Kelley, Bt 'kurstaki' is a narrow-spectrum bio-insecticide that targets caterpillers and larvae that bother many ornamental and vegetable plants. In a residential landscape and/or home garden, it is often used to control tomato hornworms, tobacco hornworms, cutworms, tomato fruitworms/corn earworms, canker worms, leaf miners and various types of grub worms. It is available in both a liquid form and in a powdered, granular form (Dipel Dust and similar products). I've linked one of the more common Bt Caterpiller killer type products below. Most all of the Bt 'kurstaki' products either say Worm Killer or Caterpiller Killer on the label or have images of caterpillers on the label or both. All Bt products are made of toxins derived from naturally-occurring bacteria. The other species of Bt most commonly used in a home setting are: (1) the 'San Diego' or 'tenebrionis' species-derived products (San Diego is genetically engineered so it cannot be used in Certified Organic operations, but tenebrionis is not genetically-engineered so it can be used in Certified Organic operations) which is used to control beetle larvae, and most often used to control the larval form of the Colorado Potato Beetle; and (2) the 'Israelensis' species, available as a granular product you sprinkle in standing water or as 'mosquito dunks' to drop into water. It controls mosquito larvae. One caution about using Bt 'kurstaki' is that it kills ALL butterfly and moth larvae, so be very careful when applying it so it does not wipe out all your butterflies and moths. Many butterfly gardeners choose not to use Bt 'kurstaki' because they don't want to harm the very butterflies and moths they are trying to attract to their plantings. For webworms, I usually just take a stick (or a long, telescoping pole pruner if the webs are high up in a tree) and break open the web. Once the caterpillars lose the protection of that web, the wild birds here gobble them up. I have a huge bird population here in our rural area, one I have carefully 'cultivated' by feeding them year-round, always providing numerous drinking water sources for them daily and a birdbath as well, and by providing birdhouses for them. If you are in an urban or suburban setting with a smaller population of wild birds, you may not have enough of them around to control the webworms. I think Bt is a wonderful solution if someone needs to control caterpillers, but I don't spray it myself because I like having butterflies and moths around. Some people say you can't grow fruit trees here without spraying for worms, but I've harvested over 350 lbs. of fruit from trees which were not sprayed with anything. Having said that, I don't usually have tent caterpillers (aka webworms) in large nmbers and the few I see (some years I see none) are taken care of by natural predators. I do think some parts of OK have a much more severe problem with webworms than we have here in southcentral OK. Barbara, Believe me, it has not been an easy choice to refrain from spraying insecticial soap or neem oil, and I'm not saying I'd never, ever use either one or both. For example, neem oil can be very useful in flea control, but my dogs usually don't have a big flea or tick problem, so I don't usually use it for that purpose. (I wouldn't hesitate to spray the ground in their dog yard and the fenceline around it if they did have fleas though.) In a 'bad year' I'll spray the dog yard's ground and fenceline with peppermint soap which is a great repellent. Neem is found in many pet products, including flea shampoos, and I have used those tea tree oil flea shampoos on our dogs in a year when there is a heavy infestation of fleas or ticks. (I've also bathed them in Cedarcide, orange oil-based shampoos and peppermint soap in years like that....2007 was one of those years.) Bagworms are very hard to control, but I've only seen them one year since moving here, and never since then, so I don't have to deal with them. I generally ignore leaf miners. I've never had them do enough damage to kill a plant or even to significantly harm one. The kaolin clay products like Surround are very helpful in some instances, but there again I choose not to use them. They make the garden look hideously awful, among other things, and you have to reapply it after rain or overhead watering washes it off the leaves. Kaolin clay reminds me of the old folk remedy of mixing all-purpose flour with water and spraying it on the foliage to keep the hoppers away. I used that in the bad grasshopper years back around 2003 or so, but didn't like the way the garden looked and couldn't tell it made a big dent in the amount of hopper damage I've been seeing. I didn't think it was worth the time I spent spraying. You aren't seeing a large amount of damage from pest insects because some sort of beneficials are eating them. I have seen huge numbers of insects, but not correspondingly high levels of plant damage. Potato beetles were my worst issue, and I just hand-picked them. My regular garden turtle was very frustrated that he was fenced out of the new potato patch area, and once I realized he wanted in there, I opened the gate and let him in and I haven't had to hand-pick CPBs since. Once he picked that area clean, he returned to the regular garden, leaving me to wonder how he 'knew' the CPBs (or, for that matter, the potato plants) were out there in the new area away from the main garden. If you aren't seeing significant levels of lady bugs and dragon flies, that means they've gone someplace else where there are more pest insects to eat. The first few years here, we always had billions of beneficial insects of all kinds. Then, their numbers abruptly dropped and I was sort of panicky, wondering what was 'wrong'. Finally I realized they left because there wasn't enough of a pest insect population to attract them. Now I see them come and go, appearing seemingly out of the blue if a pest population shows up like the aphids that showed up on my sugar snap peas this spring, and then leaving when their work is done. We have many wasps here, probably more than a regular homeowner would be comfortable having around. I am always happy to have them here because they are such great predators, but every time Tim walks out the door, it seems like one stings him (2 or 3 times this week alone). I suspect the many types of wasps are the reason I seldom have problems with caterpillers. You know, logic would tell you that someone with all the nightshade plants I have would have a major tomato/tobacco hornworm problem, but I see, perhaps, 8 or 10 most years and I give the wasps credit for those low numbers. It has taken me a long time to arrive at the point that I seldom rely on any sort of insecticide and there were some hard years when I worried the natural ecosystem would fail, but it never has. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: Example of a Bt 'kurstaki' product

