Hi and welcome! First of all, we've *all* had a first garden. Gardening is a labor of love. Like relationships with people, in your garden you'll have good times and tough times. If you watch and learn from your plants, you'll have more good times. :-) One of the beauties of gardening is that you never stop learning. There are lots of gardeners who know far more than I do, and even they are still learning. So never be embarrassed to ask for advice! One thing that most every new gardener has to learn is to plan for the mature size of the plants. It's hard to imagine a tiny seed growing into a plant taller than you or a vine 15' long in one growing season, but it happens! 3. Tangerine Pimiento Sweet Pepper - Yes, you should thin them now to a 12" minimum spacing. They won't be able to produce peppers while they are competing with each other for water, sun, and nutrients. Don't pull since they are so close together - you might damage the roots of the plants you want to keep. Instead, thin by snipping off the stems of unwanted plants just above the ground. Keep the biggest and healthiest-looking plants. 4. Tomatoes - You should thin these, too. Tomatoes need at least 2'-3' between them, because if they are healthy, most types will grow into BIG plants. You also need to figure out what you're going to do about support (stakes, cages, trellis), or if you're going to let them sprawl. If you're going to let them sprawl, they need even more ground space. If you are going to use supports, you should install them as soon as you can after thinning the tomatoes. Pinching early tomato flowers is one of those things gardeners argue about. Most commonly, the advice is that you should pinch flowers off small plants that are still in cell packs or small pots; once the plants are settled in the ground (or a large container) you don't need to pinch any more. Since yours are in the ground and several inches tall, I don't think you need to pinch. 11. - 15. Heirloom tomatoes & peppers: Sounds like a nice selection! See above for spacing. If your heirloom tomatoes are planted too close together, now is the time to move them. Tomatoes tolerate transplanting well, especially if you bury them deeper when you transplant. Earthboxes or other self-watering containers are especially good for peppers. If peppers undergo water stress they make fewer and smaller fruit; self-watering containers keep a constant moisture level. (Large sweet peppers are pickier than small, hot types.) If you use an Earthbox, four to six - no more than six - peppers per Earthbox work beautifully. 4-6 little pepper plants may look lost in an Earthbox now, but they will fill it completely in a couple of months, trust me. If your heirloom peppers are too close, maybe you could get another Earthbox or other SWC for some of them? 19. Weeds: Unfortunately, you will need to keep up with the weeds. They are small now, but they'll overrun your garden later and out-compete your vegetables for sunlight, water, and nutrients. You can pull or hoe the weeds - be careful with the hoe around your veggies, but a hoe is definitely much faster than hand-pulling for clearing paths between rows. I do everything possible to avoid weeding, because it is my least-favorite garden activity (especially in July and August!). A deep mulch around your veggies is the way to go. Many weed seeds need light to sprout, and a thick layer of mulch blocks the light. It also holds in moisture so you don't have to water so much. Even with a thick mulch, you'll need to weed some, but the mulch will make a huge difference. Mulch also helps keep dirt from splashing onto the plants, which is important for tomatoes and melons. The most troublesome weeds are grasses and other weeds that spread underground or resprout from the root, because they will come right up through the mulch. Your best option is pulling them immediately, every time they resprout. If you are diligent, you can eventually exhaust them. (They have to expend energy to resprout; if you pull them before they have time to recover that energy from the sun, eventually they get too weak to sprout again.) For paths/walkways, put down several layers of newspaper or a layer of cardboard (e.g., old shipping boxes) and then mulch on top of that. The paper or cardboard is really hard for weeds to push through, and can block some - not all - of the grasses and root-spreading weeds, too. Don't put it right up to your veggies, though, because sheets of newspaper or cardboard block some of the rainfall. Good luck with your new garden!

Hello twochicklets, I really like your pool and particularly your deck. We were initially considering "gold" travertine, but it seems very "busy". We saw the "ivory" travertine in a store, today, and really liked it. It looks really nice in your pictures, too. A few questions: - Did you seal the pavers or is it wet in the pictures? If it is wet, what does it look like when it is dry? Do you have a picture posted on this forum of the deck when it is dry? - Is your coping the same color as the pavers? - What size are the coping pieces? Thanks.

DO NOT BUY FROM THIS COMPANY. THEIR PRODUCTS ARE SO OVERPRICED AND THE QUALITY IS MEDIOCRE AT MOST. SERVICE IS ABSOLUTELY TERRIBLE. WORST DECISION EVER. Everything started from the December of 2019 when I contacted the company and made an appointment for the design consultant to come and measure my windows. Got rescheduled because the consultant is on vacation but somehow her calendar was shown as available. Order was placed after the visit and she asked me to pay 100% in advance. I needed to see the sample of the fabric vertical shade which was part of the order. Waited 2 weeks for the sample to be mailed. Order was shipped out around 6 weeks later and was packaged so poorly that when I saw the box it was all damaged. Had to refuse the receipt. Replacement was shipped about a month later and the fabric vanes turned out to be too long. The installer had to cut them short and place a replacement order again. The installation was also not smooth considering he installed the blinds in the wrong direction and had to fix them. Also he put the parts on my bed until I asked him to move them to the floor. Replacement order arrived a couple of weeks later. I didn't want the unprofessional installer to come back again so I installed the vanes myself. 6 months later, the vertical fabric shades I purchased have been shrinking/curling up in the middle, which created huge gaps between the vanes. I contacted the customer service 2 months ago, called and emailed. A lady named Angela called me back asking for pictures showing the issue. I then emailed them to her only found out that the email never wen through since their email has a limit on attachment size. I had to email low resolution pictures in separate emails. She then reviewed the issue and placed a warranty replacement order for me. A few days later, she called me again telling me her manager and the factory think "there is no way that the fabric would shrink unless you washed the vanes. They won't send him a replacement for the vanes instead, a new head rail so you can have more overlap between vanes to reduce the gaps". I asked her then the vanes will not be able to cover my entire window so I'll end up with a huge gap on one side. She said she didn't know how to resolve this issue and offered to pass pictures to her manager and factory if I can send her more. Here are the pictures I took from inside of my bedroom and from the street. My bedroom is facing a busy street and if you walk by at night, you can see through those gaps and see what I'm doing. So literally no privacy. I have to change clothes with light off so people don't peek in. I don't think that's what I expected when paying $800 just for this defective vertical shades. These vanes have only been installed for 6 months. I haven't washed or even wiped them... It's ridiculous when they try to make this issue sound like I have been handling the shades incorrectly. Angela has been helpful and fair but unfortunately her manager and the factory don't share her professionalism. They will for sure find a way to blame me again for the issue which will probably never be resolved. I'd rather spend half of what I paid with the Home Depot if I have to deal with unreasonable quality control anyways.

Yes, I agree. Roman numerals are a useful bit of knowledge to have in our brains. My seven-year-old has intro to geometry in first grade. I do not doubt their capacity to learn the advanced ideas, but I wonder what those students are not learning to make room for all of this more advanced material. And honestly Robert, I do not recall being unsettled in the least. So please do not tell me to settle down especially not with an exclamation point, thank you very much. PAM