Thanks so much for all the advice and information grandad, toogreen, farmerdilla and wayne. It sounds easy indeed, now I wonder why we did not try this before. In the worst heat of the summer, only the okra looked good last year. I cannot believe that plant, flowering when it is 107 F!!!! crazy plant (I love it). This year we are adding cow peas and sweet potatoes to the hot weather vegetable clan. Why not? might as well take advantage of what grows well here and now. We cannot grow parsnips or cherries, so we might as well grow sweet potatoes. We have several roots (tubers?) starting, I only showed one, but we have white sweet potato and red sweet potatoes. They have different types of leaves, as shown in Farmerdilla's picture. Farmerdilla, your picture is nice, thanks for posting it. We might do a bed just like that, still have a few recycled pieces of lumber to use for garden beds. I think that 500 slips is a bit much for us, we might do from 12 to 20 slips. Since each averages about 6 sweet potatoes, this should give us plenty for feeding two not too large people. Besides, we are also growing other 'starchy' root crops, regular potatoes (to be harvested soon), jerusalem artichokes, chayote (the root is edible) and some weird tropical ones (elephant ears types). I take it that the level of development shown in the pictures I posted is just about right for taking the slips? not too large but large enough? or perhaps they could be 'harvested' as slips a little younger? We still have them in water but we will plant them in the ground, or in pots, this coming weekend.

A lot of these questions were answered in this recent post... See bottom link. In very hot and humid locales, dahlias tend to slow down blooming until it gets cooler. I would be concerned that, if you are starting with an unsprouted tuber end of May, and might have a very hot spell that slows down the plant as well, you would not hit your special date. With that said, TRY ANYWAY! You'll have a blast, as long as you have a backup plan and the stress is off! I would suggest calling Swan Island and talking to them about your concerns and desires. They know their varieties inside and out, as dahlias is ALL they grow, and will give great suggestions about which ones to choose, as well as how to grow them in a booklet they send out with your order. They also ship blooms all over the US, incidentally. Hope this helps, and have fun in your wedding planning! Cheers, CC Here is a link that might be useful: Wedding flowers

Also, I don't know how big your garden is, but you might want to consider a drip system. They are very easy to install, and it took me about a half a day by myself to put my original system in, which I continue to add to and change around each season to meet my needs. Many drip systems also come with small sprinklers that you can install into the tubing if you need big coverage. I prefer using the drippers, to keep many plants from mildewing or to keep from losing water by evaporation, and much of my garden is natives and roses. I also have set it on a timer and left town for as long as 2 months one summer, and it worked great. I travel a lot so I know it's hard to not have some kind of irrigation set up. I don't know how far you live from Austin, but the Natural Gardener uses drip systems in a lot of their beds so it's a good way to look at how it works.... If you do go this way, make sure you stick with the same manufacturer because the tubing varies in sizes from make to make. I use Drip Depot, but there are loads of others if you google around...

DH and I talked about a cherry kitchen in our future, but after he convinced me to completely replace our white cabinets so we could start fresh, I couldn't see that much brown. I've always been partial to white kitchens and when I went through kitchen photos, at least 80-90% of those I was drawn to were white. Sooo.... I would call our kitchen transitional I had never seen or heard of Christopher Peacock and white kitchens were not so popular, but I think the shaker and similar plainer front cabinets were, so going simpler seemed a popular choice. It was driven by hating the heavy moldings on our custom cabinets (wall trim used on cabinet doors). It made a statement, but that and the short counters meant every drip got caught on the paint and stained -- and there were lots of grooves to clean. DH is s slob in the kitchen. I had to have something very simple so the choice was desperation, not fashion. Our tile had to be patched in the reno and was done poorly, so we later replaced the floor. The dark wood was probably a popular choice then, but it fit our house. Risky -- did white marble counters in both the cooking and clean up zones before it was making every magazine cover. I am not a granite person, didn't like my mom's Corian and the cool recycled glass was uber expensive and didn't really go with our house. I saw a slab of marble with squiggles that reminded me of the stray marks on old ink drawings and thought of Da Vinci (my boys and I were into him) and I had to have it. End of story. Other not so safe choices -- I did three cabinet finishes (wall of tall blue storage surrounding my fridge and knotty cherry island and hutch in the breakfast room, did a 3 tile combo (from 2 different sources) for the inset in my backsplash, and mixed metal finishes on hardware, lighting and faucets. All of the above plus the fact that the layout was designed by me to maximize every inch of possible function for the way we wanted it to work and adding fridge drawers to our hutch made it right for us. I designed it to make me happy and with no consideration for resale or what others would think. My favorite design element -- the different cabinet finishes -- the wall of blue as a backdrop plus the knotty cherry -- and the custom leaded glass in the uppers of the hutch. But my favorite thing is how it functions. DH even said out loud last night (8 years later) how he loves the way we designed the kitchen. It just works for us. I'd say the marble and the three cabinet finishes were a bit of a ledge, maybe mixing metals -- no regrets. We didn't name our kitchen, but we had in mind a couple of things -- an old bakery or ice cream parlor and kind of the gentrified plantation/ranch style of the rest of our home. I also kept saying I wanted a workhorse, not a showplace. It needed to be almost understated and yet, at the same time, go big or go home. Probably doesn't make any sense, but no sissy stuff here. The sparkly bridge faucet, chandelier over the island -- beautiful, but didn't fit here.