bgrow - Whenever I dig up and start to work a new garden box, especially after adding compost or manure to it, I place a piece of chicken wire over it. We also have skunks and raccoons who love to dig in soft dirt for grubs. I have made cages to fit my boxes (9 now - yes addictive it is), and they really keep all of the critters out whenever I don't want them in. The cages are made of 1/2 inch PVC water pipe, with wire on the outside. When the plants are bigger, I can remove the cages. The birds then are allowed in to clean out any bugs. The only critter that they don't keep out are the lizards that have adopted my garden, but they are great bug eaters. I see little damage from them. It would be impossible for me to grow anything without protecting my precious seedlings otherwise. Bejay

**Since we have about 30" to work with, I'm wondering if it makes sense to design it as a "hutch" look so the papers can go behind cupboards up top. There could still be a countertop for the phone, a notepad and misc paperwork. I loved the idea of drawers with outlets so the cellphones can be charged out of sight.** That totally makes sense. We're actually ripping out a small closet that's in the passageway between foyer and kitchen and turning the closet space into a built-in hutch that will be about 36" wide, so that there's a surface to drop things on (like mail) and a place to charge phones, etc., that isn't in the way of anything. I think a hutch style works really well for this purpose because it's versatile (it could also be used to store dishes and such), it can fit in a smaller space since no chair is required, and unlike a desk it can store things underneath. **So for those people without desks in the kitchen, where does your phone, day planner, papers go?** Phone: we only have cell phones. If we had a phone, it would live on the hutch described above. Day planner: when we have one (I'm sure we'll need one with older kids), it will either hang on the wall like a calendar or it will live on the hutch; we'll see what works best. Papers: mail goes into baskets that live out of sight in a corner beside the couch. One basket for each of us. We deal with mail in the living room, like so: junk mail is recycled or shredded (e.g., credit card applications are shredded), so we toss it into either the "recycle" or "shred" basket--those are fairly flat baskets about 4" high that live under the couch--and then deal with it (put it out for recycling or shred it) every couple of weeks. Non-junk mail gets opened, with envelopes and other throwaway bits tossed into the recycling basket and the important bits either dealt with immediately or put into folders that live in our mail baskets. This is hard to explain without a photo, but our mail baskets are just wide enough and tall enough for a manila folder to stand up in them, so there are a few folders standing up at the back of each basket, behind where the mail goes. I have a red folder for bills and anything else that needs to be dealt with urgently, a green one for financial stuff other than bills (e.g. bank statements), and so on. I suppose there will be a folder for mailings related to each child's education when the time comes. Periodically we take the mail baskets to our office filing cabinets and put away the papers that have collected in each folder, and then the whole process begins again. It works for us and all these baskets let us deal with stuff downstairs without taking up much space, and then carry stuff up to the office for filing. It also keeps our kitchen recycling from filling up too quickly, since all the paper from junk mail, flyers etc. is put in a recycling basket that hides under the living room couch, instead of into the kitchen recycling.

Our kitchen (addition on a 100 year old house) is 10" by 30". We don't have a peninsula and just have an eating area with an oval table at the end of the space furthest from our dining room. Our set up is that on one side we have a long L that is our primary work space. The range is on the short leg of the L, and the sink and lots of counters are on the long end of the L. Across the room we have perhaps another 6 or 7 feet of counters that then merge into a built in with a wall oven combo, a fridge, and a closet (this part opens into the eating area). So, this entire set up ends just about across from the end of the counters on the long L. Our main gripe is that, when we have people over, the passageway between the short leg of the L and the opposite counters can get congested. We did not just want to do a galley between the two walls, and the room size (width) dictated that the passageway is only 30". Wider would have been better, but it would also have meant either no L or else a really teeny short leg on the short leg of the L (ours is just under 6'). This is something I'd definitely think about if I were you. And, I really think a peninsula would only work in a situation similar to mine if the opposite wall did not have any cabinetry. Hope this helps.

OK Celine, after the whole foods parking lot video, I just will never think of quinoa the same way. Though I'll know how to pronounce it: rhymes with "bra". As it turns out, we crawled into the chocolate chip and pancakes camp. I've yet to make the granola. But dd1 insisted on making spice bars for a school potluck (to which I'm not invited? wha?) and dd2 needed to make choc chip cookies (though this hardly needed baking as all she wanted was the raw dough in truth) and there were some rotting bananas that I had to make into banana bread. Then it was father's day so verbotten meat (lamb) got roasted and eggs had to be scrambled because life without scrambled eggs is pretty close to a life not worth living....Last night, like mnerg, we actually had pancakes (p. 357, Diet 4 Sm Planet) for dinner; that's how syrup-starved we all were. We've been busy here today! And the other night we did the obligatory paper-on-the-cc-burner to great acclaim. The young, strapping hungry hombres just-back from the field had to settle on outdoor-grilled food because I couldn't quite tackle the new indoor beast at the time, but we all enjoyed the simmer-road-show. But truthfully, the very first thing that got made? It was boiled water for pasta. Isn't that pathetic? The second was to stew up some inedibly sour fruit. Funny how plebeian cooking turns out to be. Recipe for green chile stew? Here's for spice bars: boil 1 cp water and 1 cp raisins, remove from heat, stir in 1/2 cp apple sauce (or oil) and let cool; add 1/2 c sugar before all the way cool. Stir in 1 egg when cool. Sift tog dry ingred and add to wet above: 1.75 cp ww pastry flour, 3/4 t salt, 1/2 t cloves, 1 t soda, 1 t cinnamon, 1 t nutmeg (opt: chopped walnuts, 1 t allspice(ick)). Bake 20 min in 13x7x2 pan @ 375. When cool frost w/butter-cream: 2 cp confect sugar, 1/4 cp butter, 1 T milk, 1 t vanilla.