For a couple of years I had a garden spot away from my house, with no water supply available so if I wanted to supplement rainfall I had to haul gallon jugs of water. To make my watering efficient, when I planted my peppers & tomatoes in the spring, I dug down and buried empty gallon plastic jugs, one between each plant. I had poked 4-5 holes in the bottom of each, of course, and left the caps on until later in the summer. Once the weather warmed, and after a good soaking rain, I mulched the beds 4-6" deep with chopped leaves, being sure to cover the tops of the (so far empty and still capped) bottles to protect them from the sun since I had found that the plastic degrades and becomes brittle when exposed to the sun. (In previous years, just cultivating around the bottles inevitably resulted in my breaking the tops off by midsummer.) When the weather reached a point where I actually needed to water, I cleared the mulch away for the moment and poured a gallon of water into each buried bottle. I set the cap loosely back atop each bottle to keep the leaf debris from falling in and clogging the exit holes in the bottom, then pulled the mulch back up to protect the plastic. I did not care about how long it took for the bottle to empty-- it seemed like a gallon or two a week per plant was sufficient, and the best part is that by burying the bottles the water went right down to the root zone where it was most effective. As for using wall-o-waters, since I had gotten some free from a friend, I tried them last year with 3 really early tomato plants I started specifically to experiment with. While they survived a good bit of frosty weather, in the end the plants I had started weeks later and planted out a month after the first ones when the weather had warmed quickly caught up to the wall-o-water ones and all the tomatoes pretty much bloomed & set fruit at the same time & rate. So my conclusion is that it was satisfying to my eager gardener's soul to be out planting early, but it really made no difference in overall plant performance. I have found the same to be true with early plantings of such things as peas and salad crops, too. Early plantings may survive, but later plantings quickly catch up and may even surpass earlier ones that have been stressed by the weather.

lisa_mocha--I've been looking at their website also and wondering some of the same things you've asked so thanks for posting this. With the sale ending the 1st, there's not time to get the swatches and for the heavyweight textured linen, I was told the swatches in the colors I wanted to see were not available. What color are you planning to get? I'm having brain freeze over the color as well as the type of linen...had no idea they had so many linen options. I was told today when I called the Seattle RH outlet that they're having an extra 20% off everything in the store thru Monday, but of course, getting there's the trick.

Have you thought of using the really big Command hooks? They have them in a brushed nickle finish. You could mount them on the wall on either side of the window, then use a decorative brushed nickle rod laid in the hooks. I have always been very pleased with the way that Command hooks hold and then release without a problem. The link below has all of the available hooks and a coupon for $2.50 off the metal hooks. Here is a link that might be useful: Command coupons

Snickysnacker -- the ones I purchased are Robert Eclipse Black-out Energy Saving Panels -- Thermaweave Panel. They are really soft and drape beautifully. Graywings -- the problem is that the way they're hanging in the second bedroom is a workaround. My husband -- who needs to sometimes sleep in there because of a bad back -- took the decorative rod out of the dip in the front of the bracket and just pushed it up against the wall. Not really a good look, and you can't really slide the curtains to open them because the rod is just resting on the back of the bracket,rather than being held securely. But what it showed us is that if these curtains are closer to the window the amount of light that can sneak over the top or around the sides is reduced to almost nothing! Why is it that all the brackets that hold round rods extend at least 4 inches from the wall? I don't need that much clearance. Are there any alternatives? (thank you both for responding!)