Flower is fleeting! There are some great workhorse plants, but for the most part, blooms are a nice spice that come--then go. You can design different parts of a garden to have a peak season--a month to 6 weeks where they are glorious, then fade into the background. Or you can put a bunch of workhorses in a garden and get pretty constant solid bloom from late March until September or later--but then you're relying on some spring ephemerals plus some very, very familiar perennials and annuals. For someone who clearly wants a BLOOMING border, this is often the best solution. Or you can mix in a foundation of workhorses and a number of more seasonal plants, so that you don't a riot of bloom, necessarily, but there's always something going on. This is what I tend to do. In my personal gardens, flowers are the flourish, or the spice--not even the icing, really, because they just aren't that dominant. (Most of my house is in shade, so I don't really have a choice...) For the most part, I concentrate on the FOLIAGE. Sometimes, I don't even care what color things bloom, especially in my shade gardens, because the blooms will so often be so far apart and inconspicuous compared to the foliage! I like to concentrate on 1) COLOR of foliage, not bloom. The color of foliage plays an enormous role in the rhythm of a bed. I've found that most beds can support 3 major colors. The most common colors are green (obviously)--from almost black to a light true green, chartreuse, purple (only works in shade directly against another color), silver/white, peach/red/orange, and blue. One color will be green--the other two depend on the situation! I started with a Japanese painted fern under my tree bed that I'm starting this year. Purple heurchera looks GREAT, and so do the pale-edged hostas (which are more white than gold). But the true chartreuse citronelle heuchera that I tried looks HORRIFIC, and it's going to have to make room for a more silvery heurchera to set off the purple one (purple with nothing around it disappears in shade and just looks drab). 2) The FORM of the plants--are they spiky? Mounding? Flat-topped groundcovers? Climbing? You can get a LOT of mileage out of conscious repetition and contrast, both. 4) The TEXTURE of the leaves--not the whole plant, but the individual leaves. Big, fat round leaves can be echoed in big, fat strappy leaves and contrasted against ferny leaves, etc. If you pay attention to everything BUT the flowers, you can actually get some pretty awesome results. If you pay attention to just the flowers, the result usually disappoint. My front bed I started right after I moved here. I wasn't familiar with growing ANYTHING in this region (seriously, it was the first time I ever saw blooming azaleas and hydrangeas), so I took the "buy what's on clearance, throw it in the ground, see what the deer don't eat to the ground, and learn about the plants" approach. :-) For my main curb garden, which is only 35' wide (pie-shaped lot), I wanted an informal mixed shrub border to screen the house from all the cars--and headlights--that turn around in the cul-de-sac. I was completely unfamiliar with MOST of the shrubs here at that time, so I just bought stuff that looked nice and was under $5 and looked like it'd get the right size. My rules were about form and color. I got 1/2 green (with some with chartreuse accents), 1/4 chartreuse, and 1/4 purple. I put tiny leaves next to big leaves, blobs next to spikes, and I'm still in the process of figuring out what other workhorse perennials I can fill the bare spaces with (in amongst the shrubs). Sand cherries by themselves are boring and tend to get leggy--as an accent in front of a wall of green behind a chartreuse-tinged arb, they really look great. People keep asking me what they are, and no one believes me that they're the same plants as you see all the time next to the highway. Between the *yawn* spireas, the cliched knockout rose, and the altheas, I actually do have *something in bloom all the time, pretty much by accident, but it's the colors and shapes of the foliage that are arresting. I let it go for a few years, to see how it would fill out, and now I REALLY need to do some refining at various points, but I've had tons of people in the neighborhood tell me how much they love the garden and how happy it makes them to see it at the end of the street. I've had people ask me to design things for them, and a few people have said that I should be designing professionally. (Um, NO. Not up to that! I STILL don't have a good grasp on what really does and doesn't do well here--I've tried 5 different plants in one spot on the back, and they all die or get eaten within the year--and I can't quite think as clearly in all four dimensions as I'd want to be able to before setting out a shingle. And I'm terrified of pruning most bushes wrong. But it's flattering, nevertheless.)

