Highalt, your PO is inappropriately charging you for a PARCEL, lowest price $1.19. If you meet the requirements I'm about to list, you should be charged only $.83, the minimum charge for a LARGE ENVELOPE. Note the key vocab in caps. In order to qualify as a LARGE ENVELOPE it must 1. Be a maximum of 6 inches by 9 inches. One eighth of an inch over will disqualify you. 2. It must be no thicker than 3/4 of an inch. They have a little plastic widget to check these two things now. Tell them to use it. 3. It must be under one ounce. If they argue with you, tell them you have the time to wait while they look up the specs for a parcel versus a large envelope. It's in the book. A practice that is new since these regulations went into place is taping the seed packets onto a flat sheet of paper. That is designed to keep the thickness under 3/4 of an inch. Back in the old days donors could just drop packets in the envelope and send them on their way. Now it costs more to do it that way, which is why you are often asked to send three stamps. It is for the convenience of the nice person who has already gone to the trouble growing the seeds, harvesting the seeds, cleaning the seeds, packaging the seeds, labeling the seeds, and posting to let you know you can have them. I think that extra $.42 for the donor's convenience is a FABULOUS bargain for what you get in return.

SVBs do attack gourds, although it seems like gourds are not necessarily their favorite thing. Sometimes they kill mine and sometimes they don't. They seem to bother decorative warted gourds more than they bother birdhouse gourds. The nice thing about catnip is you only have to plant it once. After that, it will reseed itself everywhere. I always let mine bloom its head off because the flowers attract beneficial insects. Catmint is another great companion plant for squash and other plants. I have "Walker's Low" catmint growing near my squash. Amy, Gently rub a leaf of your catnip-looking plant between your fingers and see if you pick up a catnip aroma. Their scent is present from a pretty early age. I think I have lost one Seminole plant one year, and I never checked it to see if it was SVBs that got it or if it was bacterial wilt or something similar. The other Seminole plants just filled in the area where the deceased plant had been growing and within a couple of weeks, it was so well filled-in that no one but I knew that a plant had died there in that row. In a good year, Seminole runs 30-40' across my garden and I let it do as it pleases because it grows in conditions, and under pest pressure, that nothing else can and will tolerate, except for other C. moschata winter squash. This year I planted both the regular fruited Seminole and the ones with the larger fruit. In the past, I've only grown the regular one. C. moschatas are as close to being SVB-proof as anything else I've ever grown. Squash bugs and squash vine borers are a big problem roughly 8 years out of 10 for everything except the C. moschata types. Over the years, I basically dropped all the C. pepo and C. maxima types of pumpkins, replacing them with C. moschata types. I just got tired of fighting the SVBs every year, so figured I'd work smarter instead of working harder, and replaced them with C. moschatas that deter the SVBs for me. Dawn

Lynn, DH and I have a lakefront cabin in the village of Saranac Lake, which is in the High Peaks region of the Adirondacks. In my humble opinion, this area is the closest place to heaven you could find on this earth! Although the village is called Saranac Lake, we are actually on Kiwassa Lake, a beautiful serene lake that is connected to 40 miles of waterway, including the Saranac Lake chains of Lower Saranac, Middle Saranac and Upper Saranac. We love where we are because it has so far been untouched by the typical overdevelopment many lakefronts experience. The lakefront lots are mostly very large (ours is over an acre and considered small!) and beautifully wooded. We spend hours on our boat, traveling through the chain of lakes, stopping at small islands for picnics, waterskiing, tubing, etc. The fishing, of course, is great as well. And in the backdrop of these glimmer glass lakes are the high peaks of the Adirondacks--reflected so majestically in the water. In addition the the fabulous hiking (there are hikes to accomodate any level of ability and the views are to die for), there is a wonderful arts and cultural life here. Saranac Lake is a kind of "earthy crunchy" little village with many new art galleries and little eateries. Very laid back here--picture teeva's, birkenstocks and hiking clothes. Ten miles down the road is Lake Place, home of the Lake Placid Horse Show (attended by many celebrities), fabulous restaurants, nice little shops and boutiques, the Olympic attractions (including regular ice shows, ski jumps, bobsled rides), Whiteface Mt. gondola rides, arts and theatre. Really anything you could want to do is here! We have a five bedroom, semi-rustic adirondack cabin right on the lake. We bought it from DH's family about 8 years ago, DH grew up there as a kid. We love it--it's one of the older ones on the lake and fortunately much of the adirondack charm was preserved over the years. We do rent it out in the summer (in your price range--gee hate to sound like an ad). I could give you the name of our realtor if you'd like!

