Update! Apologies for the broken pictures in my first post... I will try to do better from here on out! It has been a week and a half since I first began sharing my pepper growing experiences, and I have certainly learned alot in those few days. After transplanting my peppers, I realized that I had made a gross miscalculation and overfertilized the little guys. Most my peppers exploded with growth as a result, except for my orange habaneros. The grow tip and top leaves turned yellow and began to wilt, so as a first time grower, I began to worry. I flushed the soil with a good watering and used some epsom salt on all of the peppers, and in no time, my habs started getting green and lush once again. They have a little ways to go, but everyone is looking healthy and growing strong! I rearranged my closet to have the tomatoes up front so I can raise my two Hydrofarm single T5's over them, while still keeping the 8-bulb T5 system low over the peppers. Current closet setup. (Two T5's seen up top are usually lowered to right above the toms) Tomatoes up front! Peppers to the left... Peppers to the right! I added some aluminum foil to the back wall for a little bit of reflection. I like the results, and how much it cost! In addition, my Bhut Jolokia seedlings are kicking. They have a front row seat to the light show (seen in the pics above) and are loving every minute. I have to water them twice per day, or they start to wilt, but they are growing fast. Bhut Jolokia seedlings up on their pedestal. Now for a question... Will an 8-bulb T5 system suffice for maturing two Bhut Jolokias to maturity? I would like to keep them isolated so I can SASE/trade the seeds. Do I need more light to pull off the job? Thanks! I hope you enjoy the pics! Adam

Hey LouiseDawn, I can at least offer a silver lining of hope that I see in your situation. If SS is in college and SD is in grad school, there is at least some hope that they will be successful and eventually make enough money to finance their own lives. I also believe your situation will get better with time. I look back and I don't know how in the world I got through the last six years with my husband's family, but I did which is the important part. Having no prior experience at all in a step situation as step mother or step child, I was CLUELESS and felt guilt for the feelings of resentment I had and still sometimes have towards them and their father. I at least feel better to know that I am not this evil person for having these feelings anymore. That's a start. It seems that the biggest hurdles towards happiness in these situations most of the time are SDs for SMs. SSs seem to have a different relationship with their fathers that doesn't trigger that "drop everything and go be a hero" button in their fathers like SDs. I finally won the trust of my SD (I think) and she doesn't try to push my buttons anymore to create conflict. She had a bad experience before me with SM #1 so I have tried to take all that into consideration to cut her some slack and focus on the long term goal of all of us getting along. These days SD's biggest offense is using the guilt her father feels to manipulate him into openning the checkbook for her whims. All children manipulate, but steps have an easier time because they can use the guilt of their broken home life to loosen the purse strings. This has been the core of my own turmoil but has nothing to do with the purse at all. There is no reason for their father to feel guilt other than simply building a life with me, which hurts me because I have no regrets and his guilt feels like regret to me. BM left them all when the children were toddlers. There were 12 years between the time BM left and I met my husband so that breakup can't be put in my lap. He's paid for their tuition solely and provides for them to be more than comfortable. Why should he feel guilt? I FORCED him to discuss these feelings this week and it seems to be helping. He's finally recognizing that his guilt isn't all meritted here. Sometimes his children just didn't go to classes that we paid for and sometimes they told us stories that sounded good while they just did their own thing. They are in their 20's and should have some accountability in their lives. Other than walking them to class and doing their homework, I really don't see what else we could have done. He finally seems to also understand that my concerns aren't dollars and cents but the part we are playing in a pattern that insures failure in the future of our children, who just aren't prepared for the world. The biggest part of our job as parents is to prepare our children to become adults in this world (I think women get this where men don't. Men seem to want to be providers or heros.). If they aren't prepared, their growth is stunted and they lack confidence in themselves and their decisions in life. I am hoping that now he is getting past the guilt and focusing on helping to prepare them for the world (NOT dump them, just set boundaries and expectations that aren't forgotten later) we can work together to repair the damage. Is that such a terrible thing to be want for your children? I want that for my own bio son so how can that be a bad thing? I do not "know it all", but I feel like in your case, you should hang in there, support your husband and insist that you communicate on these issues together. Divided you fall, after all. Try to look at everything with honest objectivity. Yes, it is normal to have these feelings of resentment, but then take that knowledge and do something positive with it by feeling a new liberty to discuss it with your husband and grow from it. Understand that your stepkids also have their own feelings they aren't sure how to deal with. (I've found that it has helped me to read some of the few posts on here by stepkids, to understand their perspective.) We should look at what drew us to our husbands in the first place. What we loved about them from the start can't also be a reason to break us up now. In my own case, I had to offer him my trust that he would do the right thing for all of us. I just assumed he would go and make some terrible, crazy decision that would stunt all of our lives. I was asking him to trust me with his children, when I didn't trust him with his children. Again communication helps to work together. Hang in there, girl. I know you are hurting from the behavior of your stepkids right now and you are justified in that. Stepkids are notorious for behaving aggressively towards us at least in the beginning. Be the bigger person, gain their trust and when they have grown enough to hear you, explain your side to them and hear theirs. This takes time and doesn't happen overnight. My husband is a good man. He's worth the time and the strength it takes to get through it. His children are too.

