The heat won't hurt the plants. Several of mine are sitting on concrete pavers in the full sun (under my clothes-line, actually). Heat helps the plant to produce the essential oils which give them their particular perfume and taste. The soil will never get to anything like the same heat as the concrete, or even the air around it. A bit of mulch (straw, pet hair, dead leaves, whatever) on top of the soil will protect the top of the soil and also help to prevent water evaporation if you feel it's needed. You can always put the pots up on little feet, available at your garden centre, or just on a couple of bricks or blocks of wood of the same thickness, suitably spaced so that the pots are off the ground and air can circulate underneath - this will also help the drainage. I've never found it necessary, even though it's possible to fry an egg on the pavers here in summer! Peppermint and spearmint, and most other mints have the same requirements. Check the plant labels for botanical names - Spearmint is Mentha spicata, and Peppermint is Mentha piperita. Spearmint is often called the Common or Garden mint (it's the one usually sold in the produce section of supermarkets) and has much paler and somewhat more rounded leaves than peppermint, and they are usually more dentated (more indentations around the rims of the leaves). Peppermint has quite dark green leaves and they are more pointed and thinner. The taste is a dead give-away - check after trying some spearmint and peppermint-flavoured toothpaste! The Finger Test is a rule-of-thumb method. Judge it by practice and experience. It's quite OK to leave your mint out in the rain (they'll love it! when I'm well and able to do such things, I rush outside to put all my pots in the rain if they aren't already there - some I have under cover) and even to flood them to overflowing when hand-watering, as long as you've got good drainage, so that the excess water can get away quickly. The larger the pot, the more soil you have in it, and the less frequently you'll need to water. A good, thorough watering once or twice a week is far better for your plants than frequent mouthfuls anyway. Just make sure, when doing the Finger Test, that it never feels dry at finger tip. It should feel cool and moist at all times under the surface of the soil (ie around the roots). Terracotta pots will need a lot more water than plastic pots because the water evaporates through the pot. I have mainly plastic pots, but a couple of heavy concrete ones. I just rely on my trusty finger for all of them! If you use a good quality potting mix, you don't need perlite or anything else added to it. Just never let it dry out, and when the plant gets potbound, and the level of the soil shrinks, just repot with fresh soil, or top up the level with more potting mix, or better still a mixture of potting mix plus compost (you should be able to buy compost in bags - get general purpose compost, not mushroom compost). This will replace the nutrients that leach out from pots. You can use just compost if you want. Proportions of soil/compost for pot topping up isn't important. Water it in and Bob's your uncle.

Yay! Someone likes my bathroom! You have no idea how I had to fight contractors et al to see my vision! Unfortunately, my vision has things like floating cork flooring.. (no glue down, as the rep from Torleys told me that the trapping of moisture is more likely with glue down), to slate, that everyone told me would need to have the heck sealed out of it continuously (turns out it's on a "need-to-do" basis, probably every 6 months to 1 year). I sealed the slate 3 times, twice with a paint roller LOL, just to make sure it was sealed. It's so sealed, I can't wait for some of it wear off the 2" x 3" tumbled slate floor. It's a little slick, when you add shower gel (no bar soap allowed in our bathroom now, as it adds oils that you don't want to build up). For 3 months after we bought the slate, and before it was installed, I had literal nightmares over the fact that I thought it was going to be COMPLETELY black in the shower.. it's not!! We added one shower light in the middle of the shower, just to calm my nerves, and I am very glad I did. It highlights every aspect of the lovely stone, without glaring at all. The picture above is with natural daylight on a snowy day, so you can see how NOT dark it is! The other "issue" we had with the slate was that it was/is randomly thick. Some were 1/2", some were 3/8" thick, and some were over 1/2" thick. The blacker tiles are harder stone, and of course the reds/oranges, are less so, but still we were able to cut them down even as thin as 3/4" for trim around the window. None of the strips snapped. The slate is called African Gold, made in India. It truly is the hardest slate I have seen. So far no shaling off of pieces and no crumbling. The worst thing if there was anything bad with it, was that two boxes we bought were completely cracked in half, but we used them in the archway (that is a foot too high.. long story!) Originally the door way into the shower was far more of a "hobbit" style, but I was vetoed, and I caved.. last time that happened on this job! We do have a window in the end of the shower, but the glass is a textured?/frosted glass, so the outside light is muted somewhat. I did have a moment of worry, once the slate was up, and knew that the paint colour would darken the room somewhat. To a degree it does, but all in all the room is cosy, warm, and a million times better than the room we had! And it has a... door! Our old bathroom had a bifold closet door for a door, and it sucked! The alder door we have now is a perfect compliment to all the "golds/warms" we have. The bathroom, although gutted to the outside walls is no bigger than it was before, but it seems miles larger now. It's still 9' x 5'. Our laundry room is part of the bathroom, but separated by a stud wall. A piece of advice..don't try and do too much in such a small space! Our machines are stacked, ginormous, and ate up every inch of the space I had intended not only for washing clothes, but also the storage cabinets that I now cannot install! Ah well.. I'll just fold on the lovely new Desert Gold granite in the bathroom! I do hope you do what feels right, what you want, and most of all..what you love. I may sound like I just blundered my way through, throwing my weight around with demanding certain products, but not one of the items in that bathroom was put in without the "OK" of either tile experts (who greatly informed me on my choices, products, and practicalities), to visiting many many sites, stores and product lines when it came to the cork/paint/lighting. If I had not recieved the go-ahead from the proper people, none of these items would be in the bathroom. There will always be debate on all these products, but heck, I am old enough that these things will outlast me! After that, who cares? LOL Once we have baseboards up, towel bars installed, we're throwing a bathroom warming party.. you're more than welcome!

