Sounds beautiful, Lux, congratulations! Why do Rugosas set copious hips yet continue flowering in many climates? There are exceptions to every rule. I'm surprised your Hillingdon sets hips as none have ever set either self or deliberately pollinated hips for me. A client's neighbor had a bed of Hillingdon the lady who designed both gardens installed many years ago. In all the years I walked near them to get to the outside of my client's side bed so I could reach in from the neighbor's side yard to dead head, I never noticed any hips on them. I wouldn't know if it's specific to that variety or if it is specific to YOUR plant in its precise location. Perhaps yours is immensely happy in its micro climate? Perhaps yours thinks it's going to die and is valiantly attempting to "perpetuate the species" before it succumbs? I dunno, but it DOES sound like a glorious sight! Thanks. Kim

I had four huge basal shoots this summer that had about 18 flowers each. As well as branches shooting underneath the sprays with about six flowers each. They are so fat that they supported themselves. Jeri is right, if I cut at the first five-leaflet leaf, much of the cane would be gone. This is on a 2nd year plant. I've never seen anything like it before, so I didn't know where to cut. I have been doing what Jeri recommended, just cutting spent blooms. I don't know the technical terms for explaining all of this, sorry, :o) This all from tea this Spring that included epsom & alfalfa pellets. Also, I used a local organic fertilizer from Tacoma called Tagro. I had 5 yards of Tagro Mix delivered this summer and I used this stuff on everything. I scratched around all of my roses and spread it out. With amazing results! The first time I used it on my garden. Really impressed! The Tacoma ARS Society recommends it too. I think I need to check into joining ARS. I would like to help out in the Pt. Defiance Rose Garden. Here is a link that might be useful: City of Tacoma ~ Tagro

Was the stem that your husband broke green inside? If so, the plant was alive and probably still is...unfortunately, the plant will have to start over from scratch. What about any other stems on the plant? Are they green inside when you scratch a bit of the outside layer off with your fingernail? Deadheading can be done at anytime of year safely. Untimely hard pruning can lessen or even remove the next season's blooms but does not harm the plant. Best to place the plant in an area large enough to accomodate it so it won't need to be pruned at all. (except for deadheading old blooms and occasional corrective pruning) Lack of moisture is another story. Hydrangeas don't like DRY. Period. Just remember, if there is green underneath the 'bark' then the plant is still alive. Just water it regularly, be very patient, and hopefully you'll have better luck next year.....yg

