Maintenance gardening and all the observation you can make while doing it is great experience. There are lots of ways of maintaining plantings. Be careful to observe the different ways that gardens are maintained as well as how the plants repond to maintenance techniques and the lack of them. Sometimes you can use the natural growth of the plants to make a composition that works well, but other times a specific maintenance schedule is a key part of the design. One is not better than the other as long as either is fitting the goals of the project. Sometimes we tend to look at the planting world based on what we see as "the" proper amount of maintenance and view everything that requires more as being wrong, or those getting less as wrong. I cringe everytime someone writes "all gardens should be low maintenance" as if it is a fact or law. There is nothing wrong with planned high maintenance plantings as long as it was not done deceptively. Obviously, there are a lot of plantings that were simply over done by poor foresight, but another thing that often happens is that there is a change in circumstance after the fact. The homeowners age and can not keep up with it, or the house gets sold to those with lesser commitment. Certainly, there has also been a big drop off in the amount of skilled garden maintenace people out there due to the mechanization of the industry. When I was a Ute (youth), a pull cord was pretty well limited to a lawnmower and a chainsaw and weeds were hoed or pulled. The people doing the work often did it for long periods of their lives with ample time to observe and develop techniques that were effective. They also passed these observations and skills on to the younger people who they worked with. It was slow painstaking work with ample time to observe. The help had to be trained. Nowadays, everything is done on the fly. It is all dumbed down and built for speed. The turnover time for help is measured in weeks rather than years. Weeds are sprayed continuously (and left in place) - heck, they don't even cut out grass for new beds, but spray those out as well. Beds are edged with a power edger. Fertilizer is applied with a ride on high speed spreader. Plants are pruned (hacked) with chainsaws and sheared with gas powered hedge shears up, down, around, under, ... all over where they need it and where they don't. Get in and get out, but don't forget to leave the place clean by blowing it all into the street with the jet pack on your back. The owner of the company is likely to have only had the hit and run experience as well. In other words, good hired maintenance is few and far between mostly because there are few with the experience that is required to train these people and a market that does not allow these people to compete. While I hate to see low standards of maintenance limit design, it surely has to be considered.

Monica, I've done several screens behind 2-way mirrors, but I've never taken a picture. Honestly, I don't do a huge upcharge for them. It's usually just a few hundred to frame the niche behind the mirror, run the electrics, and add an IR transimitter so a remote can be used. They look quite good. With the TV off, the mirror looks like a standard mirror. With the TV on, you lose a bit of brightness. Not much, the pic is still great, but you lose a tad brightness. In my own bathroom, my wife added a small flat panel on a shelf near the tub. Not built in, not fancy, just a small flat panel/DVD player sitting on a shelf so she can watch DVDs while in the jacuzzi. I can snap a pic if you like, but again, it's not a built in. It's a small Oppo LT-201 (I think that's the model number) 20" LCD sitting on a shelf. Let me know. Toodles, Mongo

great article, just incase folks dont read it here is a clip from it "Will the heat from the fireplace harm the plasma TV? There are a few precautions to take before hanging a plasma screen TV over your fireplace. First, take a thermometer and tape it to the wall above the mantel, in the place where the plasma TV will reside. Then build a fire, and let it roar awhile. Now, check the thermometer. If the temperature is above 90 degrees F, then the area is receiving too much heat -- either escaping from the front of the fireplace and rising up the face, or radiating through the chimney to warm the outside wall -- for a plasma TV to hang there without receiving some modicum of residual damage. It would not be advisable to run the plasma for a long period of time while its environment is this hot. Though the Plasma TV has its own cooling system, the surrounding heat will force the Plasma display to work harder to cool itself, thus shortening the overall lifespan of the unit over time. A Plasma TV may still be run for short periods of time without harming the unit (even with the environment heat at 90 degrees F or above). If the plasma display is not turned on while a fire burn in the fireplace, then the unit will not be harmed at all even though the temperature surrounding the unit may be warm. Of course, this might not be an option for people living in places where winter lasts seemingly forever, and fires are an everyday fact of life. In such cases, you should be advised to monitor the amount of heat your plasma display is exposed to while it is running."

I don't think most of mine start next month, but: Homeland The Affair The Americans Rectify Billions: this one is not my favorite as I can't stand most of the actors, but I am loyal to Damian Lewis who I loved in Homeland and in The Forsyte Saga, so I will watch it. Bloodline The Fall (BBC) Gee, just typing that list out made me eager. I just rewatched all of Homeland to prepare for the next season and heard today it won't start until January :(