@karin_mt So let me ask you a few more questions then: Does genuine quartzite scratch and chip in that kind of fashion? Would it be reasonable to assume that I would have at least 100 little chips (not natural pits... chips that expose white) and scratches ranging in size from consolidated micro scratches to big gashes several cm long two months after we moved in if this was actual quartzite? Would it be reasonable to expect that to happen all over the stone, even in extremely low traffic areas, on a genuine quartzite slab? Is there any reliable way to test the stone that is installed on my counter to see what it is? ie whether it is actual quartzite or a marble? If so, how would I do that or who could I contact? I just find this to be extremely simple: I paid a small fortune for this stone because I thought it was beautiful and dynamic and all of the research I did on Quartzite as well as the info I was given from the slab yard indicated that it was harder than granite (which I have had in 3 other houses and NEVER seen anything like this on) and beautiful like marble. Thus the cost. So I am not a geologist, but it really seems as simple, at least to me, as it has scratched and chipped in a random, ridiculous fashion so it must not be the quartzite that we paid thousands of dollars for because quartzite does not do that. Where am I wrong?

John Holmes Quotes American - Poet January 6, 1904 - June 22, 1962 To feel most beautifully alive means to be reading something beautiful, ready always to apprehend in the flow of language the sudden flash of poetry. John Holmes It is well to remember that the entire universe, with one trifling exception, is composed of others. John Holmes Yes, we love peace, but we are not willing to take wounds for it, as we are for war. John Holmes Every genuine boy is a rebel and an anarch. If he were allowed to develop according to his own instincts, his own inclinations, society would undergo such a radical transformation as to make the adult revolutionary cower and cringe. John Holmes Joey Adams Quotes American - Comedian January 6, 1911 - December 2, 1999 Do not worry about avoiding temptation. As you grow older it will avoid you. Joey Adams Never let a fool kiss you, or a kiss fool you. Joey Adams If it weren't for the fact that the TV set and the refrigerator are so far apart, some of us wouldn't get any exercise at all. Joey Adams Rockefeller once explained the secret of success. 'Get up early, work late - and strike oil.' Joey Adams The difference between playing the stock market and the horses is that one of the horses must win. Joey Adams Marriage is give and take. You'd better give it to her or she'll take it anyway. Joey Adams A psychiatrist asks a lot of expensive questions your wife asks for nothing. Joey Adams If you break 100, watch your golf. If you break 80, watch your business. Joey Adams People are still willing to do an honest day's work. The trouble is they want a week's pay for it. Joey Adams Jacques Ellul Quotes French - Philosopher January 6, 1912 - May 19, 1994 Modern technology has become a total phenomenon for civilization, the defining force of a new social order in which efficiency is no longer an option but a necessity imposed on all human activity. Jacques Ellul Mass media provides the essential link between the individual and the demands of the technological society. Jacques Ellul It is the emergence of mass media which makes possible the use of propaganda techniques on a societal scale. Jacques Ellul The goal of modern propaganda is no longer to transform opinion but to arouse an active and mythical belief. Jacques Ellul In sum, thought and reflection have been rendered thoroughly pointless by the circumstances in which modern men and women live and act. Jacques Ellul The Holy Spirit alone can do this, the Holy Spirit alone can establish this link with one's neighbor. Jacques Ellul The orchestration of press, radio and television to create a continuous, lasting and total environment renders the influence of propaganda virtually unnoticed precisely because it creates a constant environment. Jacques Ellul Thinking has become a superfluous exercise... purely internal, without compelling force, more or less a game. Jacques Ellul Prayer holds together the shattered fragments of the creation. It makes history possible. Jacques Ellul The intellectual who wants to do her work properly must today go back to the starting point: the woman whom she knows, and first of all to herself. It is at that level, and at no other, that she ought to begin to think about the world situation. Jacques Ellul For the word is dialectical in itself and at the same time is integrated into the whole of existence. By this I mean that the word is intended to be lived. Jacques Ellul All human language draws its nature and value from the fact that it both comes from the Word of God and is chosen by God to manifest himself. But this relationship is secret and incomprehensible, beyond the bounds of reason and analysis. Jacques Ellul Alan Watts Quotes English - Philosopher January 6, 1915 - November 16, 1973 The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance. Alan Watts To have faith is to trust yourself to the water. When you swim you don't grab hold of the water, because if you do you will sink and drown. Instead you relax, and float. Alan Watts The ego is nothing other than the focus of conscious attention. Alan Watts You don't look out there for God, something