Poor you. I have experienced it too many times with them and not just with their plants, you would not believe it. I need to first tell you my history with this garden center. I have lived in Andersonville for 26 years. I live right next to the nursery. I had been a customer since the owners father sold on the corner of Clark and Victoria and would buy all my summer plants, pumpkins etc. I have watched daily the growth of gethsemane and the changes in staff and the changes in the attitude of the owners. Accepting nothing stays the same, good for the community, they plant and maintain the medians between Clark N and S, great for advertising themselves. There is much more, please understand I am not jealous, bitter or envious, just discusted for many reasons. On to purchases. I bought annuals and pern. for years there most of the time because of quality, good customer service and value. There were times that flats or outdoor and indoor plants were infected with some bug or slug, I just dealt with it and forgot about it. 3 different times were just unbelievable. We bought 3 different shrubs, all missed marked for color and type. NO REFUND OR EXCHANGE. BULBS, MISSED MARKED IF THEY GREW, MOST DIDN'T EVEN SHOW SIGNS OF LIFE. NO REFUND OR EXCHANGE. LAST STRAW, A $130.00 ORCHID INFESTED WITH WORMS. I WAS HOME 3 HOURS, CALLED THEM, WENT BACK TO THEM AND FREAKED OUT, WAS ASKED TO LEAVE AND LEFT THE PAID ORCHID THERE AND WILL NEVER RETURN. Like I said, I live right next to them. I'm active in this community and have supported the growth of this mans business for years. It gets better. GETHSEMANE ETHICS??? Have put up there own stop signs in the alley. Painted there own cross walks in the alleys. Puts cones on Clark and Victoria in parking places. If that doesn't work they put their blue carts in parking spaces. If that doesn't work, they put the little bobcat ( that's a machine) in spaces. The corner of Clark and Victoria there is a fire hydrante, trucks, bobcat is constantly violating parking in that zone. Racks and Racks of Flowers on the sidewalk of Clark and on each side of Victoria with a path inbetween the rubble and their merchandise. I might mention that also violates more than one code as well as obstructing vision for traffic coming from both directions of the alley and turning onto Clark from Victoria. Clanging of carts and slamming metal polls on the cement at 5:30 in the morning to stop their carts from rolling in the street. The fat man that screams at the top of his voice at the yes, Mexicans as if they were I don't know, I talk to animals better than he treats him employees. Interesting, I doubt any of them are legal and I'm sure he pays them little or nothing for wages, oh, on hot crazy busy days he buys them pizza and they have their lunch standing eating off of one of the customer carts. Employees sneaking in fear in the alleys to smoke a cigarette or just get a break. Employees say alot about a business. The loyal ones are no longer and the new ones have such an attitude they could care less if you come there or not because the volume is what now keeps them in business. They sell to nurserys, landscape companies and the customers walking out with 100s and 100s of dallars worth of plants are secondary, unless you are buying a $6,000.00 tree, then perhaps you will be recognized or helped. Yes there are 2 ladies still working there, one inside at the register with silver hair and an older lady that works in gardening, both amazing helpful women. It's the attitude that has not only discusted me, but most of the surroding neighbors. The lack of professionalism, inconsideration for the cummunity,for the people that relax, own, live, enjoy, park and walk here that has me discusted. Ethics. The ownership doesn't have any. Like one employee told me, he doesn't care, he wants BIGGER BIGGER BIGGER. Greed is ugly, I have seen it with my own eyes. So neighbors, sell your house or building to him so he can tear it down, for now the free hospital parking is now gone, he has to provide parking for customers but that is not priority, if you noticed, the 4 houses that were tore down is now the site for trees. Yeah, it's good for the cummunity, to grow, expand. Perhaps he and his wife should have taken some management courses some people/customer service skills are certainly lacking. I could have overlooked almost all of this, but too many plants were mislabeled or not of quality that I paid for and they could have cared less. My money comes to hard to put it in the trash for an ungrateful business owner. So people coming from all sides of the city and lots that come from the north shore and suburbs, think twice unless you have so much money it doesn't matter and customer service and good business practice means nothing to you. Oh, the second to the last straw. In the gift shop 4 years ago they had a one of a kind doll. At the time it was around $450.00. I was there shopping and the owners wife was in the shop. I told her I didn't have my cc with me if she would hold it I would love to buy it for my mother for Christmas, no problem I was on my way. I didn't go back the same day for some reason. The next day I returned to buy it. The owner wasn't there and the doll was no where to be found. The sales lady said she would try to call her. I was given the phone, the owner, once you seen or talk to her you will never forget it CATTY UPPIDDY AND MISERABLE> She told me she had decided not to sell it, she wanted to keep it herself that it looked really nice on her mantel. Do you believe it. Even after that I purchase the orchids, siily me. Good luck to future customers at that place.

