I love your photos of Meet Joe Black. almost lost mine over the winter and it's just one tiny fan now. Your photos are inspiring me to nurse it back to health. Debra

Severn, after I saw your thread, I searched for it and I found one dutch nusery that has it! It's a bit high grafted, which I don't like much, but I can live with it! About the mugos. Yes I had two very young 'Carsten's' but one of them gave up during August. The other lost 40% of it's branches but still it has some live buds left so it's a keeper. However, the one you remember isn't 'Carsten's', but it is rather 'Wintergold'. I have it for two winters in full sun and it displays a more orang-y color than 'Carsten's' and I highly recommend it! This year I expect it to make an even better show as it has grown bigger. Despite the hot days we have here, it started to yellow up in time. Unfortunately no other winter yellowing mugos for now. I've got my eye on 'Little Gold Star' though. 'Wintergold' past January, behind Nadina domestica 'Firepower' About 'Chief Joseph'. I liked the idea of owning one but the stories in the forum are quite scary. Especially Ken's... :) I asked Edwin if he had one availiable but he was out of stock. Since then I left it alone. I don't have too many shady spots here, to make experiments with the the Chief! Too much sun!! Best regards, Fotis

I absolutely LOVE my house, we had it custom built....I love wood and the huge logs, I just want to make it look a little more modern and wanted to know if the color white on the moulding would do the trick or some other suggestion......it's my dream home I got to build but it's now 17 years old and needs updating via small changes/color thx

@sheloveslayouts If you just use a lumens/sf calculation for general ambient lighting and stop there, the shortcomings become evident in a kitchen. Let's say you have a common 15'x20' kitchen, where 8'x15' of that is carved out for a Breakfast table. We'll use 30fc (footcandles) that IES calls for kitchen sink and stove. 300sf x 30fc = 9000 lumens If you choose a 6" recessed can @1200 lumens = 8 cans. In order to achieve the sustained 30fc of your calculation, the lights have to be evenly spread in a grid. So in a 15'x20' space that means 2 rows with 5' between fixtures one way, 4' the other. But that places the fixtures in the aisles, where you shadow counters when tasking, doesn't line up with appropriate task centers (e.g. sink, ref, center of 36" wide upper cabinet, etc), and does not center over the breakfast table on one side of the room. Also, IEC wants 50fc for kitchen prep counters, 20fc for Dining, and 5fc for floors. The straight calculation of 30fc didn't account for those varied numbers. So to alleviate those discrepancies, you move those cans closer to the counters and center one over the table. But now you've created hot spots on cabinets and uneven lighting across the space from such a high-lumen fixture. Fine, so you move down to a 600 lumen fixture, which calculates to 15 total cans. Even more hot spots with overlapping throws and then lighting up the open floor. It just seems like the tail is wagging the dog. And we're not even getting into reflectivity (light loss factor), or that the mass of cabinets take up part of the sf in the equation, but still need some light between the massing (the counters). The biggest fail though, is lumens/sf alone doesn't address the most prominent feature in good residential lighting - mood and drama. When you think about lighting in a house, it is first task-oriented to a specific spot: light the vanity counter and your face; light the shower; light the book you are reading on the couch or bed, light the kitchen counter and island. Then accent things: the fireplace; a window seat; an art wall. You are not as concerned with lighting the floor in front of the couch; or the spot you stand in front of a vanity; or the between-cabinet aisles in a kitchen; or the footboard of a bed. And since there are many doorways, windows, furnishings, and wall or ceiling jogs that affect those tasks, lighting can be influenced by the aesthetics of placement and the fixture style. This slight push/pull between function and aesthetics should not affect overall lighting, especially when lighting is layered - overhead, table set, wall mount, cabinet mount (above and below). However, you don't need to ditch lumens/sf for ambient lighting. In the old days, we did it in a non-scientific way: if a closet ceiling light wasn't bright enough to tell black from navy, you would switch the 60W 'bulb' to a 75W. Or if the bedroom central ceiling light seemed too harsh late at night, from 100W down to 60W. So the benefits of using lumen/sf is best illustrated in an example of a classroom or office building. If you have a 600sf room flexible for multiple desk arrangements, or 3000sf of general cubicles, then you can calculate total lumens on 40fc and get close to the number of fixtures and zero in on whether the spec of the fixture you chose is sufficient. But, you still have to verify the task lighting is acceptable by performing a photometric for footcandles at 30" desk height. And yet even after all that, at the end you adjust fixture locations based on hotspots from walls or coordinating with HVAC diffusers, footcandles be damned. So, even here when you appropriately start with a simple equation, task lighting still comes first, and aesthetics play a huge part. One thing to take away from the class/office example is those are large, open, flexible spaces with diffused lighting levels. But as the IEC footcandle guide notes, a residential Kitchen is varied in it's tasks. The island may serve both prep and dining. You may need 80fc as opposed to 30fc as you age. And, you are not worried about diffusing the light across open space, because I can say with certainty there's not going to be any space that is not taken up by cabinets, tables, something that has a function with a task lighting need. Bring in other attributes of a Kitchen, like the drama a hanging light provides lighting up a flower arrangement in the center of a table, and sticking to lumens/sf hinders your thinking. So what I find in residential lighting is it falls more on the creativity spectrum than engineering calcs (hence they are named lighting designers, you want a lighting engineer for precise stage lighting) - focus on the tasks - and ambient kind of falls into place. But you can back check with lumens/sf or use it to help in fixture selection. Sure, curveballs with high ceilings, soffits, vaults, galley layouts, and high-end cabinets, but for the most part residential lighting is a simple monster.