As I said back in the very early stages of this thread: I'm expecting soon to see a post by purplemage telling everyone that the roofing job has been finished to everyone's satisfaction and without purplemage's life being turned upside down. Y'all see. Meanwhile, it's been great fun seeing everyone getting so wound up. Peace!

Awwwwwwwwwwww ... Kudzu! I am so sorry to hear about Uncle Jack! To be honest, losing pets has always been harder on me than the death of a human family member. Although, we have been lucky that no one in our family died prematurely. It's funny that your GKs called him Uncle Jack. My nephew who will be 36 next week, was only a few years old at the time. He kept telling his daycare teacher about his brother Jake. He told her how much fun they had playing catch and tag. He told her about how Jake knocked him down and then stood and laughed at him. He talked about how much Jake loved spaghetti and oranges. So one day the daycare teacher says to my sister, "I didn't know Mark had a brother." My sister told her he didn't have a brother. The teacher asked her who Jake was because that's his brother's name according to my nephew. My sister told her with a belly laugh that Jake was our parent's golden retriever! lol! I guess the golden's have a knack for being human-like family members! I hope your Jack brought you as much joy and fun as our Jake did. Even long after he is gone (with our Jake it has been about 30 years), you and your family will remember him fondly and lovingly. It is just another loving and selfless gift they give us by just being good dogs. My heart goes out to you and your family.

HEy Bill, Thanks again for awesome pics!! You make me want to move to SoCal!! Thanks for including the pots. It gives me an idea of what I am going to have in a few years(unless I cut them back like crazy!) That blue is similiar to the pot I put my JJ Orange in. Thankfully it has a nice BIG draining hole in it. I looked around at the pots for some time before finding the one I got. I thought at first that I would just put the blck plastic pot into the blue decorative terra cotta but I didn't need to worry about it. TLD I had a cutting of. Laura gave me a smallpiece from hers but it didn't root:( I was REALLY BUMMED about that. I read an old post that said that TLD also has decorative foliage. I am really getting into the seedlings. I wish I had better acess to seeds. Right now i have two varieties growing from seed. Mardi Gras(thanks to Jandey!)and Kimo. They may not produce the best flowers but there's always that chance that you can end up with a seedling that is actually better than the parent. I believe this is how the Jack ORange came to be. Sonia told me she found it mixed in with John's other seedlings years ago. The plumeria was labelled CS2, so I am taking a guess and saying that it must have California Sunset in it's parentage. I am going to have to look up the yellows you listed. I did get a noid yellow from Mimi. That took over 3 MONTHS TO ROOT FOR ME! I just hope it was well worth the wait. Enjoy your holiday Bill! Andrew

Our pool is 3 1/2 x 5(+)x 4, with a sunshelf, and we love this setup. The entire pool gets used. I, personally like to swim laps, lay on the sunshelf and float. I like swimming from one end to the other and being able to put my feet down on either end when I get there, especially when playing with my kids in the pool. I have had all kinds of kids, younger and older, playing in my pool and they jump, do cannonballs, even my daughter does a front somersault off the edge (she isn't diving, pushes off from the edge, and lands similar to a cannonball all curled up), but we just don't allow diving and the kids don't really care. We also have a blow up slide that we set up in the middle of the pool and they have a blast. On Memorial Day, we had a volleyball game going and it was great. The adults stand more towards the net where it begins to slope down and get deeper and the shorter people are back in the shallower part. I mean we only go to a little over 5 feet in our deep area so adults can stand fine close to the net (and some kids too). We just decided to do this style pool because most of my neighbor's deep ends are 5-5 1/2' deep anyway and we just did the same thing but only we put ours in the center. It wasn't in our plans to pay extra for a deeper (7' +) deep end anyway, so we would've had around the same depth, traditional deep end or not. If you guys are just going to float and both of your kids are out of the house, you need to think about how much use you will get out of a diving board and a deep end. For grandkids, there are always fun pool toys to keep them busy, inflatable slides, bumper boats, etc. My point is, whatever you decide to go with, kids make their own fun in a pool no matter what the shape, depth or style.