This is my first year for sfg, so I don't know about placement, but i have grown all of these. Basil gets bushier than you might expect - do not underestimate teh amount of room it needs.

Nasus, I'm so sorry to hear about the passing of your cousin. This really is a hard situation but for one you heard about his passing from other relatives, you really never know under what circumstances he might have said that. Sometimes things get misunderstood when passed around. Whatever the case is, I think that as his brother, whether they had a strained relationship or not, he has a right to know. I would put myself in his shoes. You know their relationship better than any of us here do, so ultimately the decision is yours. Have you decided?

I was actually thinking I wouldn't change much but maybe revive the wood with something? I have that Howard Feed N Wax and also some type of lemon oil for wood. I thought changing the mane would be a good idea since it's really scraggy looking. I considered adding DS's name to the other side but I don't love that mine's still there. It was neat as a kid, but my parents had a thing for putting my name on stuff. Of course, the only way to get rid of mine would be to fill and paint and I don't think I want to paint. I was going to save it for Christmas for DS but I think he'd really enjoy using it now.

Vintage orange floors here too! What worked for me was to just let it be what it was - using the right greens/blue greens seem to make the floor read more like a reddish brown which is a lot more palatable than orangie orange.. I second the advice to avoid dark expresso stains on the floor - not only does it show dust and dirt but like anything itll look dated in time and then what. When I redid my floors (the aforementioned vintage fir with its orange tendencies) I was advised to use a deep tone sealer (not a stain) to tame the orange tendencies and give it a beautiful tone. Also what I learned - very often its the OLD POLYURETHANE on the floor that's yellowed and taken on that sickly dingy color - not the wood itself! Which means taking that off, and putting on a clear non yellowing waterbase finish with or without the deeptone sealer could look FABULOUS. - the place I went to had all kinds of wood samples with different finishes I could take home and look at Now, are these old growth vintage wood floors? If so that's another reason to not stain - by totally obscuring the grain with heavy pigmented stain, you may be missing the opportunity to have some TRULY drop dead STUNNING floors. Cant really make out the grain/color too clearly from here, but you might post close up photos of the wood over on woodworking forum and see what they think.