"I have grown the Red Noodle Asparagus Beans. I found them to be aphid magnets (I mean COVERED with big fat aphids!), which, in turn drew ants. They are beautiful plants and incredibly prolific, no matter how hot it gets. Unfortunately, my family didn't much like the taste and the beautiful red beans turn ebony black when cooked, which are somewhat unappetizing to my group." There is a trick to restore most of the color... all it takes is a little vinegar. The vinegar will turn the cooked Red Noodle beans back to a burgundy red, and make a deep red sauce. If the vinegar flavor is too strong, you can pour it off after the color change. It's possible lemon juice would restore the red color too, but I haven't tried it yet (an experiment I will try this year). If eaten as a side dish, my family likes yardlongs seasoned with vinegar, soy sauce, and garlic powder. Yardlongs cook quickly, so for the best color & texture, don't over-cook them. You can blanch & freeze them too, but due to their low moisture content, they get freezer burn very quickly. I freeze the cut up beans first in plastic freezer boxes, then remove the frozen block & place it in a vacuum sealed bag. (Pre-freezing this way also reduces the chance of seal failure in the vacuum bag, caused by liquid & debris being pulled over the seal as air is evacuated.) The "hollowness" of yardlong beans can be caused by water stress - even if the plants don't show other symptoms. Yardlongs are at their best when the soil is not allowed to dry out. My best year ever for yardlongs was a year of record rainfall; while much of my garden languished during the flooding, only two things flourished - yardlongs, and edamame soybeans. I highly recommend a thick layer of mulch around yardlong beans, to preserve soil moisture locally at a high level. For me, this heavy mulch - along with frequent irrigation - makes the pods consistently longer & more succulent. When picking yardlong beans, be careful not to break off the delicate tip of the flower stalk. That is where new flowers will form, so if you treat those tips with care, you'll get a larger crop. About yardlongs & ants. The nectar given off by the by the extrafloral nectaries (the bumps on the stem below the flowers) attracts several insects. Ants are the most common, and are often the source of the aphid infestations, since they "farm" the aphids. These ants will defend the plants very aggressively, which is probably the reason the plants evolved to attract them. Generally, the ants are only an annoyance... I just thump the pods prior to picking to knock off the ants. But some years, carpenter ants colonize the vines, in which case I take measures to control the ants. But in my garden, wasps and ladybugs are also attracted in large numbers. This makes them great plants to maintain a ladybug population within the garden. If you purchase ladybugs, time their release for when flowering begins, to make them "stay home". Contrary to the hyperactivity of the ants, wasps feeding on yardlong nectar become very docile, almost as if they are intoxicated. I can move among the plants & harvest even when there are wasps there in large numbers. I was stung only once - when there was a wasp sitting on the back side of a pod I was picking, and I accidentally grabbed it. Even then, the wasp only stung me lightly, then flew back to the vines. Personally, I like to attract wasps, since they are valuable insect predators... but if you are allergic to wasp stings, you might not want to grow yardlongs. Yardlongs are just climbing cowpeas (Southern peas) that were bred for their pods instead of seeds, so all of the above pertains to cowpeas as well. Bigoledude, in your hot climate, there are two other climbing beans you might be interested in. Hyacinth beans love tropical heat, and as the name implies, have beautiful fragrant blossoms. There are both green and purple podded cultivars, I would recommend the purple due to their thicker pods. The pods are cooked & eaten much like snap beans... they must be picked young, though, before seeds develop. You might also want to try Winged Bean, which forms interesting 4-sided pods. Not sure how they would hold up, but they might make some really interesting pickles. The flowers, young leaves, and tubers of Winged Bean are also edible.

Refers to antibacterial soaps and chemicals that supposedly sanitize our hands but in reality kill the good along with the bad, thus leaving us naked without our little familiars or personal good bacteria working for us to combat the bad bacteria. While I appreciate the "Madison Avenue" issues, I'm not quite ready to return to the days when infant/child mortality due to amoebic dysentery, cholera, rheumatic fever, measles, and so on and so on was more than TWENTY TIMES what it is today. In Pennsylvania in 1912, the infant mortality rate (deaths per thousand) was 150. In 2012 it was 8. Both figures - 1912 and 2012 - include ALL deaths, not just those bacteria-borne ones. Nonetheless, "the good ol' days" weren't, and for the most part, are a fantasy no less "fabricated" by a DIFFERENT "Madison Avenue" than the fabrications of the chemo/pharmo shills. Sadly, in a world with such extraordinary access to information, it is harder to find THE TRUTH than it may ever have been in the history of human kind. We must all SEEK, and FIND, our own way in this world full of charlatans and snake-oil salesmen. Precisely why I do not share the infatuation with "all things worm", that some do. The TRUTH I find has been something less than "magic". And while I profoundly appreciate fermented food and drink - with all it's "good" little microbes - I have no illusion that the "good" ones will "win out" over the "bad" ones. They haven't throughout history, I don't know why they should now. What "wins" is a strong immune system, and when that fails, "you" die, regardless of whether you use "anti-microbial" soap or not. Paul

When we purchased the current house in 1996, it had the original GE builders grade dishwasher from 1985. It was very loud and didn't clean well, so we never used it. When the kitchen was remodeled in '06 we went with a new GE Profile dishwasher, as we also were buying a GE washer & dryer. That dishwasher only lasted us a year and was repaired several times (rolling racks and noisy water intake valve), but it cleaned fine. We replaced it with an Electrolux Wave-Touch, but only had it 60 days due to installation issues that could not be resolved, through it cleaned better than the GE. We were then without a dishwasher for about 2 years before we got a Miele Diamante Plus in 2009. In the two years that we've had the Miele, it has cleaned everything well. We don't pre-wash, but do rinse some dishes, pots/pans in the sink so piece of food would go in the garbage disposal, but we don't wash them with soap. On occasion, we will soak and hand-wash an item that may have heavy baked-on food, but that's like once or twice a week. Regardless, on the Miele we use the Normal mode or the Pots & Pans mode and everything comes out clean. Only use the China/Chrystal mode two or three times a year. The Express mode we don't use, since it only washes for 5 minutes and then does two 5 minute rinses (we found this 5 minute wash is not long enough to clean a full load). I check the bottom filter once a week and clean it out, but it hardly ever has anything in it.

I'm not sure what the going rate for installing tile is in your area, but in mine, I've found that it runs $5-7/sq ft (not including the tile, grout, thinset, etc.) which can easily run the cost up quit significantly depending on what tile you choose. The going rate for hardwood floors in my area (the sand and finish kind) is around $8.00/sq ft. Luckily, we are getting ours for around $6.50 sq ft because of a friend (4" red oak). Therefore, we are opting to replace all flooring that we can (with the exception of the two kids' bathrooms) with hardwood. It's cheaper, warmer, doesn't have grout lines to clean, and can be refinished if needed. I would seriously consider declawing the "puppy" and refinishing the wood floors. Changing out tile in the future will cost a ton in demo and I think that most buyers are fond of hardwood floors, with many HATING tile.