Direct Gardening is a company that sells things really cheap and they send small, dried up divisions. That being said, I placed one order with them and although I had to coddle and baby everything, they were what I ordered and they did all live. I don't know if I would order from them again.. maybe if they had something I really wanted and I felt like I needed a project plant, then yeah, probably. I think they do actually have a guarantee, but you have to have the original shipping label and you have to return the offensive plant...other companies are so much easier to deal with. I've actually gotten some really strong, healthy and nice plants from Dutch Gardens this year, but they were not daylilies. The Heuchera Obsidian they sent me is huge and gorgeous, better than things available at even the better local nurseries.

Call them once a week to check in. Unless you've asked for their "standard spec" house, they should have questions about what you want and don't want. Calling as a follow-up makes you look more like a prospective client and less like a window shopper. Most GCs took 1-2 weeks for fixed cost quotes with us, but NONE of them included all of our specs. Most were the GC's standard spec home, while others incorporated a few of our choices. That's why we're only talking Cost Plus now. Dangerous for novices and folks with no building experience, subs can really overcharge, and without Fixed Cost, there's no incentive for your GC to look at a sub's bid.

Snidely, retailers often sell consumer goods at a loss, there is even a phrase for it 'loss leader'. It is done to entice the consumer to shop at their place and then they hope buy other more expensive items and keep on coming back. It differs from the 'bait and switch' (illegal here) in that there is plenty of the item available and the consumer gets a genuinely good deal. Examples are the ridiculously low prices turkeys are often sold for around Thanksgiving (grocers want you to buy the cranberry sauce and all the other trimmings at the same time) or the inexpensive backpacks at back-to-school sales, (where the retailer hopes you will buy clothes and school supplies while you are getting the backpack). Another reason for unusually low prices is either to introduce a particular vendor, or sometimes to sell out a lot left over when manufacturers have sent similar items to stores. If for example a store chain orders 5,000 handbags for their stores and the manufacturer has 500 left over, they will sell the remaining small lot to outlets or other retail buyers at a discounted price sometimes. And of course there are the end of season sales, but one would think that would not apply to earrings.

Sports bore me. My husband will certainly be taking in a game, or two or three, when I'm doing things like touring gardens and museums. Catching up on how we spent the day gives us plenty of dinner conversation, while we're at Two Senoritas or O'shucks.