This is GORGEOUS!! I know this is an old thread but I just stumbled on it and have to comment. :) we too live in an old house and are mid-Kitchen Reno. It’s not fun but Oxford Cabinetry just installed my beautiful white cabinets and I am thrilled. I have such a random question for you - there are lingering fumes from the paint finish and I wonder if you recall how you dealt with them. For now we’ve been told to put out coffee grounds to absorb it. Any thoughts?

jwttrans, I think our two readings may be compatible--the ambiguously misread situation having to do with misread racial stereotypes, the captain's fixation on skin color blinding him to unrevealed dark designs. And with time the hidden darkness or "evil" is revealed--the desperate escaped slaves are truly murderous and do practically wipe out TWO ships--the one they are in at the beginning of the story and that captain's ship they attack near the end of the story. My only hesitation about our combined reading is that Benito Cereno, read by itself, would tend to solicit an allegorical reading associating innocence with whites and evil with blacks. However, that would be to overlook the blame Melville heaps on the "innocent" white captain whose self-willed "innocence" is not true "innocence," but rather a wilful refusal to see and acknowledge the evil lurking in the depths. He nearly makes himself an accessory to murder, as a result--equally culpable, in other words. That would not be white "innocence," but white culpability. And if anyone has read Melville's other sea fictions, they would know he often depicts the blackness/evil in all men's hearts. (I'm not sure if he includes women or not. Anyone remember any portraits of women in his works? Certainly, a half century later, Conrad writing on racial themes in Heart of Darkness exempted the lovely fiancee--the "intended" -- from the darkness in human hearts, for instance.) But you have a good point on ambiguity--probably works on anything Melville and Hawthorne wrote. That was the way they often set up their allegories as the reader moves from the literal to the figurative/spiritual. Just as Melville explores the ambiguity of whiteness in Moby Dick, so he does by depicting an "innocent" white captain whose innocence is just as ambiguous since he becomes the reason why they are all nearly murdered. That good and evil are NOT black and white, but quite ambiguous in nature, would seem to be Melville's point? Kate

I keep a reading journal and it has a place to rate your reads on a scale of 1-10. So, I'll list the books I read this year according to how I rated them. (I know this message is way too long, but hey--I hardly ever get a chance to post, horrible lurker that I am, so a once-a-year overly long posting isn't too horrible, right?) 10-Cheaper by the Dozen by Frank B. Gilbreth, Jr. and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey Sentimental 10 rating--remember reading it as a child and it held up. Good fun. 10-Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell What a mind-blowing book with so many layers and connections. LOVED IT! 10-Gilead by Marilynne Robinson Such a beautiful and contemplative book that examines aging, new life, regrets, families, grudges, grace and God. Particularly loved how the main character finds beauty in sunlight catching a sprinkler's spray or birds roosting on a phone wire (two things that would have been impossible to see in the 1800s). 10-Gonzalez and Daughter Trucking Company: A Road Novel with Literary License by Maria Amparo Escandon This is the "One City, One Book" pick for 2009 in our town. It is such a page-turner! The main character is in a women's prison in Mexico for a crime that remains a mystery for most of the book. She starts a reading group for the inmates, only she doesn't actually read the text, rather tells her story. 10-I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith This book has been mentioned time and again on this forum and I finally got around to reading it this year--THANK YOU to whoever recommended it. I loved it so much! 10-There is Room for You by Charlotte Bacon Such beautiful descriptions of India, both in the 40s and the 90s. Loved the two intertwining narratives of mother and daughter, both outsiders in India but at two different times. A very lush book. 10-The Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys I'm sure everyone in the world had read this but me. Written in the 1960s, it imagines the story of Mrs. Rochester (Mr. Rochester's crazy wife that he kept locked in the attic in Jane Eyre.) It was hard to read and I gave it a 10 not because I loved it, but because it did perfectly what it meant to do. It said so much about patriarchy, post-colonialism, feminism, and madness in ways I'd never thought of. I need to re-read. 10-The Woman I Kept to Myself by Julia Alvarez This book of poems was so great that I am going to buy the book. There's one poem in the particular about how she can tell who her husband is talking to on the phone by the tone of his voice. Another one talks about how she can't bear to throw out her headbands, even though she has short hair now, because they are such a symbol of her girlhood. You have to read these poems out loud so that you can hear the sound of them. 9-Five Skies by Ron Carlson Loved this book! Three men out on the plains building stuff and eating really good food. I have no idea why I related so strongly to them! It was downgraded to a 9 because of the...