California has a million micro-climates. SF Peninsula where i live can vary 15-20 degrees based on if you are in the path of the incoming fog. My particular city (our motto is Climate Best by Government Test) is pretty much optimal - not as much fog as up north but not too hot in the summer, we haven't seen frost in 3 years but still get enough chill hours for peaches and plums. My neighbor to the right grows bananas and has a mango tree (no fruit yet) and the other neighbor grows cherries. Zone 9b, Sunset 16 - its gardening paradise. It will cost you big bucks to live here, though, especially with enough land for fruit trees.

Not all whites are the same, nor are all reds. In my backyard I've aimed to have a white garden, but some of the flowers are more ivory/cream while others are white-white (more of a stark contrast). But that doesn't bother me, but if you were trying to go with the house trim or something, this might influence your decision. I got Ruby Vigorosa roses for my front yard thinking they were going to be red-red, veering toward the orangy red. Well, with the heat those suckers are dark pink (and in lots of heat, actually fade to pale pink). But in winter they're such a dark-dark pink that they go for pale red. Sometimes it really is better to see a rose in your local environment then having to trust pictures and people on the phone to describe a color. Just my two cents.

With traditional capped burners, the heat is all on the perimeter. And flare increases as you turn the burner higher. This means, unless you only use large pots, you do need different sized burners to work effectively. You also need pots that have good heat conductivity (i.e. clad copper cores). With uncapped burners (such as Bluestar's signature open burner design), the heat is distributed across the entire bottom of the pot, and the area that is heated doesn't really change when you adjust the burners. In that case, you are much better off having a one-size-fits-all for your burners. It gives you a lot more flexibility. It also allows you to use rolled carbon steel pans much more efficiently, as you won't have hot spots despite the thin rather thin material. Same for cooking with cast iron which despite all its advantages does suffer from poor conductivity. And with Bluestar, which I am particularly partial to, you even get a wok burner for free. Remove the top part of the grate, and the bottom part bowl becomes a wok burner.

I'm replacing a 9' three piece dining room back door with a slider of some kind. I'm looking a a Milgard Ultra series 650. I really like the new Black bean color for the interior. There is a large 9 ' bank of white vinyl windows painted with white trim in the kitchen a few feet away on the same wall. There is a 12' white vinyl door on the same wall in a lower living room, just to the left of the dining room wall. So this Black bean color would be sandwiched between two white framed windows or doors. Would that look odd or should I stick to the white interior door color?