stevenwayne, the plant that I believe you are asking about (in the second photo of the second set of pics hanging to the left of the large Aloe in the desert box) is Hoya keysii (that is what it was sold to me as). The leaves are thick, solid, and slightly pubescent, the flowers are white and have a "springtime" scent...kind of daffodil-ish to me. It grows and flowers well with no special care on my part. Kathy

Bevangel, Thank you so much for posting the gory details about your situation. It is a great service to all who read it, not only because others will now proceed with their "eyes wide open" but also so we can benefit from the solutions you've developed to deal with unscrupulous builders. I would SOOOO like to have found an attorney like you before we started building. I did all kinds of local and internet research, but in the end, I kind of threw up my hands and went about figuring out how to try to protect ourselves by structuring our contract and writing an intensive questionnaire asking many specific questions of the builders we interviewed. I even stated that their answers would become part of the final contract, and I stapled their responses to the signed contract. Ha...lots of good that did! Unfortunately, about 6 wks into our build, we found out that our builder had lied several times on our interview questionnaire in response to such questions as, "have you ever operated under a different business name?" and "have you ever been involved in any legal/mediation issues?" He had been the subject of a huge lawsuit that actually brought about changes in our Contractors State License Board practices/rules - granted, his situation was 10 years ago, and he claimed that it was unfair that he was still haunted by it, and that a "crazy lady was stalking him", etc, etc. Also, all of his recent references raved about his work and reported that they had come in on time and on budget and quality was excellent, etc, etc, but still it was/is shocking and infuriating that his former shady practices had been lied about, and had somehow slipped under our radar before we hired him. We came very close to firing him (and actually did but then rescinded) and now have all kinds of safeguards in place (most importantly, we have about 20% of the cost of our entire contract held until after we get our CO and final punch list resolved). We only have about 2 months to go with him and all has been fine for the past several months, but I still can't help but wonder each time we pay him or interact with him if he's telling the truth. I remember in the beginning before building even started, we had to have the City building inspectors come out to our property to review and make a ruling on something (not a minor issue, but a major thing), and the builder told me he was of the mindset to just do what we wanted to do without asking, bragging that he always "asked for forgiveness, not permission". DING, DING, DING! Warning bells should've gone off in my head, and I should've listened to my instincts. Anyway, I felt really stupid and extra angry about the whole thing because I had been so proud of myself for going through a lot of due diligence, writing my 2-page interview questionnaire and interviewing 4 builders, getting rock solid bids from all, being super specific about all our materials, etc, etc, etc. But, what I could not prevent was someone who has no problem lying, especially when it benefits him. In hindsight, I would have liked to have better legal help at the start, specifically a better contract in place. It is pretty frustrating that government agencies like the state contractor boards go around helping consumers get out of messes with contractors but don't really help prevent them in the first place. I looked high and low for a good boilerplate contract but couldn't find one...instead, we ended up agreeing to his contract with some major revisions, and now I see how vulnerable it left us. I believe this is an area where someone like you could both provide a great service and probably fill a potentially lucrative unfilled niche...writing contracts or providing good boilerplate language to help protect homeowners would be awesome. You could even probably sell these boilerplate contracts over the internet for the thousands of people who do not want to hire an attorney (and probably feel that nothing bad will happen to them anyway!) but want some protection. We feel especially vulnerable because we don't have a bank looking over our shoulder at each draw...we are funding this build with 100% of our own money. Yikes. Anyway, at this point (knock on wood) things appear to be on track. We are incredibly vigilant about getting lien releases at each draw, not only from every sub and supplier but also a blanket one from the GC, but who are we to know if he's just lying as happened in your case? This whole process is so fraught with opportunities for bad contractors to swindle innocent and helpless homeowners...it's pathetic! Anyway, thanks again for sharing your painful (but very useful to others) story. I wish you all the best and will eagerly look forward to seeing the progress of your home in future postings. Susan

