That link doesn't work for me, Tony, and I'm not sure I can explain it. Maybe the image of the pages from the book are on the screen, but the text isn't available to my screen reader. I keep coming back to Woodyoak's comments about the original three metaphors in this post's title. She wrote, "Perhaps what metaphor is useful depends on the stage of the gardens development and the particular objective under consideration as well as the mindset of the gardener at the time." Woodyoak, your garden sounds much further along than my own. Which got me thinking about time. There's been a thread here a while back about how to create the look and feel of age in a garden. In other words, artificial aging. The more recent thread about the beautiful ruins of an old stone barn is the real thing. But, some of the design questions still hinge on how you want to tell the story of those stones or what story you choose to tell. I live on an average street, in an average house, in a town that is so average it came in 2nd in the contest to be the "real" Springfield where the Simpsons live. Glaciers dominated this region for a very long time, and then prairies interspersed with thick bands of forest grew here for tens of thousands of years. For just a couple of handfuls of decades European settlers farmed the surface of this land, while a little later first and second generation immigrants mined it. Most of the homeowners within the city limits are required to purchase insurance for mine subsidence. Not always a comforting thought, as this is the region of the new Madrid fault line, famous for relative inactivity, famous for the strongest earthquake ever recorded in the lower 48 states. That's a story that my father, a geologist, liked to tell to get the hairs on the back of our necks to stand on end. He felt downright cheated when I called him a few years back to tell him I'd experienced a tiny little seismic tremor. An elderly friend told us that one of the largest mine heads was located about a three minute walk from my house. In a slightly different direction I can walk 3 or 4 minutes to where the last corn fields were sold three years ago. Now McMansions have sprouted up on their tiny lots. Amili wrote, "But then perhaps the garden is more often meant to be the setting for a good story, the lush and sensuous backdrop, a catalyst, not the author." Which got me to ask myself, "Why have I been going down this road?" Why try to make a garden tell a story? "To celebrate," writes Nandina. And that's what I would attempt to do in telling stories. Not the stories of western expansion, industrialization, or the blanding of life in suburbia. The stories I play with in my mind's eye are celebrations. They help me to dream my garden more clearly when, as now, it sleeps beneath an ice storm. Wellspring

What a job, Jackie! And it's just beginning. I wouldn't give your roses the encouragement of extra water or any fertilizer until it's over. Water as usual. If it gets blistering hot, you should water as you ordinarily would. Scaffolding is very expensive and dangerous to work on. Let's hope it doesn't have to be placed on top of a rose. The supports have to go where they have to go. And I fear scaffolding will be up longer than you think. They like to take it down all at once, and if it's needed for the construction, it could be there a while. As for the pallet idea, I share Ann's concern for your soil. But I wouldn't put pallets down to trip up the painters or construction workers. Construction is dangerous, and NO garden is worth an injury to a worker. The best you can do is emphasize to the contractors on no uncertain terms that your garden is old and valuable, that your plants are not to be harmed and that it is not a garbage dump. You can put the fear of God in them, and that's the best you can do. Don't add a tripping hazard to their already dangerous jobs. I'd be just as concerned about them driving over other parts of your garden with their pickups. They love to park right next to the job (their trucks are their tool boxes). Put up that yellow construction tape where they can see it, so they have no excuses.

Thank you so much for all of your beautiful examples � this site has truly been inspirational to me! I have been lurking for a while, taking in all of the beautiful kitchen improvements that have been created. I could really use some help from those who have been there! To make a long story short, we made some changes to this kitchen when I moved into it 5 years ago. It was so bad that I just wanted CHANGE, but did not have a budget to change everything and was in such a hurry to change it that I didn�t really think a lot about any of before doing it! Here is what we completed in the first year We removed the pink and blue wallpaper and painted the walls, removed the kitchen carpet (gross!) and replaced with laminate floor, replaced the almond colored appliances with black and stainless, replaced hardware on the cabinets, replaced the rectangular fluorescent light fixture over the island and added a few recessed lights, replaced the blue and pink speckled, wood trimmed countertops with laminate "faux granite" ones and tore out 3 plate glass windows to make a sliding door and built a deck outside of that. We later added a backsplash and just last month, we replaced the island with a longer custom island that has roll-out shelves and functional drawers. We put a granite countertop on the island. We are very happy with how the island turned out. Here is where I need some help. I am ready to make changes to the cabinets but again we are on a small budget and don�t want to spend thousands to make just a cosmetic change on this house that we plan to be in for only about 5 more years. My first thoughts are to paint the cabinets a lighter color and just leave the countertops as they are. This would still give a contrast to the island countertop and would contrast the cabinets with the darker island. Since the cabinets are oak, I know this is going to take an intense method of sanding, priming, sanding, priming, sanding, painting and painting again. We are willing to do this but have also thought about having some MDF doors made and just painting those. This would eliminate some of the sanding and would also allow us to have the doors made with full overlay so that we could remove the center stile on some of the cabinets. I have attached photo of our kitchen before the island was added. Trying to figure out how to add a second photo with the new island! Hoping I can get some suggestions for painting the existing doors versus custom MDF doors and also suggestions for wall colors. The kitchen opens up into a great room, so we would probably extend the wall color all the way into that room. The end of the kitchen where the counters and cabinets are does not get a lot of natural light, so we�re hoping whatever we do will help make it all look a little lighter. We are not completely opposed to also replacing those counter tops with something solid but we don�t want to replace the backsplash, so we need something that will work with that. Can you help?? Image link:

It is kind of a given that "latex" paints don't bond to oil and varnished surfaces. This once true opinion goes back to the early days of "latex" paints, many of which actually had natural latex resins in them 60 years ago. Today's 100% acrylic based primers and paints are actually capable of giving a good bond directly to the hard, slick, old oil finishes. I have personally tested Behr Ultra Semi-Gloss Acrylic Enamel and Behr's Water Based Alkyd directly over high gloss oil paint and urethane varnish. Wanting to see the worst case scenario, I did not even scuff sand the surface. In both cases, I have tried hundreds of times to scratch the paint off with a finger nail to no avail. If a dedicated primer is to be used, My preference is for BIN pigmented shellac. Nothing is better over super slick surfaces. BIN will stick even to glass and ceramic tile! BIN was my primer of choice when spraying varnished kitchen cabinets: great adhesion, super fast drying, and no "fish eyeing".