2 years ago I grew several different potatoes....white, red, and gold. I had 5 rows, 20' long. I hilled as much as possible. The rows looked great, but in the end, all the potatoes were near the bottom where the original seed potato started. I think it's a fantasy of mine that I can start a potato, and hill it high, and have potatoes grow up the stem. It hasn't happened yet, and this year apparantly I haven't learned because I started some container potatoes and I'm sure they are too deep. I allowed too much room for hilling. Maybe I'll just put another layer of soil over them and plant more seed potatoes on top of them.

Hi, I made a mistake when I went to consider my lawn. I think I have about 1/2 acre of lawn to mow. This was my first time and it was a new house. The professional guys were asking for about $US 100 a time to mow it. That pans out to $US 3,500 per year. Ouch. So muggins me goes an buys a mower and says to my wife I will do it. I mean for $US 3,500 a year it's got to be worth it.... right .... It turns out it takes me about 4 hours to mow my lawn. I have been at it like this for three years now. I was expecing it would take like maybe an hour. Fortunately I got a good mower, a Honda HRC 216 commercial and it works great. Did I choose the right mower, hmm not so sure.... the main issue for me was storage during the winter months. I am in the NorthEast. And that restricts the mower size. My recommendation is therefore this. Get a few professionals to come and give you a quote to mow your lawn. Get one of them to come mow it and see what they use and how long it takes them. I used to have a commercial guy come, but he used one of these 52 inch walk behinds and gets the job done fast. I only have room in my garage for a 21-inch, and hence it takes me ages. In your choice of mower I would consider the following: 1) Where are you going to store it? Not sure where you are but I only need to mow for 6 months out of the year. Get a machine that you can store. 2) Can you get a big machine around your yard? If so get the biggest one you can .... it will cut your lawn cutting time significantly 3) If your lawn is hilly with slopes go for a walk behind. If your lawn is flat go for a rider 3b) If a rider: Rather than a lawn tractor, I would recomend a Zero turn mower, these are much more manouverable although more expensive I also have a trimmer, Honda HHT 31. This I use for the super hilly bits and the jungle areas in my yard. Also to get to the bits of lawn which are too tight for even a 21-inch mower. Warmest regards, Mike.

i said it in my earlier post, but I will say it again. I would immediately walk based upon the quarry. As zone4newby pointed out, and as I tried to earlier, quarries can change. My own experience is another case where things changed. H and I did a great deal of due diligence prior to our last build. We checked the zoning of all the nearby properties within a couple of miles. We're in a semi-rural area. We made sure we understood exactly what could happen with each zoning classification. We thought we had it covered. What we did not know, and the county didn't tell us, was that years ago properties zoned for agriculture could dig rock (a quarry). Being new to the area, that was the question we did not think to ask. When the zoning changed some of those properties were grandfathered in to be quarries if need be in the future. None existed at the time of our build. Since then an old farm, a mile away, has discovered it contains a very specific type of rock needed to clean up some kind of superfund site in an adjacent county. This type of rock is some what rare. Five years ago or so, the lovely farm on the nearby hillside became a very active quarry. That first summer they ran rock crushers 24/7. We could not hear it inside but our neighbors did. We could not enjoy the outside that summer with the constant hum of the crusher a mile away. (Not across the street) It was quite the fight to get it stopped. Today,, at least once a week, we hear the blasting going on. It's pretty disturbing. Even concerns about a nearby watershed expressed by the county, the department of natural resources, the neighbors, etc. could not stop it because the rock was needed. BTW-if there is gravel, it's pretty likely they use a rock crusher.

may_flowers - Yes, it does look like 4 separate boxes, and, yes, it *should* look like one wall unit. The wood is Maple. We were under the impression Maple took stains pretty well, which seems to be the case for the ones installed in the Kitchen. The Medallion rep and our contractor will be coming over this week to take a look. PS I almost didn't post about this, but having everyone's comments will truly be invaluable when talking through this with the rep.