Last year I sowed 8 kinds of basil, transplanted the seedlings into styrofoam drinking cups and sold them for $2 a plant. This year I tried raising my price since everything has gone up but lowering my price now may not be an option since I've discovered whitefly oh no! on my basils. They are now in quaratine and I may have to call that a crop failure for this year. Growing Basil has not any major production for me. Our market here is small and several others sell plants and herbs as well. Plus some of them have the advantage of having a greenhouse and I don't. I grow stuff vertically on shelves under lights in my sunroom. One year I compiled a cookbooklet on Basil and sold those as well. It does help to give people recipes and the like. Education is part of our function at market. This just has not been a good year for basil for me. Temps have been pretty cool and basil does not like it below 50F. In attempting to harden off a tray of mostly Lemon and Lime basils [my favorites] they ended up too sad looking to take to market. Now whitefly is attacking my best ones and I am despondent. [sigh] I got a package of purple ruffles later than the rest of my plantings since my dark opal just did not germinate well. I was hoping to make some nice mixed basil pots but now I fear the window for plant buying may be past as we are heading into summer.

Happy new year! I would normally have replied much sooner, but everything has been so busy with Christmas, then new year and all the rest. Anyway, I have to agree that conservation is by far the best thing we can do right now, and I believe that it will allways be useful as almost all energy comes with a penalty. Both environmental and financial. I've been thinking about conservation quite a bit recently as I'm trying to get a rough idea how much it would cost to build an affordable house (you might have seen my posts about it?) and I want it to be economical to live in. This is partly an environmental concern, but also because it would be misguided to build an affordable house that isn't also affordable to live in. The majority of most anyone's wages go towards their house, so if I can build a house that uses minimal energy I can spend the money in other more enjoyable ways. I can also design it in such a way it comes in to the lowest possible tax category, but that's beyond the scope of this forum. One of the things that surprises me is when I say I want to build a low energy house that uses renewable energy, people tend to picture something very expensive and custom built. When I researched it I found that commonly they're high end houses built for wealthy customers who were willing to spend a lot of money to have luxury items, like solar PV panels and houses built half underground. I don't however see why houses that use very little energy have to be reserved for wealthy people building custom houses, after all one of the main attractions of a low energy house is the very small monthly bills. A low energy house design/concept that comes within (preferably below) average house prices is long overdue, and also has a massive market potential. Admittedly domestic energy use is a fraction of that used by industrial processes, and also accounts for a similarly small percentage of pollution, but I know nothing about industrial processes and (thankfully) don't pay the bills for them either. At least not directly. I do however know something about houses and how I believe they could work better. My main aim is to build it smaller, but use the space in such a way it's relatively spacious with plenty of storage. I also want to exchange traditional and generally energy wasting and expensive materials for newer materials that cost less. Insulation, and lots of it, is important. I also want high quality finishing materials, but avoiding ornate details and using a more minimalist style should keep the costs reasonable. The other main issue is using the most energy efficient appliances possible, and also installing some renewable stuff like solar hot water heating. At least in concept it seems to work, and hopefully one day I will be able to try it out.

The duvet (the comforter part) should be the same size as the cover. I've found that comforters are usually not the same size as proper duvets and don't fit the covers properly. Seems there is little standardization in these products. We bought our first duvets and duvet covers in Europe and no problem with shifting, just gave them a shake in the morning and they were in place. The covers fit perfectly which I'm sure was the reason why they didn't shift. I think clips or buttons would be uncomfortable if you actually used the duvet. If you only use it for decoration turned back no problem. Ties might be more comfortable.

pickyshopper - My son and I spent 2 weeks in Ireland in October and I received conflicting information from everyone - even a native Irishman. We stayed at hotels in Killarney and Dublin, and Bed and Breakfasts in Galway and Kinsale. They all had their own hair dryers in the bathrooms and they were hard wired into the wall. Even if I had taken my own hairdryer I wouldn't have able to use it in the bathroom - It's against the electrical code. I bought a set of converters at The Container Store and I was able to use my curling iron with one of them, but I had to use it in the bedrooms, not the bath. My son took his Mac computer and it wouldn't work with any of the converters. He had to stop at a computer store and purchase a special adapter for a Mac. His computer worked but the download times were really slow. I didn't want to take my smart phone with me so for $20.00 I rented one from Verizon and it arrived with it's own convertor. I had heard horror stories of people who returned from overseas trips to discover a huge data bill on their smart phones. The one I rented was just a regular old fashioned flip phone, but it worked great. One travel agent told me to just pick up a converter at the airport. She even suggested that I just buy a curling iron at the airport and then I wouldn't need an adapter. For what it's worth - my trip was wonderful however it was one bad hair day after another. We spent a lot of time on the west coast which is quite blustery in the fall and we were near the ocean the entire time. Dublin was milder and not windy at all. have a fantastic trip - where will you be going?