I sow pumpkin seeds by hand because I don't space them very close together. How close you can space them depends on the variety and the vine's ultimate size, how fertile your soil is, how much moisture you have, etc. I actually get away with planting Seminole more closely than other varieties because I let them climb the garden fence, which is 8' tall. For me, Seminole is an end-of-the-season space filler that I often plant at mid-summer as other crops are coming out, so the spacing depends on what space is available. One Seminole pumpkin, for example, can put out vines that run 15-30' in all directions when there is fairly fertile soil and adequate moisture available. If you plant too many pumpkins they will climb all over each other and every other plant you are growing, so take it easy with the pumpkin spacing. You can crowd some plants and get away with it (I plant tomato plants closer than I should in order to get huge harvests all at one time for a very intense/heavy canning period of 1-2 months, for example) but with rampant vining plants, too many plants in too small of a space can backfire on you by burying everything else you're growing underneath their foliage. Unless I am planting pumpkins to trellis up a fence (my Seminoles usually climb the fence and then, if I have planted them near a fence line that has trees beyond it, they'll climb the trees), I space them 6-8' apart. If I am letting them climb the fence I space them as closely as 1' apart along the fence, but that is because their growth will be mostly vertical, and when the vines try to head off in multiple directions on the ground, I train them to climb the fence. You cannot grow big huge pumpkin varieties on fences or trellises, but Seminole grows just fine that way. With varieties that produce larger pumpkins, the vines have got to have enough ground and water to supply the rapidly enlarging vines and pumpkins with adequate nutrients and water. Otherwise, you'll end up with a lot of vines but with a poor harvest because all of them are fighting each other for the available nutrients and moisture. A pumpkin variety like Small Sugar Pumpkin can produce well, as Seminole does, with somewhat closer spacing but a pumpkin variety that produces larger pumpkins needs larger spacing. Read the variety description for whatever variety you're going to grow and base your spacing on what is recommended for that variety. If you plant too many vines too close together, poor air flow also can aid in the development of foliar diseases that can kill your plants before you get a single pumpkin. You have to think about your spacing in terms of what gives you a healthy, happy plant and not in terms of what will give you the most pumpkins. Planting too many plants too close together will backfire and will give you a poor harvest, especially here with our heat and humidity but often low rainfall in the summer months. Pumpkin vines (and all vining winter squash varieties) need a lot of water to maintain the rapid growth of the large leaves. That water does not necessarily fall from the skies here in July and August at a high enough rate for the pumpkins/winter squash to get the kind of growth they need, so be prepared to irrigate. Drip irrigation or soaker hoses are both because they put the moisture in the ground for the plant roots and not up on the foliage where fungal diseases then will grow. In 2011, which was a painfully hot and dry year, I planted Seminole pumpkins in two different areas, where they were interplanted with sweet corn. With very little rainfall (about 12" total from January through late August), the plants had to fight for survival. I watered them as well as I could, but the extreme heat (high temps above 100 for about 90 days and often above 110 for a shockingly long period of time in July and August) kept their growth limited. When rainfall returned near the end of August and we then had good autumn rainfall in Sept and Oct, the vines took over about 1000 square feet of space and produced a very bountiful harvest just before frost. I think I had 4 to 6 Seminole plants that survived the drought and heat long enough to fill up that 1000 s.f. area. They climbed their trellis, they climbed all the corn plants, they climbed the fence, they ran out into the dry pastures of dead or dormant grasses beyond the fence, they filled up the dry retention pond bottom, they climbed about 100 tomato cages whose plants had long since perished in the drought. Get the picture? Those plants were spaced 8' apart that year. In a dry year, I space them further apart so they don't have to fight each other as much for moisture. I watered very heavily in June, July and August just to keep them alive. It was so hot for most of the summer that a person driving by and looking at the stunted plants likely would have thought I wasn't watering them at all, but I was watering very heavily about 3 times a week. The abnormal heat was just sucking all the moisture out of the ground and the plants struggled to survive. If you plant too many of a vigorously vining C. moschata type, it will bury everything underneath it on its rush to world domination when it has adequate moisture, but some years it is very hard to give them adequate moisture. With any variety that is not C . moschata, in our climate that sort of crazy, rampant growth is rare because usually the squash vine borers kill it before it can get big enough to spread out and really grow (or produce a single pumpkin). However, I grew many varieties of C. pepo and C. maxima for 6 or 7 years before the squash vine borers discovered we had moved here and planted a garden. It was great while it lasted, but once the SVBs found us, I switched mostly to C moschatas. Every now and then I'll grow green-striped cushaw, which has some tolerance of SVBs, or one of the warted pumpkins like Knucklehead, but I have to fight the SVBs hard just to get a pumpkin or two from Knucklehead. So, if it sounds like I am encouraging you to use wider spacing, I am. Planting too many of these monster pumpkin vines will give you fewer, smaller pumpkins, not more of them. If you have too many pumpkins on too many vines fighting for too little moisture, you run the risk of losing the whole crop unless you have an endless supply of water. It is always better to start small with just a couple of pumpkin vines, and see how that goes your first year or two. Once you learn how much space they need to grow and produce, then in another year you can plant more. Planting too many in your first attempt at growing them almost always ends in disappointment. I had been gardening for 15 years as an adult (and even longer as a child in a gardening family) before I ever planted a single pumpkin plant in my own garden because my city garden before we moved here was too shady for them and too small. Because I was a very experienced gardener, I understood what kind of spacing to use. I had grown some of the mini-pumpkins, like Jack-B-Little, back in Fort Worth, but those are tiny pumpkins that are easy to trellis. I am worried you're going to plant way too many plants and ruin your own chance of getting a nice harvest.

