Sterling SIlver is still very much in commerce , Weeks is still very actively propogating her, my local nurseries (Northern California) were full of them this spring. It may be that they know she’s rather fragile and particular and they’re only shipping her to places where they know she’ll be OK. Of course I could not resist getting one! She’s clearly very happy here, giving 2 nice fluses already and staying completely healthy (she was a real wimp when I tried her in Texas) She is tops for clarity and beauty of color, that together with her consistenly strong pure lemon-rose perfume makes her well worth the trouble! Sarah I’m sorry you got the wrong rose, especially from J&P, that’s surprising. They don’t do everything right but they’re usually very good about being true to variety. I agree, request a refund. My opnion is to continue to look for her grafted (ie from Regan next spring) she needs all the help she can get!. I once eagerly bought a huge healthy body bag labeled Sterling Silver but it when the giant bloomed she turned out to be Queen Liz…it was indeed too good to be true.

To paige 16 Yes it is true that most of those items really have no place on current tables for most of us. I think that collecting is so important rather than just melting the stuff down. I have bought items in my set because they were available for purchase. I did not expect to have the number of place pieces or serving pieces that I have. That is why I am thankful that Ebay does exist. I am sure that it it did not, I would not have had the set that I was abel to put together. The writes of the silver books said it was a hard pattern to collect. It really would have been had it not been for Ebay. This is our history and heritage. It is beautiful art as well. Just remember that some companies have given up trying to reproduce some of the "vintage patterns". Its because those men that created those early pieces were craftsmen. Just think, the silver companies as we knew them vitrually don't exist any more. They have been sucked up into holes and are no more than another part of a holding company. The people that own them at this point really don't understand or appreciate good American Silver. The younger people are there just because it is a job. Replacements does think it is doing the customer a favor by buying their silver. They are not all that honest either. I have tried selling there and found that they do try to take advantage of the original owner but make pretty good profits off of what you have sold to them. Be careful when you negotiate value with some of the folks out there.

