The primary appeal of the big box retailer, for me, is that I can buy things there at 7am, 9pm, on Saturday evening, or on Sunday. Otherwise I'd prefer to have nothing to do with them unless I have to. There are times when, whether for reasons of necessity or impulse, that I want to buy *something* now. Home Depot has gotten some business from me for that reason. However, I prefer dealing with the local shop that knows what it is doing. I spend thousands per year at my saw shop, and a fair bit at the lawnmower/snowblower/generator shop, too. It took a number of years to find shops I was comfortable dealing with, though. Reasons follow: 1. I want a shop to actually have stuff in stock when I show up to buy. New units, parts, etc., should be ready to go. 1a. If you have to order something, let me place my "order" over the phone. I will NOT drive to you to tell you to order something that I have to drive back to pick up later, because that adds no value for me. It is, instead, a waste of my time. 2. Have hours beyond 5pm. Even 5:30 can help, but a night or two per week of 7pm would be appreciated. 3. Make sure your sales staff really knows their stuff and recognizes that some customers actually know more than they do. Quoting brochures is useless, and if you've never put any time in on the machines you're selling, well, maybe you should. 4. Service machines brought to you promptly. Nothing should sit in the shop for more than a week. My saw shop in particular is good about getting stuff back up and running within a day or two, since their commercial clients require it. 5. Stay abreast of what "enthusiasts" are doing with the equipment you are selling. I once purchased a lawnmower from a shop that also sells Stihl. The owner was nice enough to bring the mower out to my car, and he started checking out my Stihl 066 and turned critical as he launched into a critique of my improper chain filing technique, carrying on about how nobody knows how to sharpen chain anymore, how my cutters were all beat up, etc. In point of fact the chain was square-filed race chain with the back of the cutter removed, the top of the tie straps relieved for chip flow, etc. His ignorance was excusable, but his attitude was not. I don't shop there anymore.

Kim: Stop, look, burrow, stop, look, duck under benches, stop, look, move things around. That's how you find the great deals. I just scored a relatively unusual tree peony (had to go to the forum for ID) for 1/2 price by moving all the herbaceous peonies away, going in about five pots deep, and glimpsing different foliage. Snagged stockings notwithstanding, it made my day. To know if a plant has a chance of taking, look at the roots. No nursery, not even HD or Lowes, will care if you pop the plant out of the pot. The roots should be a creamy or white color, shouldn't be more root bound that once or twice around the pot (trim before planting) and should NOT have ANY critters in the soil. Hostas, Dicentra, etc. that are beginning to look funky now still have good roots in those pots! The nurseries know that without good looking tops they won't sell for full price but We Know Better. LOL Think of what the plants in your garden look like -- potted plants may be a few weeks ahead so Check the Roots. Look everywhere and every day. Just a five minute stop at the supermarket may elicit a gem on the markdown table. An in and out at Ocean State Job Lot this morning found all roses marked down to seventy-five cents. How can one go wrong? And, for $1, if you plant three in November and only one lives, you've still gotten yourself a good Yankee bargain :-) Martie

Learn about propagating by cuttings, and ask friends about sharing their plants. Even if you buy additional plants, you can do the same propagation as well. I also sometimes look for plant pots that look like they would have 2-3 separate plants (herbs and other soft-stem plants/flowers seem to do this more often), and when I transplant them, I split them up accordingly. Some seeds that germinate and grow well with direct planting are zinnias and marigold. They also self-sow for the following year. Also keep an eye out for perennials on clearance (like your phlox). The bloom is over and the plant may look a little ragged, but being that they are perennials, you can often keep them alive with TLC that the store couldn't provide, and they will return next year for you. For some of the space between plants, you might want to mulch it also. That just depends on the look of the area you are going for.

I take forever to do most things, especially when spending money, since I only want to do them once with no regrets. I met a gal from a local kitchen place at a building show, and made an appointment with her to discuss the kitchen for my new house. It became very apparent that she wanted to zip through everything, and she was on a commission. I had an appointment with a kitchen designer at the lumber yard we used in our build (professional, but not very personal), and spent some time in a couple of other local kitchen design businesses (one never got back to me, and the other wouldn't let me look at the cabinet catalog on my own). I then went to HD, where I could make as many appointments as I needed to make up my mind, get printouts of the design and a detailed price list of every item every time, and I never felt rushed. We'd used a different HD for an earlier kitchen remodel (I had to keep checking the order, since at the time their old computer design program had some defaults it kept throwing in--also, the gal kept getting interrupted because she had to answer the phone several times, so that probably caused some of the mistakes). But answering the phone seemed to cause interruptions for kitchen designers in every place. My son used a 3rd HD when I helped him remodel his kitchen, but he used a local flooring place nearby. In all 3 Detroit metro HDs (and a Lowes), I'd spent a fair amount of time wandering around the kitchen department overhearing the salespeople working with other customers, So I knew who the knowledgable salespeople were when I got ready to choose the ones for us. Long after each kitchen was finished, these salespeople would still stop and have a brief friendly conversation when I was in their HD. At the non-HD places, I don't think anyone would have recognized or acknowledged me again, because they were always too busy. It may sound odd, but my 3 big box people seemed more neighborly (not a requirement for a kitchen designer, but nice nonetheless!), in spite of what you might expect to be an impersonal large store. We got all of our appliances at HD, because they were the only place that had the new GE induction cooktop to look at when it first came out (I never did see it at our local high end appliance stores), and we got a great price on it, plus a GE discount on the rest of the Profile package. We did use 2 different local businesses for our countertops, since both had been recommended by people we knew, and they both had lots of choices that the big boxes didn't have. We used a local flooring place, because they had choices of every cork manufacturer, and let me bring as many samples home as I wanted to! No other store could match this. They cost more, but we were willing to pay for the service I'd gotten. Bought the door/drawer pulls at Restoration Hardware. Bought the tile from local stores. So, in a nutshell, I looked at everything every place, but choice, service, price clarity, and the ability to take my time and look at everything, comfortably without feeling like I was using a salesperson's precious time, determined where I bought all of my kitchen things. Anne