Dorothy, How wonderful that Glenn is so close to retirement and that y'all will be able to have the greenhouse....what fun! I bet you'll be able to grow anything you want within reason...though probably not melons or southern peas and other heat lovers. You know, if you wanted to heat it, I know Randy has mentioned before that he heats his with a wood stove. The cats are big brats. When I first start seeds, they want to lay on top of the clear dome over the freshly-seeded flats. I just squirt them in the face with water in a little spray bottle and, if that doesn't work, I add a drop or two of TKO orange oil or Realemon lemon juice because they don't like it. After they are spritzed in the face a couple of times, they mostly stay off the plant shelf and away from the plants....as long as the plants are not catnip or catmint. When I transplant catnip and catmint into the ground, I put tomato cages over them so the cats can't squash the plants flat before they have a chance to grow. Once the plants are tall enough that they are branching out, I remove the cages and the cats occasionally find the catnip or catmint and roll on them or chew on them, but they really don't hurt them too badly. I try to keep the door to the guest room closed when the plant shelf has plants on it, but sometimes other people in this family leave that door open and then I have to scold the human being who left it open and the cats who seized the opportunity to go explore the plants on the seed-starting shelf. I have one cat who likes to bite seedlings off, especially while they are quite small. So, even though it is only one cat who usually misbehaves, they all are basically banned from the guest room from Feb.-May. Heaven help us when a guest actually comes to visit during that time, because they have to be reminded (nicely, of course) to close the door to the room when they leave it. LOL The cats are not a problem during the day because they spend their days outside, but they have to be inside the house or garage at night to stay safe from predators so sometimes they get into the plant room and have a little kitty cat wild party. I used to leave them on the screened-in porch all night and they liked that, but then a racoon tore a hole in one of the screens to come inside after the cats (Tim got the raccoon before it got a cat) and that was the end of them using the screen porch as a sleeping porch. Dawn

