These sort of look like Raggedty Ann and Andy to me. But my mind is racing around thinking of all sorts of possibilites. Even bunnies if you pile the little pebbles into ears instead of hair. LOL. Or little scarecrows if you stick the mini straw hats on them. Snowmen? Witches? Santa? Told ya my mind is racing around here. I have a small batch of river rock where I could make a couple of people I think. I hope to see photos of some of you creations tho. glad this was inspiring! Karen

You truely don't know what you have. I have spent the last 5 years doing dry stack walls with the same stuff. It is incredable. Start with the smallest 1st. then gradually go up in size, with the top stone covering the the lower two. work in really small ones in the gaps to help block some holes that soil can exscape from. I have terraced my 3/4 acre lot with these, and had to go find a few more to finish the projects. I also have 24" high round free standing bed for flowers (8 ft diameter). You can free form any size and shape beds you want. I also inter mix really large stones periodically to change the dynamics of the the bed, and then peice together the smaller stones around and up over the larger rock. once you figure it out, you will be hooked. Have some fun.

pbrisjar, those are great prices! I knew that they would sell them cheaper. Like I said, Steve helped me save over $10K~12K on lighting for my home. My budget was $16,000 for lights and I spent about $4,200~4,500 total and he sent everything on one pallet and only charged $165 for shipping everything! I'm still awed. Seagull Lighting is no longer carrying the PGA Tour Lighting that I bought for our home. All I can say is, I got phenomenal deals with them. I wanted to buy locally, but could not fathom paying the price. Shoot, my electrician AND my lighting was WAY under budget. So much so that we were able to afford going ahead and putting in our large brick paver patio and hot tub area. I bought my kitchen fixtures from www.ewins.com. They carried a transitional light fixture from Murray Feiss that was perfect for what I wanted. Glad this is working out for you. I doubt you will find better quality lighting for those prices quoted. And HD or Lowes will not be cheaper.

David, Black Kow is great, but many batches of it have a weird texture that doesn't retain moisture well. It feels really granular, for lack of a better word. I actually use it to improve drainage in my soil, which has spots with more clay content than is ideal. I also use it in containers in which I normally would not use compost. It dries out really quickly, in my experience. Some batches, though, are more in line with other composts in terms of texture and moisture retention. You might want to include a more moisture retentive compost next time, either to replace or in addition to the Black Kow. Vermiculite and perlite enhance aeration and drainage and are mostly to prevent compaction, so they won't solve problems with a bed that gets too dry. 50% compost sounds really high as well. I'm not a soil expert, but I'm sure others will chime in. But next time you notice the surface looks dry, do stick a finger at least an inch down in the soil to confirm. On a warm, sunny day, the surface of any soil except soil with more clay content can dry out quickly, but it's what's further down in the root zone that counts. Depending on how mature plants are and how deep their roots go, I check soil moisture up to 4 inches down and don't water until it's dry under the surface. And you should be mulching plants really well as well.