OSU Engineer, Good Heavens, No! If you want to make that video really entertaining, turn on the closed captioning and try to make sense of how it interprets what he says. We have great TV mets at our local CBS affiliate, KXII-TV, Channel 12, with broadcast studios in Sherman and Ardmore. They cover the Texoma region on both sides of the Red River, which is a pretty large area and they do an impressive job. I have a very high degree of trust in them because they are so good at what they do. The best thing is that KXII, a few years ago, made a huge financial commitment to this area by purchasing and installing their own Doppler radar, and we are exceedingly grateful to have Doppler radar here, instead of having to rely on it from an area much further away. Our TV mets (the channel has 4) are very good and very experienced, with three of them (Tom Miller, Steve LaNore and Tom Hale) each having over 25 years experience. The newest member of the team, Wava Denito, is an OU grad, and couldn't be at a better station to learn from guys experienced in our local weather. She is a great addition to the weather team. No matter what the NWS says, I'm always watching KXII to see how our local mets describe what they think will happen or is happening. Our most recent serious tornado touchdown was an EF-4 that crossed the western edge of Love County in February 2009, damaging a few structures, before it hit Lone Grove in Carter County, just west of Ardmore, killing 8 persons and doing a lot of damage. KXII was all over that storm well in advance, warning us for some time before that the tornado-warned storm was tracking from TX, coming our way, and expected to cross the Red River at the western end of our county. Their storm chaser, who at that time was Doug Drace, was out there in his chase vehicle giving us great warnings, and in fact, he was so close to where the tornado ultimately touched down in Lone Grove, that he had to back off a little bit and wait for it to get ahead of him or it likely would have come down right on top of him. Their top-notch coverage, along with warnings from the NWS, gave everyone in this area plenty of advance notice so people could seek shelter. Most of the deaths occurred at a trailer park that was just demolished. I believe one death was that of a trucker on the interstate who may or may not have known the area was tornado-warned. We don't get the huge numbers of tornadoes down here that y'all see up in central OK, and I am exceedingly grateful for that. The four tornado warnings we had this past weekend are more than we have in some years, and we still have a lot of year left in 2015. Now I'm not saying our weather guys are perfect. The storm chaser who chases storms for KXII and does live reporting apparently got too close to the tornado in Bryan County the other night, while reporting live, and his truck was either severely damaged or destroyed, and viewers were calling and texting the station wanting to know if he was okay. Apparently he wasn't injured, and I bet he'll try to stay a little behind the tornado next time instead of getting underneath it. I think it was rain-wrapped, and that may have led to him getting too close to it. I don't know if this is true for the rest of y'all, but our family has its own weather team in Texas, where our friends and family get scared by our constant severe weather warnings and start texting us all kinds of helpful info....their radar, what their TV mets down there in the D-FW area are saying about the storms up here in OK, live video from TVN Live Chasing's website, etc. Sometimes I think they are watching our weather even more closely than I am. We start getting weather warnings from friends down there sometimes even before the NWS has issued a Tornado Warning for us. That's not a bad thing....an additional "heads up" or two doesn't hurt us any. It does scare me if they start texting me maps showing TVN storm chasers on a road near our home, though. If you're sitting in a tornado shelter under a tornado warning, you don't necessarily want to know that storm chasers are a quarter-mile away, hoping to intercept the tornado that you're hoping isn't coming your way. I grew up in Texas and we experienced some storm damage there over the years, but nothing that happened there really comes even close to what happens here. We have learned to stay weather-aware all the time, which wasn't the case when we first moved here. For us, unless the rain stops falling immediately, the rainfall this year is going to be a lot higher than what we had in 2007 and that is a scary thought because we had far too much flooding that year. Dawn

Would love: - Japanese Lantern (Physalis alkekengi) - Pumpkin on a Stick (Solanum Integrifolium) - Easter Egg (Solanum ovigerum) - Hostas - any type, any size, any color - Peppers - hot - Gardenia - Allium or globemaster - any type, any size, any color - Autumn clematis Gardenia