thank you all for yr sympathy! yeah it was mis-communication, and the other person - English is not their 1st language. I had given up the plot in 2011, and in 2013 when I requested it, someone had signed up for it. Which is perfectly legit. I explained to the person that I had flowers there that I'd had for 10 years, and that there were other perfectly good plots available which had nothing in them. So to them, they were going to start over, so it made no difference. They agree to switch plots. I was so happy! knew what I had that would be coming u in the plot, and I was planning my garden. I went there one day, and there they were- they had dug the whole thing up! so - intent or accident, mis-communication? ...anyway, here I am starting over. I was heart-broken, but then I got over it. can't be undone, right? So someone has offered me Yvonne seeds, and I sent off for some blue perennial salvia seeds, and I even ordered some salvia plants. life goes on. but sympathy helps. :)

I used a pad of 17" X 23" 1/4" grid paper to lay out my garden. I divided my yard into 6 garden rooms so I only had to layout & design one room at a time. I can layout one garden room on each sheet of paper with a scale of 1/4" on paper=1 ft. in the garden which seems to work really well. I have a 1/4 acre corner lot in town with about 125-130 roses. I like the idea of garden rooms because you divide your total yard into smaller sections which have several benefits: 1--Since I'm not a professional designer, I find it easier to design one small room at a time rather than the entire garden. I do have a general idea what I want as a final result for the entire yard but working with one smaller section (garden room) at a time is much easier to plan a design. 2--Because I'm doing most of the work myself, breaking the total yard into smaller "garden rooms" divides the work up into manageable segments, usually one room a year. 3--It also helps spread the financial cost out over several years so I don't break my budget. 4--By designing by garden rooms, you can have different styles of gardens in different areas which makes your yard more interesting.

Fyi - Nate Berkus (who no longer has his Home Decorating TV show) had a lot of fans including me. His advice about rugs was that the larger they were, the more expansive they made the room feel. So if you are wanting the room to be more expansive than cozy, according to his rule, 10 inches from the sides of the room in all directions would be a good thing. Even with the traditional style of the room now, I think a large rug as you describe will make it feel a lot more contemporary. If that is not what you want, then keep the rug small. Otherwise, the sky is the limit. Though I am a newbie at this stuff, I will offer my opinion that I think the room will be stunning with the larger rug. As far as the hutch, I don't see a visual problem with it being half on and half off but if I were you, I would seek professional advice on how to make sure the addition of the new rug doesn't add instability to the hutch. Good luck and thanks very much for showing us pictures of your living room.

Glyphosate. Do it right, do it once. Sometimes, it is the best recourse to deal with pervasive rhizomatous grasses, deep rooted bindweed, mallows, dock and thistle. On my 2 plots, 1 was hand weeded - I never got on top and still fight bindweed 16 years later. The second plot was sprayed off in September. True, the bindweed is creeping back but I got almost a decade start to establish a decent fruit garden. With annual veggies, you are clearing every year but with permacrops, failure to start with a clean medium meant a really uphill battle. Solarising, covering, even for years, does not kill off bindweed or couch. Good luck with deep digging - bindweed roots can go 25 feet down, through subsoil to bedrock.. You can do a mix of covering, digging and hoeing...for a couple of years if pesticides are totally verboten.And it is very enraging indeed when the source of the many weeds is the very next plot to yours. I started off principled...and then got pragmatic, spraying a cordon -sanitaire between my plot and the next (couch infested plot) every spring.