Hola, I should have known better than to try to pull the above layout off. Thank you very much for your gentle disagreement to wake me up to the reality that sticking a large heavy portable island in front of doorways will not work. Question about REMODELFLA: "move the door down that goes into the bar/desk area": do you mean this? Does this layout work better? This modified layout is moving the current doorway down toward the porch, allowing more space for the island. This then allows me more wall space for a full bar/desk. As always, I really appreciate your help in reviewing my layouts. Thank you very much, Amanda Moved doorway down layout: Overhead view: Another view of walkway between island/fireplace: Recall, the island is 5ft wide by 2ft wide with a 1ft overhang for the 2 stools. The glasses drawers would pull out toward the fireplace (instead of toward cooktop) since it will be used more often than the Tupperware drawers. Familroom mudroom, and porch 'foyer'/desk/bar: I thought about doing a wide shallow U-shape kitchen, where the cooktop would be on the wall of the doorway (facing opposite of the wall oven/fridge). But the way I function, I like having a little barrier from people when I prep/cook. W/ the U-shape, people could stand near me and actually be in my way. Also, I need seating for my 2 kids (7.5 and 6yrs old) for snacks. (Meals will be in the diningroom, which is in the opposite corner of the house � labeled Livingroom. Need the space for my 12feet long diningroom table). 1929Spanish: The distance between the island and fireplace = 4ft. I think that is very spacious, since my current aisle is 28inches!!! The toaster oven area will be flushed w/ the wall oven. It�ll be the appliance garage mainly for the kitchenaid mixer that will slide out (so I never have to lift the darn heavy thing again). RHOME410: I wish I knew how to better utilize the good-size room (~17ftx13.5ft - currently the familyroom). But with the 4 doorways, there is no good way to set up the room as a famiyroom. This design feels very wasteful of a perfectly good room, but I desperately need a mudroom, which cuts into the room (instead of building out). That leaves a 'foyer' for the porch entrance. 2DWs: I ALWAYS have something in the drying rack. I cannot stand looking at it anymore. So I need the 2nd DW to hold all the drying stuff: plastics, knives, pots, etc. Also we host a few big parties each year, so having a 2nd DW would be great! AOKAT15: I kinda gave the condensed reason for needing to shrink the budget. We actually have the money for the renovation, but my husband got a wake-up call when we got our home appraisal back. In the comps, he noted that homes with Central air conditioning were valued more than our home (which currently does not have CAC). So he suggested that we do not renovate the kitchen, but instead install CAC. That is part of my plan, but my order of priority is to do the kitchen first, then CAC in a few years (I can live with window AC for now). DH does not see the value of spending so much money for a kitchen renovation, when CAC actually adds value, but renovated kitchen does not. So in our compromise, instead of the full-blown renovation (see link to full-blown layout thread), we would not go hog-wild, but renovate just to meet our top needs. There is always something else that needs our time/money. Waiting a few years does not help. Waiting will just eat the time/money of the future projects (masterbath, patio, finishing familyroom above the garage, outdoor ice-rink, new roof, cobblestone driveway, etc etc etc). We have a great diningroom that we use daily. I do not need a breakfast table/area. (In my previous house, I had a small diningroom right near the kitchen/breakfast table that is right next to the island with seating. A bunch of useless space.) Now we either eat in the diningroom or a quick snack at the island. Thank you very much, Amanda/huango Here is a link that might be useful: hog-wild layout thread