Well, after living with in laws for 6 months while the house gets built, we finally moved into the new house 2 weeks ago, I promptly planted 4 taxodium hybrids as soon I get a chance. I have a nice grove of escarpment live oak in the corner of backyard. Never had that much shade so I'm a little excited about what to plant there. Perhaps a couple of JMs with nice red fall color from my brother that he grew from seeds. That's in Houston where he lives so I'm curious to see how they do in bit colder weather over here. There are deer around here but they don't seem to wander close to houses judging on plants on older houses. I guess they are too scared of us unlike at in laws where they come like dogs wanting treats. I've had a couple of big nice looking bucks come right up to me and start eating deer corns out of the bucket! I'm going to miss that. Just so cool...

Mike it is not your fault it is the locataion of where you live. Is your air carrying heavey high humidity this time of the year, if so that is your problem.? Jades grow on rocky hillsides in SW Africa. They love to be cramped between rocks, it reminds them of home. I have said this over and over through the years, does anyone here pay attention or am I just wasting time? I need to know. Check back through the archives for the past 15 years. There is no magic pill that will cure this. It is a cultural condition which you will need to learn, I know this is not what you want to hear, but I can not sugar this up so the information will go down easier. Norma

Mine freezes up fairly regularly here with both IE and Firefox. I blame Vista though - I hate it hate it hate it, but unless I spent a stinkin' fortune on a Mac (I need a laptop rather than a desktop) I didn't have any other choice when my old laptop bit the dust last December. I've run multiple antiviral and anti-malware software packages to no avail. HP has no answers and tells me I can't wipe the hard drive and reinstall an older version of Windoze due to hardware incompatibility issues. Feh. I'm far too brainfogged to try to negotiate Linux. I do back up obsessively - my 'puter has a dual hard drive so I use the second drive to back up the first as well as using a couple of flash drives for documents, photos, and email. Those are dirt cheap now so there's no excuse not to have at least one! There's also a plethora of free online file storage sites to take advantage of. At least if I'm halfway through a post Firefox will usually get it back for me, I'll give it that, and it does import your bookmarks during the installation process. Oh, side note: some manufacturers are doing a really crappy thing and storing an image of your hard drive for a system restore in such a way that it is bollixed up by a defrag. Ran into that problem a few years back and had to spend nearly $50 on a set of restore DVDs as well as spending hours on the phone with tech support (in India, natch). Therefore, you should check your documentation before defragging.

Marcolo, this isn't necessarily for you, but for someone who might be considering linoleum type counters in the future. When we were first married, we lived in an old farmhouse that had red lino floors, and red lino counters, perfect U shape postwar remodel, sigh. (It looked like they used the cutout of the floor to do the counters!) I don't know if the problems came with the age of the lino, or what, but every time I tried to lift something warm up off the counter, it would stick fast. So, things like a bowl of soup or a bowl of oatmeal would stick. When I'd finally pry the bowl up, a small chunk of linoleum would be stuck to the bottom of the bowl. Yuck! We were very happy when we could replace those counters with some laminate. I hope you find that durable finish you are after. Have to wonder if hard wood countertops might be a good option. I think they'd still give you somegrounding with the colors you are considering. This kitchen is especially bright, is it grounded enough?