Dh and I have lived in our current house for our entire marriage, 17 years. Truthfully, it was being built when we got married, so we lived in an apt for 2 months, then my parents for a month then it was ready. We live on the outskirts of a waterfront tourist town. We were supposed to be here for 3 years. Dh was in the Navy and this was not supposed to be our forever home as we anticipated being transferred by the Navy. However, dh realized the Navy was not meant to be his career as he didn't want to constantly move once we had kids. We wanted to live close to one of our families, but unfortunately, they live on opposite coasts. He is from the San Francisco Bay Area, and I am from the Wash DC area. Since it was the height of the tech boom at the time dh was getting out of the Navy, and we simply could not afford a home in the Silicon Valley, he got a job here, which fortunately is only 25 minutes from my parents. And here we've stayed. It is NOT my dream home. I don't even really like it. It was small when we moved in, and even smaller after having four kids! We looked around at moving to a different home, but absolutely love our neighbors and our community so finding a home that fit our needs was very difficult. We live in a high COL so home prices made it hard to find something that fit our desires while still being affordable. 10 years ago, we added on and while the space has helped, it hasn't changed the fact that our floorplan isn't desirable to us. We live in a waterfront community with very strict building codes, so we worked within that and have maxed out what we can do w/o completely gutting the house and starting over. With four kids in private school and one off to college in four years, I've pretty much resigned myself that we won't be moving anytime soon, nor can we really afford at this point to do any major changes that would help. I am constantly looking at houses for sale in the area, but the only affordable ones are in tract home subdivisions and that's not type of community we desire. So we make do with what we have. And it's not that my house is bad, but it's not set up well for entertaining, something I'd love to do more often, we had to give up our fabulous screened porch when we added on and cannot add another due to space constraints. I miss that terribly. On the bright side, we have wonderful neighbors, live in a waterfront neighborhood so the kids can fish, swim, kayak, ride their bikes freely (community is a peninsula w/no through traffic), etc. My dream is to move into the historic district in our tourist town where we can walk and bike everywhere. We live 5 miles from there now, but not on bike-friendly roads (though dh is an avid biker and rides them, no way my kids can). There are some really fabulous Arts & Crafts cottages, as well as many other architecturally interesting homes that date back to the 1700s. My hope is to move into one of them some day and have that be our forever home, with a second home in another climate. I wish I could love this home and think of it as my forever home, but it is not ideal for aging. We have three floors, with bedrooms all on the third floor as the garage/rec room are "under" the main living level. My parents still live in the house I grew up - they are going on 50 years there. They will stay until it's too much for them as it's perfect for aging, a rancher. All that said, as much as I want to move, the idea of moving is dreadful to me, which is probably one of the reasons I haven't really pushed for it. The thought of trying to keep my home in "show" condition with four kids, a huge dog that sheds, well, not fun. So perhaps a small part of me continues to find something undesirable about any of the houses I'm always looking at. I figure if I'm going to go through the hassle, the house has to be pretty close to what I want! Love all the interesting stories!

I've been growing about 40 roses (mostly DA's, about 1/4 of them OGR's, and then just about 5 or 6 are HT's) in large 24" terra cotta pots for about 7 yrs since I rented a house. I finally bought my first home last spring on a huge lot, and will finally be planting all the roses in a new designed garden I'm planning, next month. They have always performed great for me, but do take a lot of watering especially during the summer. At least I thought they were great until I compared them to my mother's English garden that I had planted 2 yrs ago for her as her 50th birthday present. Her DA's grew much faster then mine did and bloom larger and more profusely than mine ever had. So yes you can grow roses just fine in pots, but I really can't wait to get mine in the ground and see what they can really do!! Brian This post was edited by ocbrian on Sun, Jan 18, 15 at 21:45

Cactus can live a long time in a pot. I have a cholla cactus that is about 20 years old, but when it tries to make new cactus by breaking off branches, I throw them away, as I do not want more of this cactus.

I tried a few places in NYC and this is my experience: Dunkin Donuts and Subway, said they don't get anything in buckets. Coldstone creamery, said i should come back on a day that they change stock. Waiting to see what size they have and if they actually will give me them. I walked into a small Chinese Store and they gave me a 5 bucket gallon that had soy sauce in it. They didn't look too happy about it even though the store was empty and they throw them out. now my question is how long do i soak water in it to get rid of all the salt from the soy sauce...?