Hey Josh! Good to hear from you! I'll tell ya, this gig is crazy. Good money, but man, I don't think that I'll be able to keep it up for more than a year or so. I think I'll just grab as much knowledge as I can and move on. Idk. Craziness. Speaking of CRAZY. The Florida weather IS crazy, especially way down here in the Miami. Fact is, we are a tropical climate here. The only such wet/dry season climate in the continental US. To say that it's a challenge is an understatement. It's either really, really dry and cool(er)(~meaning spring/summer for most~)....or really, really wet and HOT, HOT, HOT - not to mention the constant seasonal threat (and occasional reality) of tropical storms and hurricanes........ * * * A thought jogs his memory and he reflects: ".......I stood in amazment one late August afternoon, when my simple garden thermometer read 95 degrees with a delightfully refreshing 89% humidity, all this without a cloud in the sky.....the jungle.....it's just like the jungle here..." He remembers dark times long past: ".....Everybody wanted me to do it, him most of all. I felt like he was up there, waiting for me to take the pain away. He just wanted to go out like a soldier, standing up, not like some poor, wasted, rag-a$$ed renegade. Even the jungle wanted him dead, and that's who he really took his orders from anyway......." He snaps back to the reality of his computer screen and chuckles. * * * You'll either enjoy that APNow reference wrapped up in my garden reality, or wonder if I'm a serial killer....LOL ;) Anywho, switching gears.... DM, Ya know, I had the same epifany myself. My yard is wierd in the sense that I really only have full shade, or full sun. I mean, I do have some shade, but it's not optimal, and it's not in the right spot - it really just doesn't work for me. So I thought one day, "I'm going to make my own shade....and it's going to be mobile." The rest is history. I figure, if your not trying to make what you have better...you're just falling behind. Regarding the 12 month season: Yes and no. Many things grow here year round...many of those suffer during the summer and rebound in the fall. Few tolerate summer without some affect, while even fewer flourish during those months..but there are certainly those evolutionarily select few natives that love it here. Peppers, specifically the hot ones, are tropical in origin - so they can tolerate summers ~if~ you provide a mostly shade environment. They get crushed in full summer sun, I know this from experience ;) That being said, the sun is not the real summer enemy for vegetable crops here, specifically containerized ones, its the bugs, the rain, and the disease. So again, yes and no. The better you are, the better chance your plants have down here. That's the skinny, straight and narrow. Good to be back. Good. PJ

I have hesitated to post here because I have been mid-remodel longer than most of you have been alive...(ok maybe a two year remodel isn't that long...) anyhoo, I finally feel, that since we're six weeks or so away from completition, may be I can post in the mid-remodel groups thread :oP Tile guy finished the shower and floor (this is an entire house remodel, from bottom to top, adding a bathroom and moving many walls and soffits). So my master actually looks somewhat like a bathroom and my evil plans are actually coming to fruition (I used crocodile tile and I both worried about it and loved it...now everyone loves it) :oP The deck of the soaking tub can't be finished until we get the circle cut in the tiles (since the last tile guy lost part of the circle we had cut earlier). There's on guy in the state who cuts these circles...it's a pain! So that room can't have cabinets or anything until the deck is finished since they butt up against the tub (which is 36" high). So tile guy is heading down to the family bathroom, which after THREE tubs that leaked, is finally plumbed with a new jacuzzi tub (I will never try to save money with american standard AGAIN!) I should have just dropped a couple grand in the first place instead of giving it to the plumbers. That room will likely be finished this week :) The powder room floor is done and the toilet set, but still waiting for parts to actually work. (The old plumbers didn't know how to install so they cut the expensive pipes down to shorter pipes and installed the "high tank" very low on the wall). But it's the only room that's actually plastered, so it looks to be "done" almost. I will finish the move out this week on Friday, but between then and today I will get the first couple of coats of venetian plaster on the hood wall in the kitchen (a bear to reach if I don't do it now...since there's less than 12" in the gap...once trimmed out...my butt won't fit) :oP Next week our finish carpenter is ours full time, so while I'm gone, he'll be laying down the layout, repairing the floor and finally setting cabinets! When I get back I might feel like I have a kitchen. ANd hopefully I will have new granite and marble by then. (The previous slabs I purchased in full were sold so I have to start over). All in all...we feel so good about seeing work actually happen. We can see that we'll actually get to live in our home again someday! Hopefully for a few months before we have to move out to a bigger home when we have child number two :oP But we'll cross that bridge later I guess!

I learned a little trick in decorating school (I'm a design school drop out) :oP Keep LIKE finishs the same. That means keep your pendants and chandeliers in the same finish, but this does not limit your drawer pulls to the same finish. But you want say all faucets in the room to be of the same material, but not necessarily the same material that you have on the pulls or light fixtures :) Then find a tie in. For instance, if you have murcury glass on the knobs, and in the lighting, you have a tie in, so the material isn't such a big deal. In my kitchen the "tie in" is the range, in black enamel with stainless, chrome and brass accents. This allows me to pull all three into the kitchen. The light fixtures are antiques, in pewter colored metal (its actually cast iron and weighs a ton) but the fixture had an old gold color accent on the globe sconces and the top and bottom of the fixture, so again, silver and gold are both in the room. The sconces on the fixtures are a soft amber glass, which is also the glass used in the cabinet doors, and pulls amber from the back splash and the granite...and then the other counter is stainless. So if you try to think of the room and the tie in's you can find, you don't need to worry about the fixture color quite as much, as long as you stick to the tie in rule and the like items rule :)

I haven't read through all these posts as I'm at work, but what Magna said struck a chord. My global warming group talks about this often, that the only way BIG change will be made, regarding cars/fuel, CFLs, changes in energy, will only be done when it's a legal change to do so. I have a feeling that the CFL focus is sort of a baby step towards larger lifestyle changes in the future. Look at the digital change occurring in February for another example of a blanket change. At some point energy and fuel will be coming from alternate sources, and depending on your state that could be more of an issue than others, but it will take the govt to say that by this date that the change will be made. Home building is an example also, that better building practices (better being relative to energy consumption/retention)will eventually have much tougher standards, perhaps the requirement of solar shingles, thicker studs that allow for better insulation, tankless water heaters...etc. I dunno....just things I've read about. Any how, I am ok with CFL's, I don't have a problem with the white light, but I do use the daylight bulbs where I can, and I do needlpoint, so I appreciate the white light in certain locations. The chandy issue I resolved by getting a dining room fixture that doesn't feature the bulbs! You can't see them in my fixture, so I can even use the twirly ones! I know that doesn't work for all, but that works for me! I also think that the CFL technology will improve a lot in the next few years time! They do have dim-able bulbs now, and also I haven't experienced the 30 second drag time that occurred when you'd put a light on with a CFL a few years ago...that was dreadful. Also, there is like a pin drop amount of mercury in each CFL. Way less that in a thermometer...but people go sticking thermometers in their mouth all the time! That's just as fragile, and has much more mercury! I'm not sure if it was mentioned, but you can return burnt out CFL's to Home Depot and Ikea.