I like it! I trying to break away from my straight row planting pattern this year as well. I'm in a community garden with limited space so I thought I'd give the whole square foot idea a try.

Karyn, as promised: I printed out what I could and took it to Armstrong Nurseries and Garden Center. They didn't have any such thing and the guy didn't know where to get it. I'm busy today, but tomorrow I'll try Bluehills Nursery. They often have some exotic and unusual plants and they may know more. (Japanese guys). Ingrid

We had an above ground pool. put it up when the kids were 3 and 4. We went on vacation, stayed at a motel and they actually taught themselves how to float in the motel pool. For one thing, our above ground pool had a ladder that folded up and got locked closed when not in use. I was a pretty diligent mother, whenever they went in I sat on the deck and read. Never went inside to answer phone,go to bathroon,get food. I stayed there with them. As they got older they were allowed to swim and have friends over without my supervision, but there was one rule- No One Swims Alone. Every summer we had loads of kids over, I didn't mind as long as no one swam solo. One year, we had a Fourth of July party. I didn't like the idea of adults at a street- level outdoor barbecue with unsupervised kids of all ages in the pool. I came up with a great idea- hire our usual babysitter to act as lifeguard. She came and sat herself on the ladder the entire time. She was allowed to come down for bathroom breaks and to eat but either I or DH sat there during her breaks. Best money I ever spent. DH, ever the tightwad, did not say a thing about paying her. There had already been one drowning in our town, well-covered by the local press. Very topical warning today is July 3. Thanks for bringing it up, Alisande.

There are reasons GC costs money, sometimes BIG Money. But they prevent disasters. Just to name a few, GC's work including planning sequence of events, scheduling work, mitigating risks, progress, verifying results, controlling costs and most important, providing solutions for anything unexpected. Do you know how long each job would take, and how much it would cost? Do you know how much slack you need to leave between each jobs and each stage of the project? Which should come first? which could wait for a while? Do you know how to recover if any work is behind schedule? Do you know how to adjust budget and cost if you have cost overrun? Do you know the requirement of each task? Can you judge if any task meeting standards and requirements? Can you tell a good job from a bad one? Do you have contingency plan for any event and risk, such as heavy rain stops transporting of your order that is 3 states away. A contractor has to reschedule work because his wife gives birth a couple of weeks earlier. An item you order does not arrive in time or the vendor sends a wrong item or item has missing parts or defectives? Are you good at settling dispute with vendors, smoothing conflicts between different contractors or job shops? Can you use languages that building department employees, inspectors, vendors and contractors understand? The list goes on and on. At times even you have plenty money it would not help, since money could not buy time. If you have 100 percent confidence answering all of the above questions (they are only a subset of issues and problems), you still need extra capacity and competency to handle anything unexpected, unplanned, failed, and...etc.