behl, several states no longer soil testing through their extension service. It's a budgetary issue. I suggest that you call some of your locally owned nurseries and garden centers to see if they can't direct you to some options. Most inexpensive home pH testers, by the way, are ridiculously inaccurate. The proper way to collect a soil sample is to take small scoops over a fairly large area at about 3-5 inches deep. Remove the soil at the top and keep the deeper stuff. You'll want to gather the soil from 6 - 8 different locations, collecting enough to fill a pint or more. You can collect the soil in a CLEAN bucket so that you can sort out any stones, pebbles, sticks, thatch, etc. Let the sample dry and fill a pint container. Those 6 to 8 little scoops will become one homogenized sample. What you should NOT do is take your shovel and scoop out a bucket full of soil from one spot and call it a sample. Do separate tests for your lawn areas, for a veggie garden, etc.

Capoman: I keep thinking about getting more soil and I drive by the store every day. I don't think I will sleep right till I do pot up to the 3 gallon. Going to stop there later! And as far as the 511 mix. I am scouring my local shops to see what I can scrounge up..not going good. Thanks for chiming in. Bill: The summers get brutal here and I also picked up some lava sand to top mulch and then cover with pine chips. Just getting ready for the summer and trying to slow down evaporation. Everything helps and since I am planning on moving sometime around August, containers are my only option. Bruce: I guess I have to get out of the bonsai mindset. I am in the habit of root and top pruning my other plants because they are in containers as well. The bonchi fascinates me. With the 1 gallon and soon the 3 gallon containers, my plan was to use the thick green gardening steaks punctured through the bottom drain holes of the pots in an attempt to steak down the plants and use the bamboo with green gardeners tape to create a mock tomato cage style holding pattern to some what control the growth. I do not mind doing the additional work. My Espaliered trees require a lot of work so it is a nice break to get to play around with the pepper plants! :-)

I would make it personal. Someone who has touched your life some how. Here's an example of what we did, but we only have one picture like this. We built a Rumford fireplace. It's a specific way to build it and was very popular in the 1700 or 1800s, I forget. You can't build a better FP to give off heat, which is why we had it custom made. At the time, there were only two other Rumford FP's in our state. We did a lot of research before we built it and come to find out a man named Count Rumford is the one who invented it. My dh would marry the Count if he were still alive. lol. One day for the heck of it I looked up Count Rumford at art.com. Sure enough, they had THE neatest "old" picture of him. I gave it to my dh for his birthday and it was like Christmas for him. The funny thing is, when people come over they look at his picture but don't say anything. Most people hang these types of pictures just to have one. Finally we tell them who it is and the story behind him. And then they're fascinated! And he's hanging right next to the fireplace, of course. :) To make a long story even longer, find someone who has affected your life in a good way. And as Les said, they don't have to be famous. My personal feelings is that pictures of people hanging on our walls (not family) shouldn't be hung just because it's a nice picture, but they have to have some sort of meaning to us before we hang them. I'd never hang a stranger on my wall, it would seem creepy.

I agree with you bob. Because the locations are so far company owned, I don't think In n Out wants to be nationwide. They have a pretty dense presence throughout California, especially in the south. It is absolutely a regimented and formulaic operation but I think that's a necessity as a business grows. It's also something customers like, they know what to expect at a new location of an old favorite. It's anything but fast food, as I mentioned before. People are willing to wait. For their food, I'm not. Somewhere I am willing to wait is at Pinks, the place mentioned before. It's a low density urban location. I grew up in the city where it's located (and ate there as a kid) but I don't live there anymore. I'm willing to wait. They use a serpentine queue on the sidewalk like at an airport check-in or waiting for TSA security, with stanchions and rope (or belt) lines between them. I once waited nearly an hour. Yes it's worth it for me but I go when I can afford to spare the time. It's not right off a freeway and its aficionados know when the wait is shorter and when it is what it is.