Thanks for the kind words. The best way to decrease the amount of medium it takes to fill a pot; and, to limit the volume of excess/ perched water a planting can hold is by using ballast. Note (fig D) how much less excess water a planting can hold when using an overturned pot as ballast. The figure on the right below illustrates how you can use brick or hollow plastic blocks as ballast. If you were to turn the bricks on edge and add 2 more, you would almost entirely eliminate this planting's ability to hold excess/ perched water. Make note though, that there must be at least 1 continuous/ unbroken soil column from the top of the soil column to the pot bottom. If the bricks were turned 90* and 2 more added such that the bricks or other material filled the pot bottom so that there was a 2"x2" gap between the bricks to provide the unbroken soil column I mentioned, the only grow medium in the entire planting capable of holding perched water would be the medium in the 2 x 2 space between the bricks. Al

Getting about 1 or 2 parts an evening done. Darn rain will not stop around here. Anyway, I keep thinking there must be some way to 'bond' the sand from Oscar's sandbox. Some of these gaps are no bigger than an 1/8" of an inch. Force the sand into the openings and then pour something liquid (maybe wood glue that is really watered down?) into the sand and hope it seeps? If Marlene gives me the go-ahead, I just might be willing to post a picture. All I can tell you is that as was the deck, this is a bigger project than I anticipated but one hell of a lot of fun! Calamity, I thought about concrete or plaster-of-paris, but I think the freeze-thaw cycles will turn either into dust in just a few months, and I don't know how I could clean them off the already sealed pieces. Oh, meant to include this is the last post - anyone ever work with decomposed granite?

Was this to enable ventilation ? Otherwise why were the vertical wall panels not run farther . Perforated foam or vented soffit metal would allow it to breathe keep our birds and hornets etc !

I learned a lot about drywall watching Vancouver Carpenter on youtube. There are different types of joint compound depending on what stage you are in. A good drywall guy will use the correct products and take care of that.