I am in a similar situation - 255 tulip bulbs. From online research and personal advice seeking, these will be my strategies: (1) Plant as late as possible. Mid-late October is average here in Ottawa, Canada. Early November is even safer. We have to wait until the squirrels' gathering season is over. Let them go after your neighbors' bulbs first. :) (2) Lay chicken wire on top of the entire bed. A 1" hex x 24" x 25' (50 square feet) steel chicken wire costs $9 in Rona. You can cover 100-200 bulbs with one roll. The flower will have no problem growing through the 1" hex. (3) Bury at least 6" deep. Cover the bed with mulch so the squirrels can't smell the bulbs or see the disturbed soil. (4) Delay the bird feeder to winter (and hang it far, far away from your tulip bed).

CMK, that is interesting about eggplant liking pots. I started planting a salad garden in pots and window boxes on my back deck a few years ago. I didn't really think about eggplant though. I'll have to try it this year. I find that leaf lettuce does very well in window boxes. I also grow baby cukes in pots and let them trail down the deck railings. I've also done peppers and tomatoes in pots. I mix in a few small pots of nicotiana (not near the tomatoes...does that really cause problems?? i've heard they should not be combined) so the hummingbirds come to feed. Woodyoak, how deep are the windowboxes you use to grow carrots? And which carrots do you choose to grow in them? I've been seeing more pictures of large pots in amongst plants in the garden and I think I may try to experiment more with that. Does anyone have pictures of pots fully incorporated into their perennial/shrub borders as a focal point? Also, does everyone in wintry climates bring their pots inside in the winter? Has anyone found a type of pot that does not crack with the freeze/thaw cycles of winter?

That's a tough one! Once we got started and picked our cabs, we wanted to find a granite that was beautiful in its own right, and complemented, but didn't detract from the wood grain on our cabs. Same thing when we looked for backsplash tiles--we didn't want ones that would steal the show from our granite or cabs. However, the initial things we built the kitchen around were gaining storage space, and gaining a bigger stove and a bigger fridge than we had in our old kitchen, while staying within the same sq. footage we had started out with (in the old kitchen). Doing that saved us a ton of money that would have gone towards building an addition. Also, the one thing I made sure we'd have, right from the early planning stages, was a feeding zone for our cats. Too many water dish spills made that an A-#1 priority in this house!

You're looking for what's called "black pipe" (because of it's color). It is traditionally used for gas supply lines. You'll find it in the aisle next to the copper, plastic, and galvanized (silver color) pipe. The most popular brand of pipe clamp hardware is made Pony although other companies make essentially the same thing. The hardware is available for both 3/4" and 1/2" pipe but most people use 3/4". Plastic pads for the jaws are also available to help protect the surface being clamped although scraps of wood can be used and some people fabricate their own pads. As mentioned before pipe clamps are popular because they're relatively inexpensive and can be made to almost any length, limited only to the pipe you have on hand. Woodworkers, in general, tend to be a frugal group. A variation on the theme are "bar" clamps, which use a steel bar in place the pipe. Like a pipe clamp, one end is fixed and the other moveable. The smaller bar clamps are often called "F" clamps because of their shape. They're available in a variety of lengths from about 4" to 36" for light to heavy duty applications and with a variety of jaw depths. The drawback to pipe clamps is that the jaws of the clamp doesn't say perpendicular to the pipe which can create problems when gluing up panels - a series of board glued together to make something larger (think of a table top). As pressure is applied, the boards want to bow slightly. The traditional way to deal with this problem was to use "cauls" which are pieces of wood clamped across the surface to keep the panel flat. Bessey developed K-body clamps which were designed to keep the jaws parallel. K-body clamps are fantastic clamps and unfortunately rather expensive (and generally worth the money). Other companies have introduced their version of the K-body clamp but I haven't used any of them. Another drawback to pipe clamps is that they have a relatively small jaw depth and for some applications, like a frame and panel door, that can create a challenge. Most of the K style clamps have a much deeper jaw. I might suggest buying clamps as needed (and depending on what you're doing, you may need a lot of clamps).