Your instincts are sound, for reasons that you might not believe. And further, the NTEP studies are flawed, for reasons that you might not believe.....and really, I have to re-phrase that. The NTEP studies are not flawed. Our perceptions of the NTEP studies are flawed. What did NTEP promise us? Darn little. These people spend a controlled amount of time, on a controlled budget, to determine a few, but not a lot, of things: 1. What grass cultivars do well. (Ranked in order, best to worst...) 2. What grass cultivars do poorly. (Read the bottom of the list....) 3. Shade is not the issue: All the candidates get the same amount of shade. 4. Moisture is not the issue: All the candidates get the same amount of water, at the same time. 5. Mowing height is not the issue: Yep, you guessed it, everybody gets mowed at the same time. 6. (I know this is getting repetitive.....) Same amount of fertilizer, at the same time. 7. Leaf damage: (I'm stretching here, I really am....) All the leaves get taken off of those lawn plots, at the same time. But what do those rankings MEAN? They mean that some cultivars do "better" than others. And we'll put them in order, best to worst, for you to take a look at. First place is good, thirty ninth place is not remotely as good, is it? But the difference, between 7th place and 8th place? Insignificant. Those lawns, in those test plots of ground, have built in a 'normal' amount of care. Those test plots also have built in a 'normal' amount of neglect: "Just leave 'em alone, let 'em grow". If you can catch a break, on price, and take 11th place on the list, as opposed to 9th place which is expensive? You are going to have a very similar grass. With very similar characteristics. Your choice of 9th place, or of 11th place, on that list, does not guarantee success or failure of your lawn. You get to do that, all by yourself. Fertilize. Don't fertilize. Mow. Don't mow. Water. Don't water. But your choice saved you a bunch of money? MOST excellent. You've still got that money that you did not yet spend, eh?

I know quite a lot about electricity and have even wired may fuse boxes and a lot of outlets and indoor and outdoor lights. My brother in law had me wire his playroom and bar with color lighting. He even bought an older style well used pinball machine and juke box that I had to fix and get running again. 200 lights inside and many relays and switches. Luckily it came with schematics. I even added power to my glass green house, as it uses PVC plastic electrical boxes and PVC tubing to carry the wires. Also a GFP has been added. The house fuse box has a main fuse block that is two 100 amp cartridges and that fluse block is removed and replaced with a modified one I wired with a big long heavy cord which goes to 10 gauge wire. I also added a 220 volt neon lamp indicator to visually show me that regular power has been restored. Even for that, if regular power is back on, it can't get to my fuse box as the modified 100 amp fuse holder block as no fuses inside, so no power can get past that block and into the buss. I took courses in school for electricity and electronics. Always got straight A's every year. After a while the teachers wouldn't even call on me to answer questions, as I always knew the answers. My biggest wiring job was a 440 volt 3 phase box with 6 gauge wires. The power was boosted through a big transformer outside the building to give us 200 amps and higher 440 voltage. Use this for creating a 100,000 volt X-Ray device. There are a devices you can buy that will allow you to switch to an external power source. A friend of mine has a diesel powered generator that self starts within 1 second of a power loss and then monitors the incoming line for it to return. Right now, I use a UPS for my computer and also have a big 1400 watt one for my sump pump that runs 24/7.

Thank you Carol & Jenniesue, I love my old camera, my brother gave it to me a couple of years ago, he bought a new one. In it's day it cost $1,000. Don and I dont make the kind of living that allows us to indulge in such luxuries, so I was grateful to get it. Jenniesue, The yellow stuff is my yellow tomato basil mix. I grew yellow tomatos for the first time this year and they are abundant, so is my basil! I may just eat it as tomato basil soup, I have discovered that the yellow tomatos are a bit juicy so they don't seem to be condusive to making into pasta sauce? I don't like my pasta sauce to be runny, I like it thick. today I am roasting orange tomatos in the oven till a little black on them and then making roasted tomato sauce to can. Next to the tomato veggie soup in the picture is my Bruschetta from the Ball canning book, it came out yummy! Susan

You're not alone in struggling with lighting plants right indoors :) I haven't found an aesthetic situation, but have a similar problem with providing sufficient light needed by succulents when some bulbs generate too much heat and insufficient intensity at the distance we need to keep them from the plant. The only light I've successfully kept up close without upsetting them, while providing the right spectrum were red/blue LEDs. The heat issue could be wattage, but the make of the bulb as well. An IKEA LED grow light generates significantly more heat downwards and fries plants easily vs a Philips LED bulb that dissipates heat upwards. That is tough to tell without very thorough research or testing the bulb personally :( I hope someone with more experience can advise you more specifically here for the lights you're looking into! Yes you are right that your succulents will have different light requirements, which you'll get to experiment with and just observe their responses :)