Yeah! 36 for zone 7 at least that is my zone on Garden Webs info. I'm so glad I saved many of my jugs from last year. I can sow much faster without having to cut and make holes. Yeah!

Here's one of our sad Heuchera with an equally sad hyacinth: But then if you just turn around on the left you'll have a bunch of darling tulips getting ready to announce themselves: and on the right are irises, which look like onions right now but they'll be coming around: Where the boxwoods now are I'd had daphnes, but they were never happy so the helpful man at the nursery and I decided to just go with the boxwoods. The green mounds in back are hollyhocks -- love them! One didn't make it, but the rest look pretty happy which makes me look pretty happy as well! At the base of the (aspen) tree dead ahead are the sad heuchera. A teeny fraction of our daffodils -- aren't they just the happiest flower? I've a few hundred of them strewn across the front of the yard, bordering the sidewalk. Planting them I think I used many, many swear words -- it was so frustrating in this soil! But now that I look at that them I think "Totally worth it!" Hopefully I can remember that when it's planting time in the fall .... The fluffy brown in between them are the ice plants, two junipers (hated junipers when I lived in CA but now I'm grateful for their evergreen nature) and a hole where a third juniper was but a wind blew away. The leggy twiggy brown on the right is a rose. I think grape hyacinths are so darn cute! But I think I made a mistake in where I planted them -- should've been right next to the walkway, where the disappointing heuchera and hyacinths are! (although in all fairness to the hyacinths, they did beautifully last year and I suspect if not for our crazy weather they might've been "better" this year) There are columbines in there as well -- what a pretty flower. Because the tulips I'd planted our first autumn here (first photo) did so well and were so beautiful, I thought I'd plant more. I'm glad I did, and seeing them get ready makes me want to plant even more! And today, as I went out in that biting wind to take these pictures (Li'l Bit's [my two year-old] napping and El Guapo [my four year-old] is seriously involved with his Lego project) I couldn't believe it -- there was a lone red tulip! El Guapo's been complaining yet here one is! I've always loved peonies. Always. I planted three in our front yard but I believe two of them (in a different section) didn't make it. I'm sad. But, when I was out front on Saturday (four days ago) there was the teeniest green nubbin poking its way through the mulch and today it is three inches high! How insane is that? So I'll cross my fingers but not hold my breath about the other two .... There was a horrible wind last summer which ripped the other two peonies and my across-the-street neighbor's large peony got wiped out as well. I didn't take any pictures of the backyard, but the blue mists I planted are all showing their sweet microscopic green leaves. There's one h-u-g-e blue mist in the backyard which we inherited, and it clearly was never cut back. I know you're supposed to cut them back in the spring but it's so big it makes it a bit difficult to tell what's coming to life and what's twiggy and / or dead. So I think I'll wait until it's "back" and then cut out the twiggy / dead parts. After I see what it's doing I'll undoubtedly come back to ask how to get it back in fighting form. Isn't it so fun to see the green poking its way through to show us spring is on its way? I love it!

Not to argue over the unknown, but I can say from memory support for W98SE was dropped last year, six+ years after W-Whatever, forget its name, and six years after w2K. I don't expect them to drop XP any time soon. I just looked up information on the Dell C521 we purchased in December of 2006, it was under $600 before tax, so less than the subject Gateway of this thread. This Dell had the AMD 64 and 1 GByte of memory, but a much smaller HDD than the subject Gateway. It also has the 5 slot memory card input and a 17" LCD, so that says to me the Gateway price isn't particularly low. And speaking of our Dell and Vista, the Dell came with a "free" upgrade to Vista that had to be exercised by March 31. So, to be safe, and to pay only $10 S&H, I ordered our free upgrade to Vista Premium. I will not be in any hurry to implement it, and will have to see if it comes with a activation time requirement. The only statement this makes to me about upcoming Microsoft policy for XP is they want to get people on Vista so that it will be easier to provide support and to drop XP. Given what I paid for the Dell I can safely assume Dell paid the OEM for Vista and MS give them the XP Media to use until Vista (late as usual for MS) was available. Speaking of MS making money, a neighbor told me today (I have no proof, other than it sounds like the action of those who are paid way TOO much), the number 2 an MS, I forget his name, just had the largest private yacht in the world built for him, $400 million, don't remember the length but think it is several hundred feet, a crew of 65 (suppose some of them are off while others are on duty, not all on the ship at the same time), and an operating cost of 20 Million. So, MS clearly has to worry about making money off the Vista right away otherwise the top officers will not be able to buy a fleet of yachts next year.

The truth is you can't believe any statistics, you have to analyze the house/neighborhood/town you are buying in. I live in a town of MA with top ranked schools. Prices are not plummeting. Similar house to ours sold this month for $275K more than we paid in 2004. When we bought we negotiated and were not willing to get into bidding wars. I think there are many people who got carried away in 2002-2005 and paid a bit too much. These people would probably break even today, in my town. The basics still hold true ... location,location,location.