katmandu! I'm so happy to see your sweet name again. I hope you had a wonderful vacation -- where'd you go? Please trust your gut and do NOT go with Downsview -- not because I've anything against Downsview (I don't), but because of your feeling about the KD there. Honest-to-goodness this is such a trying thing, having your kitchen redone, that to embark on it with someone who already gives you second and third thoughts is only an invitation for disaster and high blood pressure! Totally not worth it and I would hate to see you in that situation. You don't deserve it. I am esp. sour right now because our kitchen is mostly done. I spent most of Friday and today (Saturday) unpacking and trying to figure out where to put stuff and as of now, I am NOT pleased with our layout. We haven't enough room. In my defense, I packed up ~2/3 of our kitchen in 12/05, readying it to go on the market late 1/06. I haven't seen most of our kitchen possessions since then and ... out of sight, out of mind. At that time, we had no idea to where we were moving (it was between Toronto, Boston or Boulder) so I had no idea we'd be redoing a kitchen. When I inventoried everything it was for checklists only -- not for size and quantity. (Meaning, in my spreadsheet I had "Kitchen Box 1, pans" so I'd know where to find them, not "four baking dishes, length x width" -- you know, the kind of thing which would have been useful in designing a kitchen!) After we sold our house we still didn't know where we were going so we rented a house (also in San Francisco), and then in 12/06 did we purchase this house and 3/07 moved in. I was exhausted from all these moves and because by this time knew we'd definitely be redoing this kitchen I just didn't have it in me to unpack everything only to have to repack it all when we redid the kitchen. H-U-G-E mistake. Huge. Fatal. The kitchen is gorgeous -- no doubt about that! But what I really, really wanted was a functional kitchen; the pretty factor was absolutely secondary in goal. The layout is good but the storage is crap. As I've been struggling to put away baking dishes I wondered why our lower drawers seem so shallow. After calling the people who bought our SF house I learnt it's because that kitchen has 32" deep lower cabinets and 16" uppers. What a freaking difference! (We now have 24" lowers and 12" uppers.) I'm not a TKO. It never occurred to me when I lived in that house to measure things because I didn't care and didn't notice. Absolutely not on my radar. I do know that SF kitchen was nearly twice the size of our current kitchen, which is a little odd as the house itself was half the size of this one (and that SF house was four times the cost of this house!). I think I shall find room for everything in this kitchen but it won't be exactly where I want it. Because we have 9' ceilings, lots will be going up up up, which means my stepladder will be my constant companion as long as I live in this house. Anyway, this long feeling-sorry-for-myself diatribe is my own way of saying, begging, both katmandu and lilykate to take tons and tons of time now, even if you're sick and tired of it all. Take the time to check out the custom cabinetmakers because it could end up being the smartest thing you did (regarding the remodel). For me, I wish I had spent the time and effort unpacking everything only to repack it all just so the KD and then cabinetmaker and I could have laid eyes on everything and together figured better ways of storing it all. My sweet husband said "well, we can always redo the kitchen again in a few years." Clearly he has not been as involved in the process (or paying the bills!) as I. Bless his ignorant heart .... I'm also bummed because our ridiculously expensive oven has those old-fashioned racks, you know, the kind which screech as you pull them out. The oven on which we'd initially decided was the Electrolux -- I loved its huge glass front and its full-extension smooth-gliding racks. BUT, I really, really wanted (double wall) ovens with a side-opening door -- I was tired of leaning into the oven. Either I've shrunk considerably (I haven't) or our toekicks are higher here (they are), but this oven is so tall! So I'm really relieved to have the side opening door, but I wish for that price it also had the smooth racks. I also need to get another PhD in order to use it. It took me nearly fifteen minutes just to figure out how to get the screen to register in English (I don't speak German) and set the date and time and temperature format. This is going to be one steep learning curve! Sorry for being so negative. I'm just feeling tired and sad and so v. angry with myself about this kitchen! To have spent this much money (any amount, actually) and have so many shortcomings is ridiculous. And it's my own fault! Grr. I was going to share a photo from tonight, with unpacked stuff and remnants of dinner but now, as if I needed kicking while already down, my camera has "lost" all the images on the card. Just this morning we took a bunch of darling pictures of my three year-old rock climbing and now, gone. I want to cry I am so frustrated and spent!

Ok so here's the tricky part... In general a softener with 1.5 cubic ft of resin has a capacity of about 46k grains (@15 lbs of salt per cubic ft of resin) In general a softener with 2.0 cubic ft of resin has a capacity of about 60k grains (@15 lbs of salt per cu ft of resin) Note: I say "in general" because the actual capacity is dictated by the resin manufacturer, water chemistry, etc. This is how softeners are advertised. It is a marketing thing. However, using 15 lbs of salt per cu ft of resin is a crazy amount of salt per cu ft. The amount of salt required to regen a resin bed isn't linear -- there are diminishing returns. In other words, you can reduce the amount of salt used from 15 lbs per cu ft to 8 lbs per cubic ft ( a 47% reduction ) and only reduce the capacity of a 2 cu ft resin bed from 60k to 48k (a 20% reduction). This saves a lot of salt. You can do this down to about 6 pounds per cu ft... but you will get some hardness bleed through at those levels. (See chart below). It looks like they are proposing a 1.5 cu ft softer running at 10 lbs cu ft of salt. (33% savings) that puts you about at 40.5k grains capacity. That has you regen at about 9 days with 2 people and using 15 lbs of salt per regen (1.5 cu ft x 10). That's kinda high salt usage, (50 lbs a month) but almost reasonable for 2 people and 30 grain per gal hardness. It becomes less so with 4 people and you aren't probably going to be able to dial that down to 6 lbs a cu ft - because you would be looking at a 30k grain capacity on a 1.5 cu ft softener and regen too often. Here's the thing though: It's great for you to understand it... but if you are going to hold them accountable, you kinda have to go with their recommendations or not go with them. You can ask them about a 2 cu ft unit running at 8 lbs per cu ft and see what they say.