Melissa, what a huge undertaking! I'm glad it has turned out so well for you. From what I've seen, you already have a "good" collection of roses. It sounds as though you are well on your way to having a superb one. Best of luck with your garden. Also our best to your DH. Tom and I remember him fondly. And may we all avoid Goetterdaemmerung. Rosefolly

Glo - Thanks for reassuring me! I hope your move is awesome! My husband has wanted to move us to Colorado for years and hasn't managed to quite convince me yet, although I think it's absolutely wonderful there. LOL So, Winter Solstice is the same everywhere? (LOL)... I guess you're seeing how little I know... Nancy - Thanks for the tip! I am gonna have to watch the lead hand myself as I way oversowed my cantaloupes this fall. The poor babies are fighting each other and giving me 2 to 5 inches fruits that don't look like they're EVER going to full ripen. I will be much more careful in the future. I'll try to not get TOO excited when I go to plant. LOL Carrie - Wow! That's some really good info. That's exactly the kind of thing I was worried about. I'm grateful for the heads up. Liz - LIZ!!! Hey, girl! Fancy meeting you here and there and now here! hee hee... The whole last paragraph of what you wrote is exactly what is concerning me. I know that I personally wear shorts through-out almost the whole winter except for those few crazy days that we see. 50's or what have you is not cold to me... We do get the occasional freeze, but then a week or two later at most you could have a 70+ degree high! All this in the same few days / weeks / months... it's SO crazy! Oh, and if they're having a plantswap around the 8th of December as well, I sure want to know as I'll be out that way. :-) Blessings, Angela

Just a word of advice about locating the tree peonies. It sounds great that the plants will get early morning sun but it causes problems in late winter. What happens is the sun hits the stems and warms the plant up. But when the air is freezing only the side the sun hits is thawed. The other side remains frozen. The area in between is the problem in that the cells are trying to thaw and freeze at the same time. In this area plant cells can burst and cause scar tissue damage the layer that provides nutrician to the plant weakening the plant. If you can provide shade especially on the lower parts of the tp during the winter it is better for the plant. The shade can be as little as a cloth banner or latticework placed in front of them. Don't give up on the scent as sometimes it is so overpowering that it is nasty when the flowers first open. Of course to my nose almost all of the herbaceous corals smell like re-hydrating dried fish. Very beautiful to look ate but please don't ask me to stick my nose anywhere near them.

How about ... Put the pantry beside the fridge where you currently show the trash. On the oven wall, move everything down 18" to fill in the space where the pantry was. Then put the trash pullout between the lazy Susan and the 24" 4-drawer. The would make the trash convenient for use at the sink and also more convenient to the range. It will also make unloading groceries more convenient with the fridge and the pantry beside each other. Find out the interior measurements of your different drawer stack options and measure what you will be storing in them. I had wanted to store all of our pans on edge in the drawer so they wouldn't have to stacked. Most of them fit, but the 12" skillets do not fit on edge, the interior measurements of the drawer is not tall enough. All of the other baking pans, frying pans, pots, lids, etc will fit on edge. But what to do with the 12" skillets - store them flat on the bottom of the drawer which uses too much space ? Store them somewhere else in the kitchen ? Ugh. Also, my big pots do not quite fit 2 of them in the depth of the drawer from front to back. It will fit 1 big pot and 1 med pot, but not 2 big pots. If only the drawer was 1" deeper. There is unused space in the back of the cabinet where the drawer could have been deeper. And my cabinet line allows for size customizations, so if I had known, I could have requested this. Another thing they may have been able to do would have been a slightly lower toekick, which would have left room for the drawers to be taller. Someone on Gardenweb has done that before and is very happy with it. Another option may have been to have toekick drawers. If it was our primary residence, this is what I would have done for the 12" skillets. Plus, lots of other things would be great in toekick drawers. But, it is a vacation rental property and I just don't think the renters would be able to easily find that drawer.