Congratulations!!! You waited and now you have your just reward !! Awesome!! Do you mean to pick the flower after it opens fully to enjoy in the house? To place in a cute little vase with water? If so.. Wait until its fully open. Then just bend where the bloom meets the stem. You will see once you try the first time. If you are talking about the whole inflo... I would wait until all have bloomed and let it fall off naturally. You might have seed pods that may form, so I never take the whole inflo off.. I hope that answers your question? To enjoy the open blooms.. Use your fingers and bend at the bottom of the bloom stem. You will see. Enjoy!!! I'll go out and take a pic for you. Be back in a few. Take care and congratulations!!! Laura

From what I've read so far, both plans strike me as...starters. I also definitely like the U better, but that's not saying much yet. I'm making some assumptions here that may not be at all valid in your case. But, you're having trouble designing a kitchen you really like into that space. You have a lovely room for dining that you almost never use. Is the front living room what you think of when you look forward to getting home or also gathering dust? Yes, center-hall colonials are tricky, but is the way your first floor serving you all you could want? If you could somehow sell seldom-used square footage for $50,000 and the promise of at least hundreds saved each year in expenses, would you? And be happy to live in the downstairs space still left? With this sort of scenario in mind, to me the first plan makes expensive changes with absolutely no promise of genuinely expanding living into the space available. Enlargement of the kitchen should shift at least one daily meal into the space currently occupied by the dining table, but would it? Or would it just perch you guys on stools and damage the DRM's elegant ambiance? I know the bay is new, but it also looks like a former kitchen and breakfast room that underwent an unfinished transformation--that outside wall an obvious remnant of its previous life. (If you did this, how about doors to a nice brick or stone patio outside instead?) The second plan is a simple spiffing up of the parts of your house that get heavy living, so I agree it's a good choice if you like the way you live in the rest your house just fine as is. Small kitchens are greatly underrated and can be truly excellent, so once you work out the details to get what you want--excellent. I'm also guessing the coziness of your kitchen dining area is one of its big assets, so that part doesn't need to be larger. If this were my remodel, though, and if the front rooms were mostly unused, I'd be not be happy with the allocation of my space. People do find ways to make good use of center-halls without ruining their character. Those that do tend to sell very well in most markets. After all, a lot of people who like their look won't buy them because of their space-use issues. For my own list of wants, I like halls for themselves and would definitely want the center hall as a major feature--with nice views in both directions. I would not want a large kitchen, but I'd want a bit larger one laid out just the way I like it. I'd like two places to dine with different moods, but only if they were both used a lot. One would be decorated nicely enough for seating guests to dinner, but so formally that it repelled us most of the time. (We have this, BTW.) I'd want a living area that multifunctioned for daily living and allowed guests to separate--in actual chairs!--into different conversation groups. If it had to be in 2 different rooms, I'd want good circulation and communication between them. I'd want an inviting, comfy area I could go read while my retired DH watches drag races, and vice versa--he splits while I watch Design Star, (one of those embarrassing things I wouldn't normally admit to). I'd like one living space to be sunny, with doors to the garden, and I'd like another to be just right for snuggling up inside when it was horrible out. All this in a center-hall with those great corner rooms and a kitchen remodel opening up possibilities, and I'd start by erasing their labels.

I'm sure it's nice then, and I plan to go back in other seasons. I've wanted to go since 2013, but that year my brother was ill and passed, and last year I was not well and wound up with two surgeries, one last October and one this past April, but I FINALLY made it there! I will try to post some photos when I organize them.

That's a fair point. In Montreal, your growing season is pretty much May-September. We're at the end of May, and you're not even sure you have seedlings. So you've used up about a quarter of your growing season looking for seedlings. Unless you're wedded to these particular plants, buying larger plants at this time might be smart. No, tomatoes don't take a long time to grow as seedlings, as long as they're kept warm (70-75F), and they get plenty of light. But even then, it'll be several weeks before you're ready to plant out.