I guess I should have explained better. The neighborhood has gone seriously downhill since the housing collapse. I had equity once but now owe twice what its worth. Anyway we are the stepchildren of the city, crime is going up and the residents don't take an interest, for the most part. The whole thing has turned into a nightmare really but to make a long story short I can expect no help from the city, been there and done that. The neighbor's yard is huge and this sedge has had years to get well entrenched - if that doesn't get me then the crabgrass will. I used to hoe like crazy this stuff out but then the crabgrass moved into the bare ground, its amazing how that stuff can move a foot or so a night in expanding. Anyway on account of the financial thing I have very little funds to work with and so sodding is out of the question. My neighbors are very unpleasant people so no I don't talk to them. I wish I could move my house and my garden somewhere else, its a simple house but I've done tons of work in landscaping and added a nice big covered patio. If I move I'll never be able to afford another place - it will be to an apartment with a postage stamp deck and I live for summer and my garden. You know if it wasn't for the mud thing I'd almost so OKAY I give up - I don't care what grows here as long as its ground cover so I can quit with the mud tracking in the house. Its really, I guess, a no-win situation. I could get rid of my dogs that would solve the mud problem but I was brought up in a different age/mentality I guess where the person who was screwing up was the one who had to change, now I find myself constantly lowering my standards - and why should I have to lose my dogs, not fair to them for sure. I have puzzled over this and all it does is depress me. The way it is my garden is where I spend most of my time and as long as I don't have to go out into the neighborhood I love it there with my birds and squirrels and flowers and stuff, but the outside keeps working its way in. My children, lke I said, are frustrated with me because grass is not high on their list. It's like they take good care of their cars so how would they like it if their car was always muddy even though they just cleaned it - that might get thru to them better. But the city and my kids and the neighbors have come to an agreement - I'm the problem. Because I want a nice garden. I'm getting depressed thinking of it. As for the tilling, I really didn't mean tilling, I think it just said work it into the ground so that what's down there but not emerged gets exposed to the chemicals. i will try to found more information or find someone in the business who knows, it all gets confused in my mind. I did put down annual grass in the spring and it took over fast but died about July and then I was back to the bare ground. The problem in the fall is that I have lots of trees and about the time its time to do the seeding the leaves start falling and smother any new growth or make it so I can't water. I can't rake the leaves away because the grass seed would go with it. I have spent a fortune on water and seed and I have the ugliest yard to show for it. Maybe I will just put the sedge down I think it said a month before you put down seed and see what happens and if it doesn't work then I either need to adapt / or move. I did try out front putting down some ground cover which survived but it would be very expensive and take years. I dunno. I dunno but thanks for your suggestions I will read again later when I'm not so discouraged. All I want for Christmas is to know I will have my lawn back in spring.

I dunno. Danger in the air has always seemed worse than danger on the ground where people can perhaps walk away. That's why airplane travel is so gosh darned safe and the NTSB is all over any accident, whereas we tolerate by law small amounts of impairment from drivers, and road accident investigation is usually cursory compared with air accidents unless there's grave injury involved. Perhaps legally produced drones could have mandatory remotes that pilots and emergency personnel could activate that would make them plummet fast, then land and stop working for a day. Yeah, the emergency codes could be hacked or abused, but better to have a way of clearing debris from the sky. The worst part is the unseen drone that collides with a plane or interferes with the engine and just crashes it. Maybe better than a remote would be some kind of constant repelling signal that just forces any drone away from the aircraft. Or a deflector beam. :)