It is going to be just wonderful this year as your plants should be well established and the flowerbeds full of flowers. They should completely fill in that bed. Can't wait to see it then. Great blog. Keep up the great work and keep us informed. ~Annie

Did you save seeds? I would really like to grow it here in southeastern Germany and Austria. We might change seeds then, since Iôve breeded some very interesting Cucurbita varieties for British climate too. If youôd like, please write to: ludwig.ammer@gmail.com

Hi Marti, To be honest, I've been so focused on my "side" of the trades that I have forgotten. I love asters and if you have one for me, I will love it. I'm so sorry that you aren't coming, but do understand about hubby's and projects. The trick is to get your hubby involved and bring him with you :-). I hope Sylvia's coming in a vehicle large enough for your brug because I don't want to bring it back home :-) Anyway, happy home improvements! Can you send your hubby over to help scape the rest of the popcorn off my ceilings? Just joking :-) I can't paint my walls or redo the floors until we get the ceiling done also and we need a kick start on it. Pam

I know it's discouraging when your picks get criticized. And the last thing I want is for someone's vision for their kitchen to get nitpicked down into the lowest common denominator of "safe" choices. So before I say what I think, I want to ask, what is YOUR vision for this kitchen? I don't mean specific choices, but what kind of overall look you want to achieve. Can you post some inspiration pics? I ask this, because I really can't tell where you are going based on your choices. The floor is quite rustic, the cabinets are solidly transitional, and I would probably put the counter in that category as well. Both backsplashes, this one and the one in the previous thread, are quite modern. I think you can choose two of the three (modern, transitional, rustic), but trying to include all three is to make your kitchen elements fight with each other. I think that is why people's reactions have been negative. It's not that they don't like the individual elements, its that they don't pull together for a cohesive design. I liked the backsplash in your previous thread much better than this one. Mosaic tile, in my opinion based on about a zillion pictures of kitchen that have them, are really hard to get right. They have so much going on that they don't brook any competition from the other elements in the kitchen. You need a very low-pattern counter, and they are better with slab-front cabinets. With your choices, all three of the cabinet, counter, and floor will fight with the mosaic to some extent. In the previous thread, Anglophilia was the odd-person out for calling out your cabinet choice as the problem. If you really want a modern looking backspash, then I'm going to agree. Replace the orange-toned shaker with a slab door with a cooler, darker stain that plays well with the floor color and I think it could work with the old backsplash choice. If you want to keep the floors and cabinets, I'd still tone down the orange in the cabinet a bit to work better with the floor (or warm up the color of the floor to play better with the cabinet), but I'd choose a rustic or transitional backsplash. Both of your counter choices look fine with the floor and the cabinets, and with the earlier backsplash. I don't like either with the current backsplash choice because the mosaic tile works best with a solid-color (or close to it) counter. Try not to get discouraged!