Bon, I'm glad he's feeling better, even if he is bouncing off the walls. I hope it is warm and rain-free today so maybe he can play outside and enjoy feeling better. (In my perfect world---the one that exists only inside my imagination, it would rain only at night so we could work outside during the day). Thirty-five degrees is awfully cool. Have y'all reached your average last frost date yet? Lisa, I've been watching the 5-day and 7-day Qualitative Precipitation Forecast all week. A few days ago it was showing really great rainfall totals over much of OK, especially central OK, and every day for the last 2 or 3, the amount it is showing is dropping. I still think y'all will get some good rainfall, but I'm not sure it will be as much as the forecasters once thought. The same is true for much of the state. For all my complaining the last few weeks about wet soil, we have had a lot of drying in the upper few inches of the soil during all the hot, windy days when the rain kept missing us. There's still good moisture about a foot down. I know this because I removed the low tunnel from my onion bed (the leaves were hitting the netting, which meant it had to go) and when I pulled the rebar out of the ground, there was a giant sucking sound from that deep moisture. Unfortunately, up in the raised bed where the onions are growing, it is a lot drier. Now I'm worried our wet-so-far year may be changing back to more skimpy rainfall. I have been watching the soil moisture measurements falling on the Mesonet map and felt they did not reflect our reality at our house until, suddenly, now it seems like they do. I hate that. On the other hand, the reason I've gotten so much garden work done lately is because it has dried up. Now, I guess, I need for it to rain again which will help the plants but probably will put me behind schedule on the back garden, where I hope to get a lot done before the heavy rain arrives, which is expected to be Sunday here, though maybe not until Sunday night. We never seem to get the rainfall we need when we want it or need it, but maybe y'all are finally going to get a break before Lake Hefner turns into a desert. I think Lake Texoma is down about a foot, but that's not too bad all things considered. I've been on a sapling-killing binge too---mulberries, hackberries, elm and oaks. I can blame the oaks on the squirrels, I guess. On these windy days the adjacent woodland has rained down tree seeds, flowers and pollen on me and the garden all day long. I mean the stuff is swirling around in the air like snow. I don't ever remember being showered by so much tree debris in the garden before while working. I pick up every elm seed I see lying on top of the soil when I'm weeding, figuring I can pick up the seeds now or pull the young trees later. Carol, I bet you're right about your soil generally staying too wet for herbs. I have found that most of the ones I grow really like to be high and dry within reason. My soil still is too heavy for thyme to grow, even in raised beds, since we sometimes get really heavy rainfall. I just grow what I can in the ground and put the rest in containers. I have transplanted all the big tomato plants that I'm going to plant into the ground and am holding the rest for the Spring Fling. Those are the ones started from seed on Super Bowl Sunday and then in the second round about two weeks after that. I have tiny plants from a third round that have not done as well. They just won't grow. It is vexing. I don't know whether to blame it on the constant cool, cloudy weather they had to grow in virtually from the day they sprouted or if it is the growing mix (I potted them up into Miracle-Grow Moisture Control, which worked great for the earlier seedlings, but not for these....and I think they went into mix from a new bag which might explain why they are underperforming). Most of these plants are only 2-4" tall, but Ildi is only 1" tall and has been for about 3 weeks. Their color has been off, which isn't unusual for very small seedlings, but usually by the time seedlings are 5 weeks old they are much bigger and have great color. I think something in the soil-less mix is out-of-whack but haven't had time to do anything about it. I'm contemplating planting some of these tiny plants directly in the ground to see if they will grow better in real soil and then potting up the others into soil-less mix from a new bag. I was busy with so many seedlings during seed-starting and potting-up time that I didn't want to mess with chasing down all the ingredients and making my own 5-1-1 mix, but now I kinda wish I had taken the time to do it. I don't regret breaking the tomato list into thirds and planting in three rounds as it helped me feel like I could take my time transplanting tomato plants into the ground at a slow, steady pace instead of rushing to get all of them into the ground quickly before they got too big. I just wish the third round had grown as well as the first two. Since we have had some sunny days lately, the tiny tomato plants' color has improved somewhat but their growth hasn't. If they were the only tomato plants I had, I'd be losing my mind worrying about what is wrong with them. Instead I'm just taking a reasoned response that "sometimes this happens" and will see if I can get them to start growing better and looking better. I've had mixed results with peas. Of the batch I pre-sprouted and started in paper cups, some are doing great in the ground and others are struggling. They're in a bed that runs west to east and all the happier plants are at the west end. The garden runs downhill from west to east, so I'm wondering if the plants at the east end are staying too wet even in their raised bed. I noticed while weeding yesterday that the east-west running onion bed, which also is a raised bed and sits even higher in the garden is exactly the same. At the drier west end, the ground is hard and crusty at the surface and I couldn't just pull weeds out---I had to use a small weeder to break the soil surface and then I could pull the weeds out. About midway down the bed as I moved further east, though, the soil became progressively wetter at the surface and I could yank out those weeds there quite easily. Even in my pathways between raised beds you can see where the garden effectively changes from drier to wetter soil. In the drier areas the mulch is a lighter color and in the wetter areas it is darker and even looks wet. I really enjoyed yesterday's weather. It actually felt like April when I walked out the door. Our high was only 73 compared to the previous day's 87 and it was so much more pleasant to be outdoors that I was out as late in the day as possible. I have to be in before dark because so much of the night-roaming wildlife is not something I want to run into, but I just barely made it in before dark. An hour or two later I was out on the front porch calling the name of a cat who apparently decided to stay out all night and saw the biggest skunk in our driveway that I've ever seen. It was bigger than any coon I've ever seen and we have had some fat, corn-fed coons some years. I joked to Tim that if the cat doesn't come in this morning, we'll know the skunk ate him. It was a really, really big one. We've also had some really huge possums this year, so I guess the mild and wet weather we've had the last few months really agreed with them. Now, I'm headed out to the garden in a minute for what I hope is a full day of getting things accomplished before the rain arrives. Dawn

I've never heard of All Weather Architectural Aluminum. Looking at their website, it is very exciting to see that this is a local family-owned company. Other aluminum windows available in the San Francisco Bay Area are Fleetwood, Western Window Systems, Blomberg, and Milgard (more budget-oriented). If you want to have a more energy-efficient home, then you'd be better off with wood windows. Both Marvin and Kolbe&Kolbe offer wood windows with a modern look. Suggest you check out your window candidates first-hand and open and close them and see how you like how they look and operate to help you with your final decisions. Another consideration is cost. Window manufacturers offer different standard sizes and some will upcharge more than others for non-standard sizes. So, you might want to do a cost analysis on your two favorite window choices. Lastly, you've selected your architect because you trust him/her, right? What would the reason be to not go with their suggestion? : ) Rhoda

Horizontal sounds good t me. If you had real wood planks they would be a lot longer than 36" and you would cut the ends. Make sure you have a skilled tile installer who can lay this out first, then cut. The cuts should be in the corners so it doesn't matter. Your real challenge is going to be making sure the variety of designs on the tile look right since you're cutting off a lot of design that was intended to make it look right. That can be accommodated by a skilled tile installer who knows to look for that. You'll also have a lot of waste to make it look right, but it will be worth it. BTW, not so odd to have the vanity in the bedroom in houses built in the 80's. It was a thing for some reason. Didn't seem very functional to me, but in my past I looked at a lot of houses that had that. Good luck on your project.