Thank you Mr.Impatiens! I was hopeing to hear from you! The Brunos this year have been a bit funny. The bed they are in is literally 1/2 sun 1/2 shade-as in the back half is all shade, front half is all sun, and this bed is only 3 feet deep!. At first, the best looking plants, and best flowers were in the back (in the shade). It took a really long time for the front flowers (in the sun) to really take off. I mean, there were weeks where the front plants seem to suffer dearly in the full sun, were barely growing, and the back half was as very lush and a good 6 inches taller than the sunny ones. Two months later, the shaded ones have stopped blooming and the sunny ones are just a solid bed of color. The sunny impatiens are extremely floriferous, and the shaded ones have stopped blooming. The shaded ones have also grown much taller and leggy compared to the front ones. I am certain there are other factors contributing to this, for one thing I have the plants way way too close together (I had done this on purpose as an experiment). I am sure another factor could be needing pinching; until I had read this forum I never realized impatiens needed pinching, they always were self cleaning in my experience, although I am sure pinching helps everything. Another factor could be from when I grew them as seedlings. Some of my Brunos got pinched, some of them didnt. The reason why is because I had noticed that other impatiens I had grown took a real real long time to branch out and flower after having been pinched as seedlings. So I did this experiement to analyze this. As a result, all of the Brunos (pinched or not) flowered at the same time! This surprised me, I had thought the unpinched ones would flower much much sooner. Bruons have very large flowers, as do all impatiens I have grown. In fact, I have never grown the tiny flowered standards that you get at the nurseries, either that or I am doing something wrong, because all impatiens I have ever seeded ended up with large flowers. I am certain this is a variety issue. Anyone else have experiences with Brunos? Do you have a better suggestion for this bed, as far as varieties?

My older sister lives in an 1850s farmhouse which has a bath off the large kitchen. The door faces the basement entrance in a very small hallway which leads to a bedroom. It is full sized, but only about 8x10. Spent Thanksgiving and Christmas with them, and it really wasn't a problem. The other half of the kitchen serves as a dining room. If you want weird--my own house was built in 1907, with a pantry and small back porch--neither of which was converted to a bathroom. However, there is a full bath upstairs with original fixtures, and a half bath (well, a sink with a wooden counter, and a toilet enclosed with beadboard planks under the stairs), but the strangest of all--the only closet on the first floor--an alcove in the hall next to the kitchen, and facing the basement stairs and side door--had a toilet installed for the convenience of a previous elderly owner! No door either, just a curtain rod which had a shower curtain on it when I bought the place. My very first task: to remove the carpet from the hall floor, then remove that toilet and make it a closet again! Despite this being done 21 years ago, I still have the 6" drain hole in the floor, because my cats love to stick their heads through it to watch me do laundry in the basement! :)

Let me share my experience. Here's our pool. We have an on-deck track system See the half-a-hexagon thing? See how it's kind of sticking up higher than the rest of the deck? I don't know if that's the pool design, or if the installer didn't do that part correctly. Either way, our cover did rub on it and had to be patched. We're going into our 3rd summer and the patch had to be put on after the 1st summer. I really think it was our PB's fault as I distinctly remember him stepping on the wheels to lower the cover after we complained about stuff blowing into our pool. (Which was also his fault because he didn't measure the cover to be long enough with enough overhang.) But since the patch it's been great and the cover company raised the wheels when it was patched and doesn't rub nearly as much. I originally wanted an undermount cover, but the PB said it would be a lot more costly and he thought the hex part might eventually break off since there wouldn't really be anything supporting it- it would basically be suspended in air. I knew for sure I didn't want a square-shaped lip of cement all the way around the pool (If that's what you mean by "pool in a pool"). Like this: I think it would be a tripping hazzard. I wish I would've talked to the cover company myself instead of trusting my PB because they probably would've come up with a better solution. It certainly looks like they can do an undermount on a free-form if that's what you want.

I googled burls, Marco, and I think you're right! Looks like it's just abnormal growth, but I find it interesting that it halts growth at that point. Wiki says (of trees, which is probably the same as plants) "...outgrowth on a tree trunk or branch that is filled with small knots from dormant buds." So I think my impression was right - the "growth nubbin" goes dormant and it tries again... I removed as much as I could from the one in the photo above and I'll be paying close attention to see if perhaps it will incite it to grow. I hope so... Denise in Omaha