Yes, Glenda, aren't those rudbeckia outstanding? I'm going to plant a lot more for next year, and add a later planting so I will have some for later in the fall. They are already mostly cut and not coming back very fast. I put the tomatoes in the hoophouse because last summer was really chilly here and absolutely no one had ripe tomatoes until almost September. I pictured myself making a killing at the market this year. That didn't happen. This summer turned out to be a hot one and I didn't get the hoophouse up as soon as I should have. I had to vent the hoophouse in a big way almost every day and I didn't beat anybody to the market with tomatoes. Also, it turns out that I have a lot to learn about growing tomatoes. They look much better than they really are. The plants have been mostly healthy looking, but I've had a lot of blossom-end rot and some other disorder where the tomatoes develop slightly dark soft areas that get bigger as the tomato gets fully ripe. As a result I have had only four or five quarts of good tomatoes from all those plants. I'll do a better job of testing and preparing the soil next year, and hope for better yields. I added only a small handful of bonemeal to each planting hole this year. On the plus side, I've had no late blight or other nasty diseases, so I haven't done everything wrong. TM

I think I originated the thread breezy's referenced above, which started out asking a slightly different topic: "who can take credit for the design of your kitchen?" But I was very surprised to learn that (according to folks in the industry/"in the know" who participated in that thread) homeowners have given implicit permission to photograph our homes. Whether that is current practice/"the way it is," that does not feel right to me. I am a private person and I can't believe someone can photograph my own home without my permission. Wanting to photograph my home is flattering, theoretically, but to have my home photographed (and posted to something like facebook?!) without my knowledge? I would be upset. I don't think your architect has the right to do that (unless photography/use of project for portfolio/marketing is explicitly spelled out in your contract. It was not spelled out in ours.) As others asked, how small a town/easily identifiable is your home? I don't really use facebook now so it might be different, but I remember being absolutely shocked that I received photos/details about other people's lives (young children!) who I didn't even know in my facebook feed. Perhaps this makes me sound paranoid, but think how many people may have just seen the inside of your home or who may be "liking" forwarding those photos of your home. A blogger could find them and post them. Someone following that blogger could post your home to something like this forum or someone else could pick it up and post it to houzz.com. This is not supposed to happen theoretically, but photos are posted here all the time without identifiers/permission, (even innocently, like "here is an inspiration kitchen I found, what do you think that wall/cabinet color is?") Someone started a thread here to say she was surprised that a photo she had posted here to kitchen forum of how they'd organized their kitchen drawers ended up featured on houzz without her knowledge/permission. By commenting to your architect's post, anyone following now "knows" your name/who you are. Everyone has different comfort levels with internet privacy, but I would definitely feel uncomfortable. Here is a link that might be useful: Do you want your kitchen in someone's portfolio?

Gean, thanks. How's your Pacific Northwest garden going? Hello, Suzy! Thanks! About how I planned the garden, I don't think there was anything in my head that you don't have in yours. I wanted to grow all the plants I love that were suited to my conditions (acidophiles were excluded, for example) in a way that was appropriate to the frame: the Italian countryside. The semi-wild style that called for was exactly suited to my own taste in a garden and in garden plants. Those plants were also the kind that do well with minimal intervention on the gardener's part because they're adapted here (though I do continue struggling with Teas, and we have to go out after a big snowfall and shake the snow off the Italian cypresses and pines, native further south of here). In other words, as you say I honored the genus loci. The main novelty was that I needed to scale up, since this garden was many times larger than anything I'd done before. Also I had views to exploit. I put in a good many trees, including a lot of Italian cypresses since they give a lot of height for the space they take up, and planned on bulky volumes of hedges, beds, and pergolas. I wanted the garden to look good from a distance as well as up close and inside it. I drew up plans beforehand showing the major plants: trees, shrub areas, and rose plantings--lots of rose hedges--and the paths, allowing tractor access, and open areas. I planned the garden, not all at once, but in large self-standing chunks, and trying to ensure that nothing I did would stymie any future ideas. I'm pretty happy with it, though since we started with a poor barren field it will be many more years before it develops an adequate skeleton of trees and large shrubs, and it won't look complete until that happens. Faults and all, and it has many, the garden feels right. Garden design is like morality; you don't need quantities of baggage: just a handful of basic principles and you can deal with anything.

caflowerluver: I did not take offence. I merely wanted to mention that most of us today contain a large mix of genes. As far as "fooling around", I have a few in my closet in a joking manner. I have ancestors of whom I can not find a trace of a marriage record, mention in a journal, or any other indication. This doesn't prove they were not married; It only says there are no records to be found. Some of my ancestors were "on the frontier" and official accommodations were scarce. I probably have some common law ancestors as well. Some of my 200 yr old records are not readable and others have been lost in court house disasters. A number of court house records were lost during the Civil War. If a minister of the gospel performs a marriage ceremony, the couple is not "officially" married in the eyes of the law until the marriage papers have been filed at the court house. During pioneer days, the Minister might not get to the court house for 2 weeks to a month after the marriage. I have 2 mariage dates for my grandparents: one is the day of the wedding and the other is the filing date at the court house. if something happened to the Minister before he filed, the record could be lost. Relationships can get messy. I have a great grand uncle who lost his first wife and 2 children. He married again and they had several children and then she died while the last child was very young. Her sister stepped in, married the man, and they had children. In the same community, another man and wife had 4 children of their own and took in 12 orphans at various times. He adopted all the orphans so they took on his surname. That's got to be a mess in the gene pool to straighten out. Another mess: My gggrand father, after his wife died, married the sister of a brother who married his daughter. Oh my!