I feel your pain. We had our house sided a few years ago which got delayed to early spring - the worst possible time. We had 2 groups of workers, first the roofers who ripped off the old siding, then the siders. They even trampled my fencing which I used to protect my tulips. Brats. It was a garden disaster. Not to fear though. It's only the top growth that gets destroyed, nothing below. The soil does get pretty compacted. I do not like the "claw" - it doesn't work for me because I'm too short. I can't get enough leverage with it. So I used a long handled cultivator with sharp tines that is along the same idea. It did a nice job loosening the soil. Cut off anything that got broken, and loosen the soil a little. You'll be fine next year.

Late husband worked for a health insurance company, and that was the last time we had a health insurance benefit. When he left that job, we got catastrophic care insurance, with a huge deductible. We eventually opened HSAs as well. Over the last ten years, each of us has had jobs that offered health insurance plans. We looked at the cost (to the employee) of those company plans, and the benefits, and restrictions imposed. We compared them to the cost of our current plans and benefits, (when you pay yourself, you chose who you want with no restrictions). The HSA balance creeps up over time, allowing more payments, (dental, doctor's office visits, optometrist exams,) on a schedule we controlled, instead of what the company plans would allow. Employers have been hit hard the last few years, too. The workplace plans we were offered had higher premiums than our individual accounts with Unnamed Health Insurance Company, and were not of more value to us. In spite of being a "catastrophic care" policy with a high deductible, It seems to be paying for things, or making partial payments for things, every time i turn around. Tick removed from back at walk-in facility: Paid half the bill. Prophylactic medication in case I was exposed to Lyme disease: I was stunned to have the couple bucks and change it cost. I asked the pharmacist "Isn't there a minimum dispensing fee?" Yes, she said, but the insurance covers it. If I hadn't had that policy, it would have been twenty dollars or so, for two pills. As it was, I paid less than three dollars out of pocket. I'm actually quite happy with the situation I'm in: the fewer people sticking there noses into my health care (policy wonks in DC or that lady in personnel) the better I like it. And it had no bearing on Poor Late Husband's demise: He had lung cancer, quite likely from his thirty eight years of smoking two packs a day. There were unusual circumstances that contributed to his sudden death only five weeks after diagnosis. No amount of chemo, surgery etc., would have saved him. I had a cancer scare myself, actually less than three months after his passing. I asked a nurse what would happen if I had cancer, and my insurance didn't cover treatment. She said she didn't know how that worked, and she said the doctors and nurses take precautions to not know anything about the finances of patients. That way, she said, those with or without insurance are treated the same way while in the hospital. I think it's stupid to go without insurance to have more money for lattes and cell phones, but I defend others' rights to spend the money they earn in a way that they find valuable. As for people who "End up in the emergency room because they couldn't afford a doctor" I've personally known, lived near, worked with some of those people...and they abused the emergency room option so they wouldn't have to pay. I've heard them rationalize taking a child with an earache to the emergency room to avoid a $20 co-pay at the doctor's office, and the hassle of scheduling an appointment. Then in the next breath they griped that they had to wait so long to be seen.

One thing I'll add about my storage of pot lids over the stove... another reason why it is so convenient is that (I confess) I feel that pot lids don't need to be washed after every use. This is perhaps my version of the drip cabinet, as I recently read... somewhere... is a Scandinavian idea. I have an absorbent cloth under the rack that holds the lids, and so a lid can be put away immediately even if it has some condensation on it (say, from boiling water for pasta). Karin L Here is a link that might be useful: modern version

We bought our house from two elderly sisters who were both in nursing homes. They had held off on selling because they had hoped to move back home. They finally realized they had to sell it. Thus, it had been empty for almost 18 months when we first saw it. There were cobwebs hanging off the ceiling, and a few abandoned items here and there. They had owned dogs, and the carpeting smelled of you-know-what. Plus their remodeling taste was decidedly iffy -- when I first walked through the house I told our partner, "This is hands-down THE ugliest house I've ever seen!" But we bought it anyway, and ended up loving it after we gutted the interior and did a complete top-to-bottom remodel. However, since generations of spiders had lived and died in the 2 years before we moved in, it's still clear that they consider this THEIR house, not ours. I still have to fight to keep them at bay, LOL. I keep reminding myself, "They're the good insects...."