Following Inkognito's question, and guessing from the "new" contributor names appearing here that you are of conifer forum origin, I had already postulated that one of the major purposes of this design is to find a way to plant all these plants that you love. That's a perfectly legitimate purpose - a collector's garden. Having made one of those myself (unintentionally, incrementally), and having transitioned out of that style to some extent, I would caution you to take a step back, waaaaay back, from the stage at which you are contemplating plant names. Think about the really basic questions, such as, do you really want to plant up against the house? This is not a foundation planting plan we're looking at here, but the use of the house as an anchor. But I don't really think that (a) your house is going to look any better with plants against it in this arrangement, or (b) that they will necessarily grow well up against the house. Deciduous plants in particular reach for the light, even when they are against a south-facing wall, and they do not look good after a few years. Fundamentally, what I'm seeing in this design is a case of what we call "perimeteritis" around here; a fear of simply stepping into the open and creating a bed for plants right where you want them to be for some aesthetic, functional, horticultural, or plant-tending reason. You've made a really easy design decision that is an alternative to Ken's "if I'm collecting I might as well just line 'em up" style, but is still not the creation of a pleasing and functional landscape that allows you to collect plants to your hearts content. There is a distinction here between perimeteritis and boundary definition. Nothing wrong with defining boundaries. But one way of distinguishing the two is to say, if my neighbour defined his/her boundaries the same way, could we co-exist? The answer is no - because your big trees, for instance, are borrowing airspace (and root space). At the same time, your big trees may be lending or wasting their primary amenity: shade. They may also end up competing with each other for airspace. Is this necessary? What you need to do to avoid a situation in which you will want to redo this all in five or ten years - and trust me on this, because I've moved every single one of my plants a half-dozen times as I transition from one garden form to another! - is to think in terms of plant form and its function for your life - shade here, sightlines there, enjoy the early spring or late fall flowers from this window, compost bin accessed this way, and view of your house from one vantage point or another. AND water flow. Do your design in terms of "big conifer here, arching deciduous shrub here, bulbs there, spreading deciduous tree here with shade on this patch." No plant names yet. Later, you fill in the plant names. The problem with a collector's garden is that once you live in it for a while, you start to think of the way the landscape functions for you, vs. for the plants. So my advice to you: step away from the structures, step away from the lot lines, and put down the pencil. Walk around your property and think about the places you like to BE on it, whether to enjoy the morning sun with coffee in hand admiring the new growth on the pines, watching the kids play while you're weeding, what have you. Put a plastic garden chair there. Sit in it, and think about what you want to see from there. Maybe one of your places is your back steps, your deck; others may be in the shade of the big trees you already have. Make pathways to get to the places you want to spend time, and also make pathways that reflect the routes you already go. Also, where do you sit IN the house and what do you want to see from there in what seasons? Landscape design, even if it is intended to collect plants, is for people, not for houses, properties, or plants. Design it around the people and their needs. KarinL

Actually, after my gripe the other day, it has been almost smooth sailing. I still have to call them in the morning to remind, but I gladly do that. When I picked up last night, I saw that they have designated a bin to me (!) with a sign saying "coffee grounds only" behind the counter so it's not accessible to other patrons (in case people would use it as a garbage can and throw other stuff in there). Minnesuing, at first they said no to me, too, and the reason they gave was that people forgot to come pick up their UCGs eventhough they promised to do so. I pleaded with them and told them that I had actually had deals fall through because the shop-owners forgot to save the UCGs and I had had to make trips for nothing. That somehow softened them and they agreed to try it out. It looks like I might be able to train them after my initial problems and I'm so happy! When I have this one down pat, I might expand to local food suppliers for old bananas etc. like GGG! But baby steps, baby steps...