My main prep space is a 30" stretch of counter between the cooktop and the sink. Once I start working in earnest, I don't like to have to move far from that spot, just shift over a step to sink or stove. Always out is a cutting board (14" x 18"), held steady by a piece of that foam-fabric shelf liner stuff. Always lined up against the wall in front of me: - utensil crock [most-used utensils only] - bottle of olive oil - salt dish - pepper mill - butter bell - small utensil crock [measuring spoons, peeler, scissors] Between the cutting board and the line-up, there's a spoon rest. My motto is "be ready to cook". Nothing is out on that counter that isn't used daily, often several times a day. There's plenty to get out when preparing food without also having to get out the "infrastructure" every time. When I need something while prepping and cooking, I either reach for it right in front of me, or get it from the assembled ingredients behind me on the worktable [I'm pretty much of a "mise en place" cook]. The less-often-used utensils are all in the top drawer under the stove, in one layer, viewable and reachable at a glance. I hate riffling! It helps that I don't have many electric appliances; the immersion blender and coffee grinder are in cabinets, the little toaster and small microwave are on the worktable with a bowl of onions and garlic. The induction unit lives on a cookie sheet covering a rear burner on the gas stove, leaving three gas burners free -- a dirt-cheap way to get a "hybrid" cooktop.

lavendar lass, as several of us have said, soapstone requires no sealing. But there still seems to be some confusion over whether it requires any maintenance at all...oiling/waxing for example. I guess I hesitate to say this is THE authoritative answer, because I'm no authority. But it is what all of my research and reading on this forum and elsewhere told me about soapstone. You don't have to do nothin' to 'em. Remember the stone chemistry tables in high school? Those were soapstone. All kinds of bad stuff spilled on them. Nothing happened to them. Soapstone is extremely dense and nonporous, and at least one source called it "inert", meaning it doesn't react to anything. That's not quite true, though. The one thing it does is oxidize over time. That's why most soapstones when first cut out of the earth are a medium to light grey, sometimes with blue or greenish tones. But over time, even the lightest soapstones will tend to darken as they oxidize (react to oxygen). Because some people LIKE the darkened and someone more uniform look of old soapstone, they use oil, wax or a combination of both on it to hasten the process. Typically, it'll need to be oiled every week or two for the first couple of months. Then it needs oiling only very infrequently to never to stay dark. Some folks LIKE the lighter, unoxidized look. They don't oil or wax their soapstone at all, but probably scrub it down more often to remove any accumulated oils from cooking or touching it that are speeding up the natural oxidation process. It's unclear to me if they can keep it light forever...my understanding is no, but with effort it can probably be kept light fairly long. SO...if you like it dark, you can do minimal treatment to get it there quickly and then, almost never have to do anything again but wipe it off. hope this isn't too wordy or too technical and that it helps. I think, by the way that soapstone on either your perimeter counters or your island would look fabulous with the look you've finally (grin, here) decided on!