MelissaStar, You're usually the only cook, but occassionally have someone who helps. You live alone, I seem to recollect, or at least there are no kids to accomodate at a family dining area, right? And as I recollect you do some heavy duty cooking and prep, thus the desire for butchering and baking areas and for storage of canning supplies, etc. Right? Your memory is fantastic! When it is used for dinner parties, I see no reason to think it would be any more inconvenient than a similar booth at a restaurant, and they are usually the most desired spots, because they facilitate converation and coziness, My thinking exactly. I certainly prefer a booth in a restaurant to a table - I just find it more comfortable and relaxing. I started the kitchen design process focusing on seating at a peninsula, which changed to seating at various islands, but then through all of the back and forth with everyone on this board, my thinking on my likes and desires sharpened quite a bit and the appeal of the banquette became more obvious to me. I'm designing this kitchen for my enjoyment and my ease of use, not for kids or guests. Taking my morning coffee, reclined in the banquette, feet up on the opposite side, watching the sunrise is a far more enticing prospect than sitting on a stool in front of an island either in the middle of the kitchen or buried deeper in the house. I'd rather watch what's going on outside my windows than turn my focus to what's taking place on my Big Screen TV. I don't have teenagers who need to be glued to the screen during meals, so a good line of sight from meal sitting to TV was a non-factor for me. If I ever develop the habit of desiring to watch the news while I'm having dinner I can always hang a small undercabinet TV right above where the dishwasher is situated. As for the casual guest - they can sit at the banquette and they're completely out of my work flow in the kitchen and with more than a few casual guests, even the messes in the sink are hidden for 2/3 of the span of the banquette. For more formal occasions the dining room is available. And for the rare "house is teeming with guests" events, I can fit 5-7 kids at the banquette, with 3 more kids sitting at chairs while the adults are in the dining room/living room. The banquette works extremely well for me and I had the most miserable time in trying to fit it in. It doesn't really work that well in the middle of the East wall and it doesn't work that well on the South end of the East wall because now it intersects traffic and work zones. Being on the North end of the East wall keeps it out of traffic. I keep thinking there should be a way to either overlap the butchering and baking areas (since they are unlikely to be in use at the same time) That's true. I find that I like hacking up meat close to a sink because it serves double duty - easy to throw waste into and convenient for clean up. Baking doesn't require sink proximity as much, at least the way I work, so I can make do with a smaller sink near where I bake than where I cook and cut meat. This means that if I combine baking and meat cutting, which never go on at the same time, then the big sink is really only used for pot clean-up and the secondary sink is more heavily used and it has to be larger, thus taking up more counter space. I'm just not able to fire on all cylinders here and get the "perfect combination" of all the features. The alternative would be to replace part of the counter between sink and range with butcher block. That would certainly make things simpler, as kateskouros so perceptively noted in the other thread. There's just something about the change of materials in the run of the countertop that unsettles me. Maybe I just need to mull over the idea a bit more - this solution after all just popped into my head last night. A appreciate the picture of your kitchen - it now makes real what I was only imagining. The placement of the prep sink seems awkward to me, in that corner. What about moving it to the other end of the peninsula? There are lots of islands with them at one end. I agree that the sink placement is a bit awkward. I hadn't thought of putting the sink at the end of the peninsula, so I fired up the software and did just that. I looked at it, I rendered a photo and I actually find that more awkward because it cancels out the fridge drop zone, a grocery from garage drop zone, it sits smack in the middle of a walk around zone if I need to work on something from different angles - I have a 180 degree work surface there. I think the question at the moment is whether to keep that sink where it is or move it a tad more towards the inside corner edge, with the attendant trade-off of creating dead space behind the sink. I'm wishy washy on that - I see the pros and cons of both positions. What would you do? Favor more work area or favor easier use of the sink for your baking needs? I would consider rejiggering the oven/refrigerator/storage areas to make the storage facing the banquette less deep and widen your aisle there. Also, as someone who has a "pinch point" with fridge doors opening across from the end of the peninsula, I can tell you it's not good. Can you switch the fridge and oven placement (you'll be opening them much less often than the fridge) and move them a foot or so to the left, losing the small closet? I'm going to play around with that tonight. I had never thought of placing the oven right at the entrance to the kitchen. I recall from past commentary that there was a consensus opinion that having the fridge placed deeper into the kitchen was less than optimal and that it would be better for the fridge to be placed nearer the entrance so that access to the fridge didn't require disrupting cooking/prepping activity. However, because it's just me that I have to worry about your suggestion might bear fruit. I won't know until I try. MrsPete, I adore your seating area. I wanted something similar, but my space just doesn't work. Thank you. I'm starting with a blank slate here so I have more flexibility. I've scrapped so many plans because of kitchen design issues, and even in this latest iteration, due to trying to make that seating area work. I wonder about switching the butchering area with the baking center. I say this because meat goes with basic meal prepping, while baking has a different set of "stuff". You'd have space for baking pans, your big mixer, your canisters over in that separate area. One of the reasons that the baking area is where it is is because just off the bottom of the plan is a wood fired baking oven, hence pizza and bread and when everything comes out of the oven that peninsula is only 6' away to use as a drop zone. Secondly, in terms of baking I'm currently used to working on a large surface - I've never actually done a lot of baking on a 2' wide counter, so I'm going with what I know. Pressure canning supplies -- have you allotted enough space for this? I have two canners and various accessories, and I couldn't fit it into one upper cabinet. How often do you use these things? I currently have a greenhouse, so my growing season is extended, but it's certainly not a year round production chain for items coming from my gardens, however, I do put up non-garden derived food throughout the year and once this house is constructed I intend to focus more effort on that activity. This house is really kitchen-centric. When I embark on a kitchen project it's usually pretty involved, so the design I'm trying to achieve is catering to my extreme uses rather than to my day-to-day uses. I'm faced with two alternatives - design for everyday ordinary needs and then be cursing at the limitations of the design when I need more space or design for big projects and then don't use the kitchen to maximum potential for the following 5 days. That's a huge refrigerator, yet I'm hearing that you have only two people in the house. Is that size really justified? The space for the refrigerator is a placeholder. I come from a science/engineering background and I tinker and design machinery as a hobby and instead of hot-rodding my car I'll be hot-rodding the fridge, amongst other systems in the home. If the design is finalized as it stands now and I kick the bucket or decide to sell, the new owners can close up the fridge space and enlarge the hallway closet if that's to their liking. Secondly, I put a lot of stuff into my fridge. When I'm making cheese, I need ready access to a lot of milk. That has to be stored somewhere. When I'm making salami, I need to store the meat until I need it. So I'm pleased to make your acquaintance but as you see, MelissaStar already got the lowdown on my oddball ways earlier in the year. Your kitchen is soooo large. Everyone keeps saaaaying that! :) But you know what, I've spent a lot of time analyzing how I'm using my current kitchen, which I didn't design, and I'm reflecting on my youth when I worked in restaurants, and I just don't see that the kitchen is to large for how I use my kitchens. I've seen large kitchens showcased on this forum, by which I mean that they're too large for how I would use them for myself, but they're probably just right for the families that use them daily. From fridge door to wall and from sink wall to edge of peninsula counter is 11'6" x 16'9" and that doesn't seem unreasonable to me. Could you move the penninsula "up" towards the sink, making the "main kitchen" smaller and more space-efficient . . . and have sort of a "working pantry" in the are that you're now calling the baking area? It'd be just a small, not so fancy spot for these two activities. I'm going to play around with this idea because it's one that I haven't thought of. Thanks for suggesting it.