They certainly weren't discounted but out of 12 "Woodstock" Hyacinth only ONE came out advertised Maroon color. Out of 6 "City of Haarlem" none were advertised pale Yellow color. Disappointed with "color combo" plans gone amiss but more than overcome with their fragrance. Those purple tulips are gorgeous. ****What is that red foliage among the pink tulips??? Looks beautiful together. Does it spread enough to cover dying tulip foliage or do you overplant with annuals? Your plantings are so orderly and well plannned. I love it. Rjinga...don't you have any deer or rabbits who get at your flowers? Most of my tulips went into containers. Ones I planted in ground got the heck sprayed out of them with critter repellants. None were eaten but most of tulips in ground haven't bloomed yet. My late season discount impulse purchases have been about half bloomers. Don't know if I should toss ones that didn't bloom or hope for next year. Don't think it's worth saving them since don't even know what color or form they are and won't leave in garden since I already have misplaced bulb plantings! Guess I could plant them in some out of the way place and take what comes. A surprise flower or two in an unexpected place out back would be a welcome sight next spring. Amazing what one doesn't know with first year attempts even after reading what I could. Procrastination is not a gardener's friend...planning is.

I guess my perspective is a bit different. Maybe I've been more fortunate in the two GC's we've worked with. The GC for our initial remodel generally took responsibility for the work of any work that he arranged for. We never had a change order because one of the workers made a mistake that needed to be corrected. There was an allowance for cabinet hardware (pulls) and it would have covered a reasonable choice such as the Amerock pulls that we considered. We decided to use the larger Schaub higher end pulls which went over the allowance so we had to pay for that, but the original allowance wasn't out of line with good materials. He generally kept us informed of the plans for work ahead of time. He and his workers did a good job of ensuring that our home and the prior parts of the work were undamaged by work - e.g. putting hardboard down on the wood floors which we weren't replacing to protect them from cabinets and appliances being installed, doorways were masked whenever there was messy work. Before work started, they went through the house and asked us to take pictures down from the other side of walls they would be working on so I felt they were pretty cautious about taking care of our things. I can't recall any damage occurring. Junk or dirt was never left around at the end of each day. They would sweep the floor if necessary, consolidate their equipment into a part of the room we didn't need to walk through, etc. I guess I didn't notice whether they locked up when they left for lunch breaks and we weren't home. My husband is retired and I work from home so generally one of us was there. They had a key and did lock up if we weren't there at the end of the day. They weren't perfect. On the down side, we did from time to time notice something that they were doing that needed correction. We checked progress every day and let the GC or the worker know right away and they would correct it or explain satisfactorily why what was done was correct. Sometimes we would spot a potential problem before the contractor and workers were aware of it. For example, the back side of our island had a row of 12" wide cabinets facing the ends and 12" deep cabinets facing the back. It turns out that the cabinet manufacturer makes 12" deep cabinets a tiny fraction of an inch over 12" and the 12" wide cabinets are spot on so a small shim was needed to even them up. That broke down at the very end over issues with the vent hood. The roof jack they installed was too small for our high CFM hood and we felt that they hadn't mounted the hood securely. They didn't agree that either was a problem so we brought in an appliance installer who agreed with us and changed the roof jack and mounted the hood properly. The GC got in a huff and terminated the contract. All the rest of the work was pretty much done at that point (final inspection was complete) and final less than $2 K payment that we didn't have to make covered our costs for the appliance guy, roof jack, roofing guy and some minor paint touch up. While our spotting things and helping come up with ways to correct them saved them some time and cost, there were clearly times when dealing with such hands on involvement stressed them out.

I've used the Sunday paper insert places. Don't have need for a check printer anymore though. I last got them from the bank and will reorder through there if I need more, but I'm sure I won't. My last box cost about $4 for shipping and no charge for printing. Actually I got two boxes for that price since they goofed and started the checks at 1000 rather than 10000 as I ordered so I got the reprint free of course and the bank manager said to keep (and use if I want) the "error" checks. Which I did and will if I need more. I had to take a look at the last checks written in about the last year. Two to the plumber last September. One to the guy who shoveled for me this past winter and 3 medical bills that weren't set up yet in the electronic payment. I'll probably have checks left for my estate to use.

This interesting topic led me to do some looking around for more information. I learned that what I'd always thought of as the "machine readable" bank routing and account numbers at the bottom of the check came into use in the late 1950s. This system is called MICR, micro ink character recognition. Magnetic readers were all that was available at that time for this task so the numbers were printed on checks with magnetic ink. Reading that reminded me of yesteryear when returned checks had that the check amount printed at the bottom right of the check. This was presumably added by a machine operated manually by a bank employee actually reading the check. The banks and clearing houses then used mag reader machines (as described before in use at retailers) to process checks. Anyway, turn to today. It's not exactly as gardengirl described. The Check Clearing Act for the 21st Century, a federal law passed in 2003, provides that an image of a check IS a legal check and that the physical original check need not be passed through the system at all if an image is used in its place. That's why you can deposit a check using a smart phone or scanner, and why the bank doesn't return cancelled checks but rather makes an image available to a customer (readily obtained online). Bank records (also available online) can be used in place of actual checks for legal and tax purposes. When a bank receives a physical check as a deposit, it takes an image of the check (as well as the deposit slip, if the deposit took place in person) and destroys the pieces of paper. These images are what's available to see online when you access your account. So, to TG's information - stores using MICR readers are using technology that's over 50 years old. Checks DO NOT need to have magnetically readable ink. Yes, they're doing that to cut down on check handling but it's not their only alternative. Apple and Android Pay, other proximity (non-contact) cards are also available for use. Optical readers with OCR capability can also be used, just like every smart phone can do with a bank app. It will get to a point when retailers and other businesses won't accept checks.