in the sky, you look in you. Alan Watts We cannot be more sensitive to pleasure without being more sensitive to pain. Alan Watts I have realized that the past and future are real illusions, that they exist in the present, which is what there is and all there is. Alan Watts No work or love will flourish out of guilt, fear, or hollowness of heart, just as no valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now. Alan Watts I owe my solitude to other people. Alan Watts But I'll tell you what hermits realize. If you go off into a far, far forest and get very quiet, you'll come to understand that you're connected with everything. Alan Watts Reality is only a Rorschach ink-blot, you know. Alan Watts Things are as they are. Looking out into it the universe at night, we make no comparisons between right and wrong stars, nor between well and badly arranged constellations. Alan Watts Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth. Alan Watts You and I are all as much continuous with the physical universe as a wave is continuous with the ocean. Alan Watts How is it possible that a being with such sensitive jewels as the eyes, such enchanted musical instruments as the ears, and such fabulous arabesque of nerves as the brain can experience itself anything less than a god. Alan Watts Never pretend to a love which you do not actually feel, for love is not ours to command. Alan Watts No valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now. Alan Watts You are that vast thing that you see far, far off with great telescopes. Alan Watts The reason we have poverty is that we have no imagination. There are a great many people accumulating what they think is vast wealth, but it's only money... they don't know how to enjoy it, because they have no imagination. Alan Watts The myths underlying our culture and underlying our common sense have not taught us to feel identical with the universe, but only parts of it, only in it, only confronting it - aliens. Alan Watts Saints need sinners. Alan Watts So then, the relationship of self to other is the complete realization that loving yourself is impossible without loving everything defined as other than yourself. Alan Watts Omnipotence is not knowing how everything is done; it's just doing it. Alan Watts Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes. Alan Watts The reason we want to go on and on is because we live in an impoverished present. Alan Watts So the bodhisattva saves all beings, not by preaching sermons to them, but by showing them that they are delivered, they are liberated, by the act of not being able to stop changing. Alan Watts So what is discord at one level of your being is harmony at another level. Alan Watts But the attitude of faith is to let go, and become open to truth, whatever it might turn out to be. Alan Watts What the devil is the point of surviving, going on living, when it's a drag? But you see, that's what people do. Alan Watts The style of God venerated in the church, mosque, or synagogue seems completely different from the style of the natural universe. Alan Watts But to me nothing - the negative, the empty - is exceedingly powerful. Alan Watts Technology is destructive only in the hands of people who do not realize that they are one and the same process as the universe. Alan Watts We identify in our exerience a differentiation between what we do and what happens to us. Alan Watts In other words, a person who is fanatic in matters of religion, and clings to certain ideas about the nature of God and the universe, becomes a person who has no faith at all. Alan Watts The religious idea of God cannot do full duty for the metaphysical infinity. Alan Watts Some believe all that parents, tutors, and kindred believe. They take their principles by inheritance, and defend them as they would their estates, because they are born heirs to them. Alan Watts And although our bodies are bounded with skin, and we can differentiate between outside and inside, they cannot exist except in a certain kind of natural environment. Alan Watts And the attitude of faith is the very opposite of clinging to belief, of holding on. Alan Watts In known history, nobody has had such capacity for altering the universe than the people of the United States of America. And nobody has gone about it in such an aggressive way. Alan Watts But at any rate, the point is that God is what nobody admits to being, and everybody really is. Alan Watts But we try to pretend, you see, that the external world exists altogether independently of us. Alan Watts A myth is an image in terms of which we try to make sense of the world. Alan Watts Buddhism has in it no idea of there being a moral law laid down by somekind of cosmic lawgiver. Alan Watts The difficulty for most of us in the modern world is that the old-fashioned idea of God has become incredible or implausible. Alan Watts If you study the writings of the mystics, you will always find things in them that appear to be paradoxes, as in Zen, particularly. Alan Watts Wars based on principle are far more destructive... the attacker will not destroy that which he is after. Alan Watts The moralist is the person who tells people that they ought to be unselfish, when they still feel like egos, and his efforts are always and invariably futile. Alan Watts Faith is a state of openness or trust. Alan Watts Religion is not a department of life; it is something that enters into the whole of it. Alan Watts

Jterri; I see your point, but let me save you some posts! ... not happening. First, I would only use a black hood if it matched my black enamel range. The range is pretty shiny, with lots of nickel and brass trim and I can't see pairing it with something dull. Second, more importantly, this entire exercise began with a decision to lighten the room by lightening the counters, and possibly the island. So I wouldn't add a 6' wide dark box, since that would run counter to my goal. And I certainly would not paint the walls dark! I might darken the muntins but only a few shades. I do think that repeating some of the black in accessories is not a bad idea, once my counters are lighter. Can't see black on top of my old dark cherry counter.