Begin by mapping on paper the usage of the back yard, including any natural pathways. Think carefully about sun exposure and how you can use it to your best advantage, and the areas where you need to control the exposure. Hardscape should come first, with materials that mix well with your house materials, style, and colors. Budget and practicality are important. Your two year old twins will go through many childhood phases rather quickly, and your garden is small, so it makes sense to use an adaptable scheme and limit the number of segregated areas. My own kids had a paved area, a grass area, a dirt area, and a non-traditional "playhouse/fort" area built under an existing patio cover. This allowed for a multitude of play activities only limited by their imaginations. We had a planting area in the sunniest spot where I grew giant sunflowers and tomatoes, nothing fancy. When they were little we were on the go all the time, and actual gardening was a fairly low priority. To summarize: children are easy to please.

After a search on line for those names, it appears you have a Rieger (Hiemalis) begonia. Most of these are treated as annuals but you can overwinter them with limited success (in my limited experience with these). I would only trim leaves that are oviously bad but it shouldn't hurt to trim away leaves you find objectionable (as long as you keep a majority of leaves for growth). I think if you give them plenty of light then you may be able to keep them going. The few I've tried always kick the bucket sooner or later and I believe it is due to inadequate light and watering practices. They are great growers in summer but lackluster in winter under lights so it is not a huge deal if they go to the compost heap after fall. Here was mine from last year. It held on most of the winter but finally succumbed in March. R.I.P.

Well, I don't think the "10%" rule is true, Andrew, but certainly citrus will produce more fruit than they can support for sure :-) As John has mentioned, it's a young tree, it's in a container, and it's not at all unusual for a young tree to drop all it's fruit. It is trying to develop its canopy, and most young citrus trees know to drop fruit in favor of canopy development. Scott, if you'd post a few photos of your tree, plus let us know more specifics - potting medium, amount of water the tree is receiving, how often you are fertilizing the tree and with what, that will help us to give you a more certain answer. Patty S.

The word heirloom is bandied about a lot. Most people just take it mean old-time as per grungy's description. They can be true family heirlooms, or just old-time commercial releases like the tomatoes that A.W. Livingston introduced from 1870 onwards. Some people only mean family heirlooms when they use the word. In terms of growing, there's absolutely no difference between growing a tomato that was developed and released yesterday, and one that's been around for a couple of hundred years. As grungy pointed out, many modern hybrids are developed for storage and transport, taste kinda gets lost one the way. Since you're growing for your own consumption and don't really need to ship your tomatoes anywhere or cool store them for weeks on end, then I'd explore the heirlooms more. Many have superb flavour, and they variety of shape, size and colour is just astounding. As far as disease resistance is concerned, I haven't noticed, nor have I seen anyone report an appreciable difference between modern hybrids and the old-timers. For good choices for your zone, post your question on the tomato forum, where there are many very knowledgeable people only too willing to share their knowledge. Hope this helps.