This morning, I plugged in the new battery that was charging last night (it takes forever!) and it held the columns in place so I could use my portable tank to go to rehab. I use liquid oxygen at rehab, provided by them. Called Inogen when I got home - could not speak with helpful young man from Mon night. He called me back and we worked on the danged thing. What finally made it work was to hit it soundly with the heel of my shoe. That finally got it all the way locked into place. It's like the old thing where one tries all the high tech and then gives the machine a sound kick and it works! I told him that I had tried multiple times the night before and that the instructions kept warning me not to remove the columns or use them for "practice". He said that's because some idiots throw them on the sofa where they become coated in nacho chips and spilled soft drinks and then won't work. In other words, in their attempt to "idiot-proof" the instructions, then completely disregarded the needs of someone who knows better than to treat an expensive machine like that!!!! The "tail wags the dog" so often today. So, it's finally working and I won't have to deal with replacing columns for at least a year. As to the delivery - he said Amazon has "spoiled" us by telling us if we order by a particular time, we will receive it at a stated time. He claims they're the "only company" that can do this and that my standards are just too high - that they are "pretty good". I asked him if he'd seen the ATT&T wireless commercial on TV about the surgeon who is "just okay". I told him I felt the same way about Inogen's service - "pretty good" and "just okay" just don't cut it with me. For a $2700 piece of equipment, surely they can be better than "pretty good". Now I have to get my SIL to come over Sat AM and bring down my stationary concentrator. UPS is delivering me a new one between 2 -6PM and they remove the new one from the box, replace it with mine that is not working properly, and then print out and slap a label on it. I'll then have to try and get someone to haul it back upstairs for me - it's quite heavy and I can't do it anymore. Thank you so much, mama for your concern. It means a great deal to me. Here you are so very ill and you're thinking about someone else's woes. But that's YOU, mama and it's why we love you very much on GW. Sounds like you've got good oxygen coverage. It varies so much from one area to another. It really depends on whether ones area felt they could make enough profit under the new Medicare guidelines for oxygen. I don't begrudge them their profit - I'm a good capitalist girl - but it sure makes it hard when the demographic just don't allow much choice.

Here are a some pics and my dilemma. Keep in mind this is my old fridge...new one comes today! Here is how we ended up with this: I have never had an enclosed fridge so didn't think about the peninsula dying into panels or how deep panels were going to be. I "semi" designed the new footprint and took it to Lowe's where the KD took over. (yes---I know......) Bought Schuler plywood with maple fronts cabinets. Although the kitchen designer had the model number of the fridge we were buying, which is a full-size, she designed the kitchen with 24" deep panels. She knew I was trying to have the look of an enclosed fridge. Being that I've never had an enclosed fridge, it was something I just didn't think of until the install started. Evidently she put a counter-depth in the design program because the elevation sketches she gave me showed an enclosed fridge. "Luckily" the panels actually came in wrong and were cut at only 23" for some strange reason and the installer caught it right away when looking over everything. Otherwise he probably would have installed them and I would be stuck. So called Lowe's to reorder the panels and somehow in all this it suddenly dawned on me that a full size fridge was going to be deeper and require deeper panels. I thought "no problem! Yay I can order them at 30!" By this time the KD had quit her job due to the pandemic. The other KD didn't know what was going on so we called in the Schuler rep. She was the one who immediately told me that those 30" panels would be sticking out in front of the peninsula. She asked if we could move the peninsula forward since the other side is an overhang for seating, but we couldn't since it would bottleneck the entrance into the kitchen down to under 36" and getting rid of an existing bottleneck was one of the reasons for the re-design to start with. So we had a dilemma. We cannot go down to a counter depth fridge which was the other option. What I decided was to split the difference and order 27" refrigerator panels. The fridge without doors is 29.5" so I will have about 3" of the side of the fridge sticking out which I don't like, but while I want my kitchen to look beautiful, I value the functionality too. The old fridge that you see in the pic sticks out a total of 32" The new fridge will stick out 34 with doors but without handles (4.5" of that is doors that would stick out anyway) Here's the really complicated part....we will be installing decorative panels on the end of the fridge as we have them on all the cabinets. This is how you enter the kitchen and I don't want that big blank space there next to the peninsula. The panels should be installed with just 1/4" reveal. I posted a photo below of how the panels look that are already installed on the side of the pantry that adjoins to a 17" high window seat. Luckily those face the opposite way from the fridge panels so you will never see both at the same time. I also posted photos of us holding up panels on the side of the fridge (they are NOT the right size panels...we have to order those still---we just used these to look at the right edge as to how wide to make the panels.) Also keep in mind we can remove the quartz backsplash piece if that would look better. That was not originally planned...the panels were going to sit directly on top of the countertop. So do we order the panels with just the 1/4" reveal to match the panels in the rest of the kitchen? Or, as the Schuler rep recommended, order the panels so they are the same width with the countertop, leaving about 1 3/4" reveal on the right side, but then your eye follows the countertop all the way up. I asked the countertop templater guy if I should just lengthen the overhang on the kitchen side of the peninsula to 2.5" to bring it out to within 1/4" of the fridge panel but he said no....I'm now thinking I should have insisted on it. Especially since we have full overlay cabinets that already make the overlay look very small since the 1.5" planned overhang is measured from the box, not the front of the drawers. Note how small the overhang looks to the drawers. And then of course, they had templated for a 1.5" overhang and I only got 1.25" UGH! Every quarter inch there would have made the reveal on the side of the fridge less. Suggestions appreciated! I'm hoping that I will eventually make peace in my mind with this issue and won't notice it but it is driving me crazy right now. I think of all the things that screwed up just because of this one error by the KD that I didn't catch and I am beating myself up for it!