What state are you in? All zone 8's are not created equal. I am going to say that overwatering is one of your problems. The tomato plant looks like "toast" to me and I would recommend starting over. The lettuce looks fine and the pepper should be on life support. Here in Western Oregon Zone Eight we are having unseasonably warm and dry weather. But it is still too early to put out unprotected tomato plants. Those nights when it was "37ish" it might have been colder in your garden and the tomatoes don't like a chill and will react as in your photo. (FYI: if you put your zone and location in your profile, it will appear on all your posts and give everyone a better chance to help)

I have a Toro leaf blower/vacuum. Shreds nicely for dry brown leaves, but freshly fallen autums leaves or wet leaves do not shred as well, they mainly get vacuumed up and partially broken. My pinecones are about 1.5 inches (daughter calls them the "baby cones") and we get plenty. I rake them out of my garden beds and lawn into a pile on the lawn. Then I use the leaf vacuum and suck them up. They chop up into a fine reddish brown mulch. Even applied in spring, these shredded cones have not led to any pine tree sprouts. The mulch smells nice if you like the smell of pine. WARNING - very dusty job. The bag that collects the shredded material will send out dust from the shredded pine cones, more than the dust from leaves. If there is a medium wind, I do it standing upwind of the bag so that the dust blows away from me. The earthworms LOVE the beds I have applied the pinecone mulch.

Lsudude, About your counter top, sink dilemma: It seems a shame to give up "His and Her" sinks on a counter top so long. Have you thought about adding an outlet behind the knee hole- Possibly with access from the drawer in the vanity to keep your iron and hairdryer? There are pictures on this forum showing that. Alternatively, add an outlet on the wall behind the kneehole- Plug your appliances into the outlet and attach hooks on the sidewall of the vanity (kneehole wall) and hang your appliances. This second way is what we did- as the first wasnÂt feasible. The existing wall outlet can be used when needed- recharging a toothbrush or shaver- since relocating the outlet to the medicine cabinet wasnÂt feasible either. About the sinks- everyone has their own preference. I like the look of "Under-counter" sinks on a counter of that length. Vessel sinks would be very dramatic as well. The smooth lines of the under counter sinks in the granite appealed to me. My granite fabricator included cutting the holes for the sinks, drilling the holes for the faucets and mounting the sinks in his cost. ( No plumbing) Pam

Loonlake - I actually do monitor my credit reports monthly. :) And I thought of the mail drop potential - but this is a small, cul-de-sac neighborhood. The houses are pretty close together. And there are a few neighbors who are retired and home all day long, and basically watch out the windows for someone to talk to. :) While anything is certainly possible, they know us now as the "new neighbors", and I'm fairly certain they would say something if they saw strangers checking our mailbox. We filled out the change of address card with the post office. Everything addressed to us gets forwarded to NY. The prior owner has all of her mail forwarded to her new address too. I guess this one was delivered because it was a new name?