconsequential stylistic labels & categories, and Buying brand new pieces. I did without a sofa for five years rather than buy something merely to be have something to sit on, I don't worry about what style supposedly goes with what, and I never buy anything new. Well, almost never. The most expensive thing in my house is an early 19th century sofa, for which I forked over 850 of my hard-earned dollars, and the two-months-long diet of peanut-butter sandwiches that paid for it was worth every bite. The second-most-expensive thing I ever bought was also the only thing I've ever bought new: a gigantic 3-piece arched mirror set out of a popular catalog that looked very handsome in the photo but which turned out to be a piece--well, three pieces--of junk, which I should have predicted, since, Hello!, it was in a popular catalog. All I can say is I must have been on Nyquil that day. Anyway, I seldom make mistakes, but when I do, I don't brood & beat myself up over them, so I hauled them down to the service entrance lobby of my building and in a few hours, they were gone. The sofa I'll have forever.

Yes, it's the disconnect between the exterior and interior that is so jarring. The views are to die for! It's interesting to know more of the house's story. Sadly, the remodel looks like an absurdly expensive folly of some super-rich folks. Especially that they, apparently, never moved in. With those $$$ they could try to create an interior more fitting such a beautiful Beaux Arts mansion. Although the modernist interior is nice in its own way, the disconnect seems to signal the owners' lack of desire to honor the milieu. They just pushed on with whatever suited their fancy. If there were no protective restrictions on the exterior, the shell would probably be destroyed or altered beyond recognition, too.