Paula, You have to realize the sad, sickly plants stay home as "back up plants" in case hail or some other disaster strikes, and I only bring "the best ones" to the Spring Fling" to give away. Diane, Speaking of getting better, I hope your infected finger is improving, and I hope the infected finger isn't your green thumb! Leava, Doesn't it seem peculiar that we often talk about what a stress reliever gardening is but then we forget to mention all the times it brings more stress into our lives? lol I was just trying to provide a balanced view of gardening in case anyone here is laboring under the misguided belief that it is all fun and games. : ) Let's face it, none of us has a Martha Stewart type of estate with a staff of gardeners, landscapers, etc. We all live right here in the southern plains in the Real World! Dorothy, I second that suggestion! I always buy a bag of Epsom Salts in the springtime "just in case the pepper plants need it" but, really, they never need it....but I do! Gardening, like aging, is not for sissies, you said, and that is so very, very, very true. The cow incident happened to me 3 or 4 times and then by the time someone came to help me herd cows, they'd totally disappeared without a trace. Wily cows who are good at escaping from a pasture often seem to have an uncanny ability to put themselves up again. About the 4th or 5th time I saw cows that then disappeared before anyone could get there to help herd them, we figured out they were escaping from a downed fence at Ranch A about 1/2 mile from us as the crow flies (but much farther by road), traveling through Ranch B's pastures, coming through that ranch's broken water gap gate onto our property, and then traveling through our creek until they reached the woods beside the garden. If the cows hadn't left hoofprints on the creek bank one day, the whole neighborhood probably still would be thinking I was losing my mind and seeing imaginary cows. Rancher A fixed his fence, Rancher B fixed his water gap gate and I haven't been visited by an entire herd of cows since then, although plenty of other animals, including goats, have managed to find their way to my garden. If I didn't have a fence, needless to say, I wouldn't have a garden. I now know why country women's hair turns gray. Dawn

They love fresh dirt. I don't know how they do it, but they always seem to find it. Same with my windowboxes & potted plants. I accidently ripped out a strawberry plant, so I stuck it in a pot. Naturally every day the little SOB digs it up. You can try sprinkling down dried blood. Unfortunately, it needs to be reapplied frequently :( Or you can plant through some kind of chicken wire, which works great for bulbs, but the holes are probably too small for plants, unless you enlarge the holes...

I have the same range and had installation issues too, although not with Ikea cabinets or installers. I had custom cabinets made and because every inch was very important to me, despite what the spec sheet said, we (the cabinet maker and I) decided that we could get away with 1/2 inch on each side instead of the full inch. Well, I could only get either the lazy susan cabinet door on one side of the range OR the spice pullout on the other to open (by shifting the range a tiny bit from one side to the other). My cabs are frameless, so full overlay. IIRC, we ended up changing the 1/2 inch filler to one inch on one side, which threw the symmetry off by 1/2 inch. I did not make the installer put in 1/2 inch filler on the upper cabs for two reasons: 1. I thought it would look weird and 2. I was at least partially responsible for the error. So now, my upper cabinets are shifted 1/2 inch off from the base cabs, but it's really hard to tell. My granite also needed fixing, but I had a strip along the back with two short seams. My granite guy graciously fixed it for free by making a slightly longer strip. The seams only have about 1.5 inches showing - they are barely visible and I think the strip of granite in the back is standard for slide-in ranges. Good luck. I think this can be resolved such that you would not even know that there was ever a problem.

I guess what I was saying is that I would not this possible issue concern you. When it's time to paint over, if you need to sand, you get a pole sander and some sheets of sandpaper. A pole sander a flat block (think of a Swiffer) on a broomstick with sandpaper attached to the block. You go over the wall with it - you wear a mask - and knock down any high points. Good professional painters do this routinely. And as Arcy points out, it may not be necessary at all.