I've finished the Eddison book. A lot of wisdom, well-said, but not very applicable to me for several reasons. She says that gardeners are perfectionists. Anybody who sees my garden, or the Sacramento cemetery, knows that I am not. I do strive to grow every rose as well as possible, but I am a "good enough" gardener. I can focus on the things that please me, and block out the things that do not. Eddison's lowered standards probably are still much higher than mine! Being such a perfectionist, probably there are few roses that would have suited her. She likes hot colors, which would have driven her to modern roses. She says in the book that probably the only more labor intensive garden than a sunny perennial border is a rose garden. I'm pretty sure that she'd have made roses a tremendous job, deadheading them every day just as she does the daylilies, and feeling the need to spray or fuss in pursuit of "perfection." I do think that Albas or species roses would be fabulous in her garden, but don't think such a thing ever occurred to her. (She does mention grubbing out wild multiflora, a good thing!) Eddison gardens on a scale that few of us have the space, finances or energy to do. She had help all through the process, too. She has woodlands, shade gardens, sun borders, etc. She describes her "little" woodland garden as 175 by 70 feet. That's about a quarter of an acre, huge by California suburban/urban standards. She talks about pruning being terrible for the hands, and choosing plants that don't need it. I'm blessed with very little arthritis so far (nearly 60 yrs old), and wonder if decades more of wielding secateurs will take an inevitable toll. I had some bursitis in my hips, which was keeping me awake at night, but no longer have a problem now that I do water aerobics several times a week. Being in the water has made my hands, back, shoulders, etc feel better, as well as improving my overall disposition! She advocates container gardening as being an easier strategy. I've been intrigued by the differing views of containers in this thread. In hot, dry Sacramento, watering containers is a major chore. I also find wrestling things into/out of a pot is a problem. I just had a plastic pot shatter from old age, and its Japanese maple has grown into the ground. I asked my husband to build a box around it, because otherwise I'd kill the tree (and my back) trying to repot it. Overall, I don't think that containers are a strategy for MY old age, unless I end up somewhere with only a balcony. I've never read her other books, but do love how she writes, and she truly is a real gardener, even if her garden in Connecticut has very little resemblance to mine. Hostas and primroses are tatty and short-lived for me. I have to say that she seems largely oblivious to the fact that many people garden in different climates from hers. Reminds me of those maps of NYC, where Manhattan is very large and everything to the west is miniscule. One thing that I love about this forum is how it's made us all very aware of regional differences. Anita

This looks like something in development. Maybe someone is trying to replace the conventional timing chain with a belt, but this doesn't make sense to me. Possibly, the thinking is a cost reduction. Physically, its merely a matter of changing the sprockets on the cam shaft and crankshaft to one designed for toothed belts, but from a mechanical designer's view, this makes no sense. Possibly, a belt would be quieter. However, a chain drive can approach 98% efficiency and a belt can not. Ultimately, a belt will need replaceing at the expense of removing a gasketed belt cover and all the labor required to get to it. An enclosed belt can not be inspected unless a port hole is provided. It does eliminate the seal on the camshaft extension. I would think that a belt tensioner is required, the same as for a dry belt. Maybe this application is for a motorcycle engine. Look at the evolution of engine development in Japan and it seems they use motorcycle engines for their test beds. Several developments appear on motorcycle engines a few years before these are found in automotive engines (from Japan). To name a couple I know of: 4 to 5 valves per cylinder; Counter balance shafts.

@Mavis Jones Our builder contracted with the local Reico office. I'll start out with something I'm sure you will already know, and most likely agree with, that every Reico office is different (staff, experience, expertise). I didn't find our Reico designer to be helpful in choosing options, but I came to the appointment ready to roll (our builder provided all the options prior to the appointment). I came in thinking I would go with Ralston or Tolani until she pulled out a new option the builder added to the list, Glenrock. I went with that and love them (in Kona stain). My husband pulled out all the countertop options and narrowed them down and I made the final decision. The designer was helpful only in ticking off all her boxes for the builder. But that's just me as a customer, other customers she'd provide more guidance. I like the cabinets a lot. I've had better cabinets in a previous home but I like these. I chose a recessed design and the inset sounds like MDF (in my previous house they were all wood, including the inset), but I don't go around tapping on the inset so it doesn't matter to me. It seems like the finish on these is more prone to scratches so someday I'll get around to filling them in with the stain pens they provided. They're easy to clean with water and vinegar. The stain color is consistent throughout the product. These pics were before we moved in so there's some building/construction dust still on them.