It's about 3-4 years old in the picture and had been chopped twice to induce the taper. Just about anything that's perennial and looks like it will make a trunk, I look at with the 'bonsai eye'. All my display containers with flowery stuff in them, as well as all the garden plantings .... even houseplants benefit immensely from the pinching/pruning techniques that thicken the plant or let air and light into the interior. The attention to form and the guidelines we use in building our trees readily apply to other plantings and make a big difference in their appearance. Most people realize even nonbonsai plantings are special in appearance because they don't appear to have the same growth habits that they are used to seeing in their own plants that have received little/no attention, and usually don't realize that there might have been a considerable amount of consideration given to improving the appearance. Sorry - I got off track. ;o) I was clearing out the containers ion the garden one year and there was a snap that had grown kind of thick and woody. Instead of the compost pile, it went in a pot & I nursed it through the winter & started to build on it in the second year. I give away a lot of plants like the one in the pic after figuring them out, but I've had that one for about 7 years or so. I should have repotted it last year, but I didn't, so it wend downhill over the winter. I repotted it a few weeks ago, and it's just warming up here - showing new growth. I had to prune it back quite a bit & I'll have to rebuild it, but I'll see how it responds to the repot. I can't imagine they would be all that long-lived. I've had several that were 5 years old when I gave them away, but this is the oldest I've had yet. It's just your every day snap that you get 6 to a cell pack at the greenhouse - nothing to stop you from building one. ;o) I have some volunteers in a permanent planter that has several volunteers in it, so I'll probably be digging one or two up in Aug. ..... keeps me off the streets and out of the bars. ;o) Al

Ahhh-- I agree with all of you! I see that we are coming from many different backgrounds and budgets, which definitely affects things, I think. My DH and I do not have generational items. If I had 6 BARNS full of stuff, I'd never have to buy anything again. :) Both of our mothers are still alive. The only family items I have are a side table, a set of my husband's childhood books, and my grandfather's painting. Those will never leave this home! We also have 5 young children. Their "stuff" is in most rooms, so, for example, even the board books don't look elegant in the living room, I have no intention of moving them or giving them away. I also try to limit the amount of toys they have, and buy beautiful ones (like a handmade wooden dollhouse instead of a plastic one). DH and I are not collectors, other than his few boxes of comics. I do not have many knick-knacks at all. People gave some to me, but I got rid of them in my 20s. They held no real meaning to me and I see knick-knacks as mostly clutter, which I do not like. I am going to get a few as I now have a few places which need them (built-ins in the DR), but I am going to take my time. I am also not one to follow trends. While I do appreciate modern style, I think one must have a lot of time and money to keep up with the latest, and I have neither. I tend to buy only vintage or antique, save for items like bookcases. (Too hard to find the right size for my room, and too $ most of the time.) Ditto for sofas, because my DH would not like that! My major items (furniture) will like stay around for a long time, because they are styles I have loved for ages. It's more the few details . . .purchased when I needed "something" (we still do not have proper end tables-- never have!). I also very much agree with limiting the time of the "hunt." I want to be done. I guess this is actually more the point of my question! Sometimes, I look for things to match instead of focusing on what I love. Now, when I see something I love, I am just going to get it, and worry about where to put it later. I find that since I tend to be loyal to my tastes, I will likely love it forever. Case in point: I was looking for lamps for my mantle. I found lamps that would go, but they were verging on tacky, even though from the '20s. My DD took one look at them (online) and said, "Those are UGLY!" She was right . .I thought, I am going to go just by my instinct (heart) instead of my mind. I am going to get things I LOVE for little things, too, whereas I was normally 100% functional in those areas. I am not talking about replacing what we have, but rather, when I need something, it will only be with what I LOVE. We do not have room for many decorative items, so I will bring in things that make me smile with function. If I had the $, I think I would be done looking, on the whole. I see plenty of things I do love, but they are way beyond my tiny budget!

Love Bee's black ceiling and the painted bathroom floor. I've made some departures, for me, in going with a new chandelier for my dining room that has a lot more crystal than anything I ever thought I would like, and I love it. Then I put a large, contemporary crystal chandelier (a disc, basically) in the master bedroom. Love it. Painted the dining room blue when everyone else was going red. My appetite is ruled by what is on the plate, and if that doesn't stimulate an appetite, why eat it? Not one person has refused to eat because it wasn't painted red. But it is a calm environment, so maybe there is less digestive upset after? ;-) Probably my most different thing was selecting three cabinet finishes and door styles for my kitchen when two was not often done. I have two hardware finishes and styles, two faucet finishes, two counter tops -- and it doesn't look wild at all. We also reduced the doorways on one wall from three to two and used the space to put a hutch with fridge drawers and a counter for our espresso machine in the breakfast room. Normally, I would not close an exterior door, but we had one into the garage right next to one to the driveway and another to the driveway at the other end of the counter run. We think we corrected a builder blunder. My porch was painted blue, but it has faded and now that it is time to repaint, I'm going to go darker.

Jane, why would people throw up over using coasters? I have several nice sets (mostly from ebay), including some stone ones with fossils in them, hand-carved wood, tooled leather, miniature Oriental rugs. It gets so humid here in the summer that a beverage glass will sweat a big puddle all over a table, and the hot mugs we slurp from all winter long make nasty marks on wood, and the rough bottoms of handthrown pottery can scratch something fierce. DH pretty much wrecked the top of his ~150yo Victorian nightstand leaving a cup of hot coffee on the unprotected surface, I could have killed him because now I'm going to have to fix it. (I had glass tops cut for them when I first bought them, but I hate the "clank" sound of something like a glass or mug being put down on a glass surface, and that glass is a dust magnet.) Most of our tables are antique in the sense of "old stuff" rather than "valuable" but it doesn't mean I still think it's okay to trash them. I'm not one of those people who scurries around sticking coasters under people's drinks when we have people over though, that's just rude IMO.