Karyn, I am soooo scared of earthquakes. I felt 2 big ones ...first one in Romania a 7.5. It was about 32y.ago. It happened at 10 pm and if I would have been home and in bed I would probably have died. Part of the wall where my headboard was, fell on my pillow. I was young and I did not went to bed so early LOL. I was at some friends house when it hit and I did not know what happened. In the beginning I thought a war started. A friend of mine was begging me to run outside but I could not move. I was parallelized. I was like in a trance and I was picturing a house I've seen in a movie who was shaking and than fell. In that moment I realized that the house might fell and I ran outside. I could not see anything just a lot of dust everywhere, bricks and building material falling around me. It was a miracle I was not hit. It was a lot of damages, lots of tall buildings( 10 stories) fell to the ground and thousands of people died .I can not tell you the terror I went through until I located my parents ,my sisters and brother. We were living in different parts of the city. There was no light, no telephone or transportation working. We reunite sometimes during the night. Thanks God we were all alive, not hurt just scared. The second big one (about 7) was in California about 20y ago when I was 3 month pregnant. I was in a supermarket paying for my groceries when it hit. This time I knew better and I ran out as fast as I could. Lucky me I was not through the aisles to be hit by falling products and selves .I was closed to the door and avoided the crowd. Another big thanks to God that my pregnancy was not affected. The smallest earthquake scares me to death. Pat

Ezzirah, I agree wholeheartedly with Carol on this one, including the fact that Bill P., who used to post on quite a few forums here at GW as "Gone Fishin'" always purchased two or more per pot, separated them and planted them and had a great crop. He was a great gardener and taught many of us to try techniques, methods and varieties that were new to us. Last week I purchased six 'Bonnie Plants' tomato plants in 5" peat pots to put into 5 gallon pots for the earliest possible ripe tomatoes (should start getting ripe fruit in April!) and four of the six plants I bought had two nice, fairly large, 6-7" tall plants per pot. I deliberately chose those 4 specifically to get two plants in each pot, and would have chosen all six with 2 plants per pot except one particular variety (and I bought 2 pots of that variety) only had 1 plant per pot in every pot in the store. If I can get two plants for the price of one, I'll do it every time. You have to try what works for you, but I've never had a problem with sowing a bunch of seeds in one small area, and then separating them and planting them into individual containers, a process called 'pricking them out'. For example, when I started my tomato and pepper seeds, I put anywhere from 4 to 18 seeds in each little square in the starter flat. That allows me to start 72 varieties in one 72-cell starter flat. I don't leave them crowded like that long. Once each plant has two true leaves (not just the two cotyledon seed leaves), I prick them out and plant each one as deeply as possible in its own Dixie cup. That's what I've been doing this past week with my two to two-and-a-half week old seedlings....pricking them out and potting them up. When you separate the plants, be sure to hold the soil in your hand and basically break it into half, or into as many pieces as you need depending on how many seedlings there are, and separate the roots. If you try to separate the plants by tugging on the above-ground portion of the plants, you can break the stems in half so always separate the plants at the root level, not the stem level. You then can handle them by either the portion of the root/soil or by the leaves but not, as Carol mentioned, by the stems because the stems are very delicate and break easily. I have separated out about 240 plants so far this month and haven't lost but one....and it was later than its 'siblings' to sprout and grow and was very tiny compared to the others and I expected it wouldn't survive being potted up. Some people here may remember (I know Dorothy does because she mentioned it before) when you could purchase a bundle of bare root veggie plants at stores and take them home and plant them. I remember buying cabbage, spinach collard greens, cauliflower and broccoli that way. You'd get about 25 to 50 seedlings per bundle and they were likely about 2 to 4 weeks old. They'd been grown either in field rows or flats, pulled up, had the dirt shaken off their roots, were bundled up and sold in seed and feed stores. You took them home, planted them in the ground, watered them in and they grew and produced just fine even though they often looked kind of wilted and sad when you purchased them. You did have to buy them as soon as they arrived in the stores, because they'd only survive a few days as bare-root bundles. This was back in the day when very few folks started their own plants from seeds and it wasn't easy to find seed-starting supplies in stores. So, your choice was to direct-sow or buy bundles of seedlings and buying the seedlings got your plants (esp. cool-season seedlings) off to a faster start since most seeds are very slow to sprout in cold soils. Research has shown that pricking out seedlings while small doesn't damage the roots if done careully and may, in fact, give you stronger plants because it stimulates more root growth. I see no point in automatically yanking out and discarding the extra plants. Of course, you have to try what works for you and then, over time, you'll develop your own way of doing things and I say if it works, do it! For what it is worth, one of my brother's friends had a small nursery south of Fort Worth in the 1990s and he raised his own tomato plants (and other stuff) from seed in his greenhouse and then pricked them out/potted them up to sell. When he started seeds in starter flats under lights, he sowed those tomato seeds as thick as grass. He potted up and grew on all that he thought he could sell, and threw away the rest of the tiny seedlings. His potted-up seedlings always grew just fine and sold well, so I learned from him long ago that seedlings are tough and sowing large quantities of them in small space didn't hurt the quality or growth of his plants. If you only have a couple of plants per cell, you could leave them together for weeks and weeks....the ones I bought last week that have 2 plants per pot have stems about as big in diameter as the tip of my little finger, are perfectly healthy and some have blooms....being 2 plants per pot hasn't hurt them at all. I do separate them and plant them in separate pots when I move them from the large peat pot to the 5-gallon container. I have found that as long as you follow a few logical common sense 'rules' in gardening, you will have equal success no matter which sort of seed-starting or growing method you choose. It seems to me that you can break about 98% of the 'gardening rules' with no consequence whatsoever, so I say that 'gardening rules are made to be broken'. Dawn

we've had the A/C on 2 days in a row now. thur was extra humid from rain and a bit warm low 80's, today was mid 80's and humid almost fl summer like. infact it's 74 outside right now... a couple of weeks ago it was sooo cold i had to break out a space heater(just to heat the room i was in) & electric blanket, i refuse to run the house heat this yr after going w/o last & saving nicely. sunday we are expecting record lows :-0 wish it would just stay low 80's and dry out till april when it's back to the 90's for 7 months ~ liz

I have two dream homes. One is on my family's lake property, which is small, is on the south side of the lake, and is on Minnesota, so severe winter is an issue. There, I want low maintenance, energy and space efficient, good cross ventilation. An open floor plan with informal dining. A screen porch with a sun deck above. Main floor bedroom and laundry. Probably floor heat under Marmoleum in the living space, to accommodate wet, sandy kids coming out of the lake. It needs to be two-story, because of the small lot size. The lot is level, and I don't want steps; the basement will be storage and storm shelter, but not living space (no windows to speak of). Upstairs, I want bedrooms for guests, and an open area overlooking the deck for a game table - my family loves board games and jigsaw puzzles. My other dream home is in the woods somewhere, more of a cozy cabin - though not log. I love the look, hate the maintenance!