I believe your light conditions may be an overriding factor as to what plants will work for you or not. There are some succulents that will tolerate at least partial shade, but most salvias will not be happy nor does lavender do well in less than 6 hours of sun. This is not to say these plants can't work for at least a season or two - it is just not their preferred growing conditions so growth may be leggy and flowering sparse due to lack of direct sunlight. I'd also discourage the planting of most herbs as they tend to be full sun lovers, but hopefully the supplemental lighting will overcome the lack of natural light. Annual herbs seem to tolerate lower light situations better than perennial herbs, IME. Container gardening can be a very enjoyable experience....a bit like landscape design in miniature that can be easily changed out as plants fade, grow too big or your tastes dictate. Certainly a lot easier and cheaper than inground planting! I do a lot of container design and always try to include something evergreen in the mix to provide the same structure and year round interest that evergreens provide to the inground landscape. Depending on container size, you may want to create compositions of multiple plants in a single container and/or use a single plant as a specimen - these work well for annuals and provide a lot of color without disrupting the more permanent plantings when the annuals fade for the season or go out of flower. Focal points, plant forms, fillers, textural contrast and colors (whether from flowers or foliage) will all play a part in the design just as they do in the broader outdoor landscape. And any plant can be grown in a container as long as you size the plant to the container appropriately and provide proper ongoing care. This may involve periodic repotting and root pruning of larger species. I'd look to whatever plants your local nursery/garden center offers that are suited to part shade and make your choices accordingly. January may not be the best time for this, however :-) Select from flowering annuals and perennials as well as small shrubs and trees, both deciduous and evergreen - I could definitely see a dwarf Japanese maple included in your collection as a focal point! And if you need help to compose your design, there are all sorts of publications that focus on container design - Fine Gardening publishes annual special interest editions on this topic that are excellent. For a very rough rule of thumb in container design, think in 3's for multiple plant compositions: a "thriller" plant as a focal point (something dramatic or upright/more vertical), "fillers" to fluff out the middle ground and "spillers" to trail, cascade and soften the edges. For long term viability of container plantings, it is recommended to select plants that are hardy to at least one zone lower than your own....and more is better :-) This of course does not apply to annuals or single season plants. And proper container soil is a very important consideration, as is irrigation and fertilization. You may want to check out the Container Gardening forum here on GW for additional helpful tips.

Practice will let you decide as you start scanning. Try a few of your own photos so you have a basic idea before you attend the shindig. Use the auto scan and see what it does. You have an upscale scanner so output should e great. If photos are small, worn, scratched or torn then I select a higher resolution or increase the size so I can work on it later. I rarely use other scanner settings, relying on my photo editing software to do these things. I recently scanned a 1968 passport black and white photo of my wife at 600% of the original size, cleaned it up and printed it as an 8 x 10 and it came out quite good IMHO. DPI. What do you intend to do with the scans? I ask because a computer reads 72 DPI but if you intend to print then that is useless and will show jaggies so if I intend to print I select 300 DPI. Again, play a little and make your choices.

Came to this website looking for updated info on the latest appliances and thought I'd check in with this thread. I'm glad I did. DISASSEMBLY My sleeper sofa (see posts above) had to be disassembled too. When I first ordered there was plenty of room for delivery, but during remodeling I decided to put in a door that was normal-sized (too narrow for the sofa). It wasn't hard to put the unit back together again on the other side, but it's more complicated than just screwing the legs back on. So I'd suggest you make sure the delivery people (or friends of yours) know what they're doing. Then it would be fine. It's not brain surgery, but it's not like playing with TinkerToys either. You're buying a relatively sophisticated mechanism, as well as something that looks good. So it makes sense to respect what you've paid for. You wouldn't let just anybody install a dishwasher, for example. But thousands of them get installed properly every day. AMERICAN LEATHER CUSTOMER SERVICE I would buy American Leather again, even after my nightmare. I accept that things will go wrong with a percentage of anything that's manufactured or delivered. My problem was with with my retailer, Foremost Furniture. At every step of the way they were careless. As in, they could not have cared less what happened once they had all their money. If you do not live in New York or the tri-state area, you cannot make this mistake. I believe AL pushed Foremost to fulfill their legal obligations in my case, thanks to this site. After I posted here, the situation was addressed. I could not get a refund--Foremost dragged this out for years, so the sofa was now officially "used"--but I got a store credit. That is not, IMHO, AL's fault. Foremost is a nightmare, so I warn anybody about their truly nasty management. But if you have a decent retailer (and do your research into their customer service record), I think AL is a very good value in every way. I love their stuff. I only come to this site when I am remodeling or need advice on purchases, so my purpose in posting is to clarify what I can and to be fair. I'm glad I didn't have to go the time and expense of taking legal action to solve my problem. It took years to address the problem; that's wrong. But once AL got involved, the problem was attended to in a reasonable time frame. And they only got involved because of this site and this thread. FWIW

No judgement can be made because we don't know the size of the photo that was scanned, nor can we see the original and a print of the digitized one to compare. The file size will be porprotional to the area of the scanned object plus some overhead. I've had good success scanning B/W photos at 300 dpi (dots per inch) and using 256 gray scale. A finer gray scale can be used but there won't be much difference in the final tonal scale. Scanning to a jpg format reduces file size and you can control how much reduction to make; jpg files are 'lossy'; defintion loss increases with increased file reduction. B/W photos can be scanned in color which will pick up any yellowing or color tinges at the expense of a much larger file. I have found that 256 gray scale is quite acceptable. I will switch to a color scan if I wish to preserve color tinges. (My scanner always scans in color. It then writes the digital file depending on user selection. It converts the color image to gray scale for writing the file. Therefore, once the image hs been scanned, I can flip back and forth between color and gray scale.) After a photo has been scanned, it should 'played back' in a photo editor to check the result and to correct the color or gray scale balance. If the technician did not take time to check and make adjustments, the result may be disappointing. This brings us back to your monitor. If you display the digitized file on your monitor, the result can be puzzling. For example, the picture when printed on your printer may not match what you see on the screen. That's because your monitor was not color corrected and needs to be adjusted to a standard. Some older CRT monitors may not have adjsutment range. In some cases, best result is achieved by adjusting the video display card. This is done by software supplied with the card, if it is adjustable. The quality of the copied photo depends greatly on the skill of the operator both in making the copy file and printing thereof. If you have only 10 pics or thereabouts, it may not pay to buy a scanner. If you have 50 or more photos to digitize, then a scanner purchase is recommended. Once you have a scanner and become familar with its operation, you will find uses for it.