Well.. I'm a former midwesterner now living in Charlotte NC, where it has finally cooled DOWN to about 85, and I finally do not feel compelled to water daily--although--we are in a severe drought so watering is a clandestine affair anyhow, and usually involves water salvaged from doing dishes or cooking pasta--so as to ease the conscience a bit... It gave me a chuckle to read that you thought 85 was too hot, just like last year it gave me a chuckle to hear Charlotte folks complain when it was 20 degrees one evening--and I said "that's ABOVE zero right? what's the problem??" I had spent the last winter in Fargo North 'duh-koah-tuh' (sort of like you pronounce 'duh bears')--so I had little sympathy for folks who thought 20 above zero was cold. Anyhooo--- enjoy your 80 temps-- you know they aren't long for this world up there in Chicago. **also** just because you CAN keep a plant producing doesn't mean you HAVE to. I pulled up several tomatos and peppers recently that were still producing and stuck in some herbs--cuz I was sick of them. Enough tomatos already! I loved looking at the photos of your roof garden!! Fabulous!!!! I'm a renter, who has moved to various states/regions the past few years and misses her old Wisconsin garden on her own property. More and more of my garden is in containers these days anticipating the next move. Its much easier to pop a pot in a trunk than to dig up a plant and try to make it live to the next planting spot. It was really neat to see how you had managed with a rooftop!! Very encouraging to the landless among us who cannot give up gardening no matter what life circumstances hit. Mary t

Marco, the concept of size and spacing comes up here a lot. It really comes down to a person's preference on adding and removing items to visually satisfy them on what they want to see. There are many folks who often times plant an area, dig it up a year or two later to change the look, then dig it up again two years later to change it again, etc. When this is done with flowers no-one seems to think twice. But when this same concept is done with trees many folks feel differently. For those folks, it is difficult to understand not wanting to plant a tree, give it space to grow to its normal mature size and shape, and then enjoy it in all its full grown glory. But there are two issues with doing that most people run into.... 1) Most people do not have the living space to grow hardly any trees to maturity much less have more than a couple in their yard. 2) Many people do not have the patience or desire to wait 10-15-20 years to see how that tree will turn out. So instead they choose to garden the way they feel fits their visual desires. Here's three garden variations of members from this forum - is one more correct than the rest ?? Will - He is in major collecting mode. His desire is to built a massive collection of as many conifer varietals as he can...the true collector. In order to do this he buys most of them at very young stages and plants them very close together so he can enjoy their beauty over the next 5+ years as they blend together and then is prepared to begin making decisions on moving or removing specimens as they out grow their planting beds. Myself - I would love to collect but do not have the patience or space to do so. I love unusual conifer varietals so I developed my residential landscape plan to fit as many of these unusual type specimens in as I could and still keep enough functional property space to do the other things I wanted to do in my yard. I tried to buy larger specimens for more instant gratification, was prepared to pay more for doing so, and have spaced my plantings wider than Will's but will also have to begin making decisions in the next 10-15 years on what will stay and what will go. I think Dave probably fits in this category with me as well. Dax - He is another true collector but has the space to plant his garden over a very large area, allowing him to space each tree far enough apart it will never have an issue with overcrowding. He also is an example of extreme patience because he plants mostly from seed or seedling and is willing to wait many many years to truly see the forest someday that will be the fruit of his labor. None of these three examples in my mind is wrong. All do what they need to do to enjoy their gardens. For me its all about growing things at all and keeping the planet green in any way possible and not about whether I killed a tree that outgrew my space. Off soapbox now mark

Heh, the gardening centers around here are useless. I asked the one that I thought would be most competent, Armstrong's, what I should do, and they recommend using copper for any fungus problem. I'm leary of copper, having had to write a long paper when I was in college about the Romans and their copper-glazed pottery and their mad emperors, so I'm going to pass on that. That's my only tip of the hat to being "organic," because, really, I'm not opposed to drowning them in Zyklon-B at the moment if it would do the trick. I'm planning to order some Mancozeb from Ebay, because I have heard that mentioned here as effective when Daconil doesn't perform. Mancozeb isn't apparently for sale to home gardeners here in California. Maybe that's actually a good sign. I don't care if I glow in the dark, heh. It may not be obvious from the pics, but I really think I have multiple problems. Early blight, yeah, but Septoria too, (that birdshot look) in some of the leaves, in particular on my Marianna's Peace) and something else where they were getting soft kinda fuzzy white spots on the surface of the leaves. I hate to sound like a hypochondriac about it, but this really did turn out to be a huge cluster**** this year. I am looking at the remaining green whips on my Burgudy Traveler and thinking of trying to go a couple of cuttings. I have tried the cuttings-thing before with nothing but wilted dead cuttings to show for it, but it might be my best option, because really they were the best tomatoes I grew this year. The Druzbas are hanging in there but they aren't particularly good tomatoes. My Eva Purple Ball has already passed on, yanked out by the roots to ripen in my garage because there weren't any suckers left worth trying to save. (Good news... my Arapaho blackberries are growing new canes like crazy all of a sudden... I had just about given up hope on them. The older canes are producing a few fruit, but they are big and quite tasty. Raspberries still to come...)

Thank you for all your responses. As far as lakedog's comments are concerned - Yes! I am upset! Whilst I agree that it was a rather sweeping statement I made about 'local' companies I feel that a national or larger company (that I might previously have thought would be disinterested) would have a 'brand' that it perhaps would care to protect. A more reputable company would also more likely have learned through experience the value of customer service and satisfaction, and perhaps also have a better developed contract that is less ambiguous! As far as your other remarks are concerned, as I explained, we had had a business relationship with this company (with many satisfied customers of our own) and in fact already had several of their windows in our own home for a few years, in addition to the 26 large windows they installed in our commercial building - with no problems. Personal experience trumps recommendations in my view! Their windows were not less expensive than those of reputable competitors so we certainly did not go for the 'lowest price', nor were there any 'discounts or special offers'! 'Being in a hurry' did not cause us to make this mistake - believing as you apparently do that "local people have to live with their mistakes so they usually go out of their way to avoid making them or are quick to take responsibility and make it right" did!! It seems many of us are guilty of generalizations of some sort! Hence my comment about local companies - I will never again assume that they have a greater interest in the quality of their product, service, or customer satisfaction than the larger well known companies. Each supplier will in future be judged carefully on its own merit, regardless of size - but now there sadly will be little trust of any company - how can there be if even extensive personal experience fails to protect us! I appreciate your good wishes but for now I remain sick to my stomach!