Daisy, congratulations on your new smaller garden! You'll be able to make this one perfect, or nearly so as no garden is ever perfect in the eye of the owner. I sometimes miss my patio garden, that small space was perfect in a way my present larger garden is not and never will be. I have friends in Aegina with a small garden that sounds much like yours. They have fruit trees and olives and roses, tomatoes and lemon verbena, not much of anything but quite enough for two people. And they have enough water for whatever they want to grow, a big problem for their neighbours with larger gardens. If you collect water remember to add a little detergent or soap to stop mosquitos from hatching, the only problem that prevents me from visiting my Greek friends in summer.

With a couple million miles unner my belt I concluded, as any truck driver does, that most driving "situations" fall into a relatively few typical catagories. One that comes to mind is drivers accelerating onto a freeway to freeway speed but then slowing down for a bit then resuming freeway speed again. Though momentarily discombooberating it becomes expected and therefore tolerable. In fact when it doesn't happen it is surprising. I have noticed this particular behavior is not as prevalent as years ago and have concluded it is because the older pre-freeway drivers have died off. I never could unnerstan this catagory till I found myself doing it one time. Here's what I found. I had accelerated my ancient velocipede to freeway entrance speed (a harrowing experience), entered the freeway then, feeling that I had accomplished a good thing ie done a good job, just relaxed which of course meant my foot came off the throttle a bit. Finally realizing my mistake I speeded back up. With this insight I found much greater tolerance for the situation. Please realize that years ago a 200hp truck getting slowed down might take a mile to get back up to speed. Today they are running 600hp-700hp or more; just have to lean on the pedal a bit harder so the situation is much less intolerable. Ultimately with enough miles and years you become quite a student of the human nature and behavior of drivers particularly 4 wheelers to say nothing of the highway patrol. Over the years I became less and less perturbed when the various situations developed, learned to take em in stride and indeed to forget em within a minute or two. Literally. =============================================================== An above post mentioned accidents where the people just sat. Now I had one time read that it was found that passengers in airplane landing crashes often survived the wreck but not the aftermath. Careful observation showed that, for example, 150 survived the landing but only 20-30 evacuated the plane. The majority just sat there. I truly believe it is the same with freeway wrecks. They survived the crash, ie did a good job, now they could relax; stop thinking. Possible fatal error of course. Driver training does not stress, "get the hell outa here." It should! It all comes down to mental conditioning, either by formal instruction or by a self analysis involving the process "if such and such happens just what should I do?" Having a "correct thing to do" in mind increases the chance you will do it; that is the reaction is at the ready. Figuring it out at the moment doesn't make it ie may not be a viable timely option. Well I could go on but I believe the best thing is to be aware of and be alert for various typical situtions, note the typical behavior, expect it and then be content to go along with it maddening as it might be because you can't really correct it. You will be a safer driver because you will be mentally comfortable. And as vstech says; "if they want to pass, let em." Both of you will be more mentally comfortable. Regardless of speed or conditions or percieved excesses a mentally comfortable driver is a relatively safer driver. ======================================================== And of course I note here on this thread, as usual, it is always the "other guy" who is the lame brain. None of the above posters has ever made a single solitary driving mistake of any kind. Have you? :-)

You cannot run in a panic right now, you will scare Rhianna. If you scare her she will not talk, IF there are signs of physical abuse, by no means wait, But if there are no signs physically, then you must take things slowly and on her terms so you do not scare her and tramatise her more. calm talks are the best. She may not tell you today, she may not tell you tomorrow, BUT if she knows she can tell you and you won't freak out on her, she will tell you, trust me, she will. Listen to her, what she says and doesn't say...That sounds odd, I know but if she says something that just doesn't sound "right", it could be the clue to a talk. Again above all else, BE cALM. Deep breaths, Make her calm. Matter of fact terms, "Mom he showed me his pee pee"..Oh he did, boy that must have been icky, I wouldn't want to see that...calm not OH MY GOD, YOU SAW HIS PEN!S. One way can keep her talking, the other will make her clam up. All will/can be fine eventually. Remember too, she may not like him because he just isn't nice to her. And her moodyness may have nothing to do with him. Oh yes and remmeber with you talk to enforce upon her that if anyone says they'll hurt xxx if they tell, that they don't have to worry, you owuld never let that happen. AND if they promise anything if they don't tell, that is not the kind of secret to keep. Good secrets and bad secrets..good conversation for another time. Vickey-Mn

@rmtdoug - I bought the veneer from Oakwood Veneer. They have more choices than I could possibly list here, but more importantly they have them with two paper backing options - 10 and 20mil. I went with the thicker of the two; it's about as thick as greeting card stock. I have to back up to explain why, because for something like this there are two challenges. The first is, you have to go with something paper backed because contact cement is the only way the material may be applied to something this large. The second is, a LVL is nowhere near perfectly smooth. This one was in the attic for 10 years and had ceiling joists attached to and removed from it so there are nail holes and marks from a saws-all. The thicker backing makes all of that invisible. To prepare the LVL I used a punch to set all nails that were cut off and used spackling to fill pieces of missing wood. On the right side I filled nail holes and on the left I did not, but I can't tell the difference between the two areas. I followed the directions on the contact cement can and went to work. I cut the veneer slightly taller than the actual size of the beam because the ceiling is not perfectly flat. The occasional 1/32"-1/16" gap at the top will be filled with walnut wood filler. The veneer company recommends using a rounded off piece of wood to flatten bubbles instead of a J roller. So far, so good. It was still completely bonded when I left for work this morning. This was surprisingly easy. I should be able to finish the other big side this afternoon and maybe the underside by the end of the day. Looking forward to seeing how the chimney turns out @Texas_Gem - it's crazy to see how fast framers can go, isn't it? How long until they can get a roof on? Are they going to remove the sloped section of the roof over the existing part of the house or build on top of it? Here is a link that might be useful: Oakwood Veneer