Wintersowing very rewarding for starting perennial gardens, if you've patience and your goals are long-term. Checkout their website www.wintersown.org which gives information on how to do this, and also makes seeds available. I was a newbie to gardening till four years ago when I tried this method, and now have a flourishing perennial garden with shasta daisies, purple coneflower, snow in the summer, salvias, butterfly weed. I had a jungle of shasta daisies growing last summer; finally traded a lot of them this spring for some other perennials. I have also grown annuals such as cosmos, cleome, snapdragon, zinnias, petunias and marigold by wintersowing. The site provides a list of perennials, annuals and vegetable and herbs that can be wintersown. If you're not looking for instant gratification, wintersowing is great. Many local stores have buy one, get one free deals on seeds end of the season. Drug stores, dollar stores also have seed packets available for about 10 cents each. Not all may be viable, but hey, even a dozen plants for 10 cents are well worth it. My township has a free compost heap, more like mountain - free to anyone who wants it. Check with your township and neighboring ones too. You never know. As other have suggested, sign up with your local chapter of freecycle.org. Take a drive around the neighborhood the evening before trash day. I recently salvaged a discarded wine rack; lined the bottom hollow part with coconut liner, put some soil and planted some petunias. On the top shelf, I simply put a pot with violas for now, and plan to replace it with other pots as whim strikes. :-) Lot more creative people on this forum have great ideas. Also, you can try propagation through cuttings - roses are good candidates, so are forsythias. You can use vining plants and some chicken wire fence to disguise your metal shed. Moonflower, morning glory, vining black-eyed susan are fast growing annual vines - easy to grow from seed. Hope this helps. Good luck.

Maryland - you should be in zone 7. I also like the brown; it's fitting for the style of house. As for landscaping, you can lighten up the heaviness of the old pines with the addition of a lacy dogwood or one of the many beautiful varieties of Japanese Maples out at the sunny edge of the stone retaining wall. The lamppost bed would look nice with something simple like Perovskia or Walker's Low Nepeta - both have silver grey foliage with lavender blue spikes of flowers. I'd resist the temptation to color up with the usual assortment of rhododendrons and azaleas - beautiful, but just everywhere in the Mid-Atlantic. Sometimes less is more.

Hi, thanks for the encouragement, and your input!! Can't tell you how much it's appreciated! I have added a small lower cab / cupboard next to the pantry in the smaller area. For use as setting own food when I am putting food in/out fridge/freezer. So,.. good point! I moved the radiators to accomplish that. One under the window in the small area, one under the bar seating area in the corner to warm the feet when eating breakfast. The distance from major prep area (to left of cooker) to fridge is now 11 foot, which was around 5 foot before so it is almost twice as far which is not ideal. But... I think the positives outweigh the negatives, it's not a crazy distance and I think it is still doable. The pantry is even a little further, but I can keep oft-used items in a closer cupboard it if becomes annoying. I have looked into venting to the side wall and would need unsightly ducting - with no upper cabinets to hide it. Possible venting above goes into the spare bedroom floor which would then need to go through all the joists to get outside.. its a shame the joists run in that direction in that room or it would have been much easier. Anyway, I think running that length of ducting with a 90 degree bend would have seriously compromised the venting performance. Also, I think having kids (which we hope to have) sitting at the bar area as far away from the cooker as possible makes sense too... so the alternative v3 layout works well in that regard. I think this is my favourite layout so far. The amount of counter space is great and the separation of cooker to sink is good too. Next up is getting a builder in to confirm that the plumbing is no problem there. And also convince the wife that its a good idea. She fears change. Unless,... there is another layout option out there. But I think my creativity has run dry for the moment! Thanks again!

Wow, Daddy Cat, I'm even more impressed at your efforts looking at the sorry excuse for what passes for "soil" in your region. Even the good soil left after filtering out the rocks looks pretty depleted to my eye, and I think your roses are going to need some consistent infusions of organic material for the foreseeable future. Fortunately, this is best done by mulching with something organic, which kills two birds with one stone. In my zone, I use chopped up leaves topped with some shredded bark if I feel like it, since the leaves are free and break down relatively quickly to add to the soil. Don't know if you have many deciduous trees in your area, but they're among the quicker ways to get organic material into the soil. Compost is another quick additive, and you can top-dress with the same compost you used in your hole, however: a) it may promote weed growth more than bark or leaves, b) it may dry up to that light beige color in your heat, and c) it's liable to be expensive as you want a good 3" of mulch I'm guessing in your dry zone. You could try using any old shredded bark (I like cypress) and then top dressing over that with the compost to get the darker color. It might not take as much compost and the bark below it might suppress some weeds. Another option for living mulch would be some kind of annual groundcover, like perhaps alyssum, but it would depend on whether you have enough moisture to go around for both the roses and groundcover. I wouldn't feed the roses anything solid or granular the first year, though you can water them with a dilute mixture of some liquid fertilizer like seaweed or fish emulsion. A little alfalfa hay or pellets sprinkled around the perimeter of the rose before you put your mulch down will also make the roses happier and put out more "basal breaks" (canes that start from your grafts to make a bushier rose). There are rose fertilizers like Rose Tone or other "Tones" that will also work, but alfalfa is cheaper. In general, less is more as far as feeding your roses in their first year. More than anything they are going to need water in your zone. It's great that you understand that caring for roses is part of the fun. They don't necessarily take that much work - nothing like the work to maintain them of digging out all that soil! It's just that a little thought ahead of time lets you have the fun of enjoying your roses and avoiding problems down the road. Looks great! Cynthia