Hi there, neighbor to the north. Vashon Island here. Going with the natives? Small trees: Vine maple, Indian plum also called sand plum, a small tree about the size of vine maple - white flowers just starting to bloom right now and very pretty. And you must plant the native dogwood with the greenish white flowers - tall slim and gray barked, grows in sun or shade, a beauty. Cornus nuttalii. There's a native currant that is large enough to almost be a small tree, with pretty pink flowers. What about the eastern Washington elderberry with the blue berries? It is GORGEOUS and delicious. About a 30 foot tree. Likes to grow by water over there, but we're so moist here you can grow anywhere. These are all doing very well in my forest edge garden here, and I do nothing to care for them - they're all adapted. Shrubs: Evergreen huckleberry (beautiful), Snowberry, and my favorite: Thimbleberry - Grow a thicket of these and you'll smell the lemony scent of their leaves several feet away, they have pretty white flowers that look like strawberry blossoms in May, and they fruit in July - to my mind the most delicious berry - a winey flavor that lingers on the tongue. Not as many berries as rasp or black, but far tastier And a clump of these is really attractive with something growing in front - they have bare legs. What about a hedge or clump of salmonberries? They look scraggy in the winter, but in summer they are light green and fresh, and they are the staple food of hummingbirds around here in March - ours always attract the hummers & then we supplement with feeders by the window to watch the birds

My understanding is that your weight and height, should you choose to set them up on your FITBIT profile, are not "out there" unless you choose to share them, with people other than FITBIT. I have had the ULTRA, which I accidentally washed after being careful for a year, I put it in rice to dry it out and it worked but would not reset at midnight. So by then they were no longer selling new Ultras, so I ordered the ONE last year, it worked great and was easier to wear but after a few months stopped synching with my MAC. I looked online and found other MAC users having the same problem. After trying many things Fitbit replaced it and the new one is working great. It does track my sleep when you place it in the little cloth bracelet and serves as a reminder. If I'm near the 10,000 step goal for each day I often walk around the house or down the driveway a few times just to push myself to that goal, or climb the stairs a few times to make the 10 flights of stairs goal. I don't use the App on my phone, but like just looking down at it and checking my steps and flights of stairs and activity level throughout the day. If I'm sitting at the computer too long and look down I am reminded I need to get up and put more steps and flights of stairs on the Fitbit. I've recommended this product and five friends have them now, some of them gifts from me.

I stopped by Best Buy and bought a Fitbit One on Monday evening. I have been painting the exterior of my house, going up and down a ladder for a few hours each day. I wore it yesterday for the first time - logged in over 8,000 steps but got no credit for going up the ladder repeatedly. I guess I'm not going high enough for it to register. And you don't get credit for coming down the stairs - just going up. Still, I think it's great. And now I understand how it could fit in a bra. The thing is about the size of my thumb. The directions for using it are not readily available. It comes with no instructions - it sends you to their website, and even there the instructions are sketchy. I tried to use it as a sleep tracker the first night - got into bed and held down the button for two seconds. What they don't tell you is what the Fitbit is going to do - that two second hold starts a stopwatch. I thought I had done something wrong. I wore it on my ankle last night. It recorded my bathroom trips in the night - LOL.

Hi, I went through this exercise two years ago to install a Cummins Onan 20kw Generator. You are correct in that there are lots of trades involved here: 1) Electrician 2) Plummer for Gas 3) Gas propane supplier 4) Builder for concrete pad 5) Generator / Tunner I did not buy my generator from a turnkey place because those places are expensive. I bought my generator from Costco. It took a bit of doing but I think it came out O.K. The first issue was when the generator was delivered it was missing a few parts. Small issue in that a hinge pin was missing. A bit of going back and forth between Costco and Cummins Onan. Costco in general had no clue, you get the usual customer serrvice rep more accustomed to handling pots and pan returns. Cummins Onan was another story. These guys although dificult to get to the right person via Costco. Once there they were very good. In total they came to my place four times. 1 came out to check over the genset, 2 replace ths missing pin (free both times). I paid for them to come out for on-site turn on and tuning, And one more time to fix on a Goverment recall notice (free). I paid only once for the turn on visit. They were prompt and responsive on the phone was good. I recommend them, The installation was handled for me by a Electrician who had generator installation experience. The Cummins Onan was over 1000 lbs in weight, so my electrician used a small back hoe to put it in place on concrete pad. He also did all the trenching for the gas lines. The propane gas tank we had to purchase from the propane company. They hooked up the tank and put in the gas line and installed a gas regulator for the generator. The propane company were NOT willing to hook up the gas regulator to the generator! So we had to get a plumber to do the final hook up. My electrician had a licensed plummer to do that bit. Took him all of 30 mins and was a buddy so the charge was not too high $US 200 I think, Final turn on was done by Cummins Onan. They came checked the wiring and the tuning, My electrician was also there to make sure no back feeding to the local utility side. My ATS came with the generator as a set. The ATS has a number of additional hookups for my genset. 1) Heater on 120v to keep the genset warm for fast start up reduced engine wear 2) Trickle charger cable to make sure car battery in gen set constanlly topped up. Something like a battery tendor / charger. 3) power cables for output power. (not switched neutral) 4) Various engine start etc controll cables. My supply is 400 amps coming into two panels. My electrician rewired one of the 200 amp panels to be the 'BACKED up' panel. All the circuits that we wanted genset powered was on one sub-panel. The ATS then controls power to that panel. The non-backed up circuits were moved off to the other not backed up sub panel. I would advise that you ask your electrician to also install a whole house surge supressor on the incoming power lines. That way a lightning strike will not take out your genset, or at least less likely to.... The whole exercise took about 4 months from start to finish. The electrician was the general contractor and I think did a good job in coordinating all the trades. The only bit that I did was the gardening, planted a new lawn over all the earth excavations :) so yet another trade ..... Best, Mike.