Any solutions to this? I am having this problem too - the tiles just above the fireplace center are falling off (have repaired once to have it happen again). I suspect the high heat rising up and out the top of the fireplace is causing the wall to expand and contract slightly so that it weakens the mortar and the tiles fall off. Is that possible? Is there a special high heat mortar/mastic? The fireplace manufacturer said: The area above the fireplace will get warm, warm enough that you may not want to touch. It is still safe as the area can reach temps of 325 degrees and still be safe. On the tile coming off, [fireplace co] has not had issues like this before. Please make sure that the area of “non combustible” around the fireplace was properly faced over with a non combustible facing and your tile person is using a mastic that will work in high heat areas.

Not sure why this is in the "Marriage" forum, as it's not really about your marriage, but anyway. IMO you have some justified complaints and some not, and some issues that could have been handled way better. Who cares whether your Mom made a good/bad decision to move? It's disappointing she seemed more excited about that than about your impending marriage, but then you knew you aren't high on her priority list. So, just blow it off as more of the same way it's always been. Paying for the rehearsal dinner? Your fiancee (note spelling for female person) should never have got into any sort of discussion let alone fight with your mother regarding this. Demanding that someone host an event for you, whether you think it's traditional or not, is beyond rude. If your mother had been disinclined to pay, then (as I'm guessing you're supporting yourself and not dependent on your mother) then _you_ and your fiancee should have decided to pay. If your mother felt $2,500 was beyond her means, as the host paying for the dinner, it is her prerogative to have a hotdog cook out in her backyard if she so wishes. If you don't want a guilt trip, short circuit her and pay for it yourself. Why did you pay for ten people who didn't RSVP? You should have set an RSVP date early enough to change the numbers so that if someone isn't coming then you let the caterer know the adjusted figure. And expecting a gift just because you sent an invitation is rude on your part. No one is ever obligated to give a gift. It would have been nice, but not compulsory. In fact, if I was invited to the wedding of someone I didn't know well (as an acquaintance of their mother) I'd probably just send a card with best wishes if anything, as I'd feel it was more of a fishing expedition for gifts rather than a genuine wish to share a happy day with them. Yes, it's rude of your cousin to invite himself to stay at your house, unless you already have that sort of relationship (which it sounds like you don't). Just tell him it isn't convenient. No need to go into reasons, or whine that if he can come for football why not your wedding. It will only engender bad feelings. Even married mothers of four understand and appreciate the concept of "sexy"- how do you think they got to be mothers of four? If your concept of older women is poker-faced ice queens, boy are you in for a rude awakening. I'm not saying they are raunchy sex crazed fiends, but most of us have been around the block a few times and between ourselves have slightly franker conversations than we might with our children. Was your MIL offended?

Dear fellow decorators, Thanks so much for all your responses! I knew I could rely on you guys. Thank you very much for the inspiration pictures, "jejvtr." I absolutely love them, and the look depicted in all three of them is pretty much spot on what I was envisioning. However, I am realistic and I know that our end result will probably not match what is in these pictures, because yes, the stretches of brick to the left and right of the main flank of brick are uneven. Also, I could remove the hearth, as you suggest, "egganddart49," but there are electrical outlets on both sides of the hearth, so I am certain removing the hearth would require electrical know-how, and DH and I are not up to snuff with that. I don't mind having the fireplace as the focal point, anyways-it's inevitable, and with a nice large painting above I think it can look nice. "Jakabedy," our house is actually a two story traditional colonial built in 1940. I do appreciate the MCM style, although our family room is not that. It was an addition consisting of a family room built on a concrete slab with a new master on top. I think whoever did it just took various elements popular at that time (floor to ceiling fireplace, large patio windows, wooden paneling, etc.) and mashed it all together. Cheers, Anna