Paul and mjmisgka concerning "my special soil mix". It's material that I can get easily from a friend of mine who owns a small organic farm and nursery just a block from my home. I can't say that this mix has or provides any special effects on the trees but using it through the years I can't complain. Depending on the amount I need at the time the amounts of each ingredient varies. If I am using my large contractors wheelbarrow then I use three buckets full of the Mircle Grow potting soil like in the photos above. CanÂt forget that I also add two shovels of old (aged) sheep manure. To that I add one full bucket of course sand two buckets of mushroom soil and a half of bag of the planting mix (large bag) that my nursery friend sells. I don't recall the name of it but it is a mixture of fine and course particles. Almost like small pieces of bark. He usually sells out of that very quickly in early spring. That's the reason I have none on hand at this time. I do also add a shovel full of fast acting lime and using that shovel I mix it all together. That is enough mix for one twenty gallon tub plus a couple of small containers that I might need filling for trees that need to be moved to a little larger size container. Hope this answers your question. Lou NE., PA

Alameda, Chris could easily be a climber here (and what a wonderful one he'd be), and I just know my trellis isn't big enough. I haven't had the heart to hit up DH again to do a bigger support. The bamboo was difficult for him to deal with. It will take some sweet talking, I am sure. Weeds? It looks good now but I have tons of warm-weather weeds. That awful onion stuff that has underground runners. I use a weeder tool on them in early spring and summer. Once the roses and daylilies grow up big, I can barely fit in there to weed and they start winning out. I am not compulsive enough to do it every day. I need to. Kathy

I also really love the Suave Daily Clarifying shampoo, it's dirt cheap and doesn't harm my very delicate fine hair. I just stumbled upon it too. I had bought it for my husband and he didn't use it so I had this huge bottle and used it and was surprised at how well it did for my fine hair and plus, it doesn't make my scalp itch, that has become an issue for me. I also found a conditioner that I love, it's Martix Biolage, the detangling one. Finally, a conditioner that doesn't make my scalp itch AND actually takes the tangles out of my insanely tangle prone hair. I used to shampoo daily because I styled my hair every day. Now, I just put it in a ponytail and call it done. I wash my hair about every third day now. I'd be very afraid to put baking soda in my fragile hair...I'm sure it would destroy it. I once (ONE TIME) used Dr. Bronner's liquid Castile to wash my hair and it damaged it so badly that it had to grow out before it was normal again. UGH! I'm lucky that I have hair, don't get me wrong, but my hair is very weird! My scalp is also very oily...so I cannot go very long without washing. Three days is pushing it and I can only pull it off because I wear it in a ponytail. I also can't stand the smell of stinky hair...UGH! It gets stinky after a couple days. That's when I know it's time to wash!

@grapefruit1_ar Hah - you say you don't want to move from your primary home alive, I've told the mister we are dying in our current house because there's no way I will move to another in our lifetimes. I was the one who did the packing of boxes and all the other tedious but obligatory stuff in preparation for moving from our previous home - he only had to go see houses and take a ton of pictures of the ones visited, my parents helped out with the realtor-given property tours for because they already lived in Nebraska where we moved to. My mom ended up taking 'supplemental' photos because the mister was getting a little frustrated at the fact that I didn't think the ones he'd taken were sufficient nor showing all possible angles/views. :P My mom is a prolific photo taker, and she's super detailed (like I am) about things so really I should have just asked her to take all the photos while she and my dad were doing the home tours with the mister. I'd have gone out to Nebraska myself, but I had to stay and properly wrap up things with my legal practice, not to mention pack/be on site for showings/get the place ready including letting in various professionals to clean the chimney-replace sink hardware-add more lighting fixtures-etc...We decided to go ahead on moving in May 2017, put the house on the market in June 2017, had the place sold and escrow closed at the end of July 2017. My old car was sold and the title handed to the new owner a few days into August and the mister and I stayed at a nearby hotel with the dog until our flight out of LAX on August 5th. His work vehicle was already at our new house, but once we dropped our luggage off we went over to the dealership to pick up my new car - the transaction was done primarily online so it was super easy and convenient. The mister got a job offer out here right before I did, but his was on a shorter timeline before he'd have to give his now-boss an answer about whether or not he wanted to accept the position. Renting a place here at the same time as looking for a home to buy would eat up a lot of funds we really wanted to keep in the home purchase category of the budget. I also needed to put aside enough for taxes on the townhouse in SoCal that we sold (and other taxes related to both of the property transactions).