Hi Dearests! :) This is SO EMBARRASSING that EVERY DARNED TIME I get time to get on here and read, there's no time or I'm about to fall asleep (as is the case now - and I have to get up early)! I'm SURE I look like an opportunist just totally taking advantage of your advise, expertise and patience but please believe me that I simply have less time than I'm used to. Thank you so much for continuing this dialogue. I've gone into the worst depression over this! I just want to turn this over to someone else to represent me who's capable/competent enough but there's no one (or I don't dare ask) and I can't afford a lawyer nor do I want to get that legal. My contractor came back into town last Wednesday, Jan. 19th, if he meant what he said about his schedule, and every day I hope I don't hear from him. I just can't deal with this and barely know how. I mean Rohl said I could have a new sink but if I order it, I'd have to have the old sink out first in order to know which sink will be close enough in measurement to fit into the spot. I don't want to go pick up a new sink and leave it sitting on the side lines for weeks or months and then find out too late in the game that it won't fit in the old spot! So that means I need to get the old sink out, which brings me back to square one. I need to find new contractors or carpenters to get quotes from and feel so low I can't imagine figuring out where to turn, who to ask...who to trust. And who will be willing, after that last guy said he basically won't touch it with a 10-foot pole. My contractor's going to probably show up any day now to "finish the work" and then I'm also told by friends that I should no way let him finish the work but should deduct that which needs to be deducted and then pay someone else with the money. But he could file a lien on my house or whatever the terminology is. On the other hand I may never see him again since I paid him a partial payment that he may figure is close enough... Just to be clear: 1. My contractor bought the sink, not me. I mean I paid him sometime after that but he bought it using his own card. Not the dishwasher or counter or tile honing, cutting and installing which I bought, but the sink, faucet, disposal, flange and tile itself, yes. Now it's always possible he paid in cash and kept the whole order in my name since I had the items on hold in my name in which case there's no evidence he paid for it but who knows... 2. I truly believe that the sweet, young-sounding Rohl guy that I spoke to didn't really care and just called it defective for a couple of the reasons listed above by you guys but I do think if he has any experience at all (and he may not), that he suspects it was over-tightened and doesn't care - he just wants me to be a satisfied customer. My instincts and my own experience tell me so. And I don't think less of him or the company for it. 3. I have no proof that my contractor tightened the flange. I think it's possible that he didn't. But I don't think it's probable that he didn't. The timing of the cracks and the fact that no one else touched the area below it besides him and the way the hairline cracks splay out around the drain all tell me there's a better chance he cracked it than that he didn't. But it doesn't matter much if it can't be proven or that no forensic scientist - haha - will be coming around to pay more than the sink's worth to determine that. As for the issue of lying, I think there's a lot of context here to be considered. I believe he cracked it, and that Rohl is giving me a new sink but knows that he cracked it. My contractor bought the sink and installed it and messed around with it cause he didn't want me to bother his precious plumber when the leak needed to be stopped (don't get me started on how he thinks so highly of this totally flaky and rude plumber) and then it cracked. I think that covering my ARSE after everything else that's gone down is let's just say a fairly reasonable choice at this point, even if some think of that as lying. I get it, but I think that when you believe what I believe about what's really happened, it's not quite the same thing. And even then, I'm still willing to compromise at least a little - just because I'm not a one-dimensional human being and I believe my contractor isn't either. In my favor, sure, I guess, though yes I'm still really super uncomfortable about this whole thing and am as curious as the rest of you to know how strong I'll be and how well or disastrously this whole thing will turn out before it's truly over!! Ok that's it for now - it's 1:35 a.m. and I've gotta be up at 7:00. Yaaaay! ;) More soon. Thank you everyone - I am SO GRATEFUL that you're here. In fact you've been here "for me" more than just about anyone else, I swear!! That includes friends and family members and certainly contractors! How crazy is that!?

Hi Hyn Patty, this one was grown from one of KO's seed (Elegant Ballerina) I think it turned out much better then the mother/seed I purchased... I actually got 2 like this from one packet of seed & the others were similar to the mother plant. I sold off the others & kept the 2 bolder stripe ones for my collection. I love this flower too, the stripes are beautiful & it just screams tropical to me. I would love to try & breed a double of this flower one day. Below is a photo of the mother/seed I purchased from Mr Ko's website. Maybe you should buy a packet too. Rachel :) This photo is Elegant Ballerina & is taken from Mr Ko's website, to show the seed I ordered!

I buy about 500 cubic feet at a time. I tried buying it from local sawmills, but it always came in with bugs that ended up being a LOT more trouble than they were worth! So I switched to using bags from Lowes a few years ago. I didn't have a truck to haul it myself, so by time I paid someone to haul it for me it ended up being about the same price as the bags, anyway. But no bugs with the bags :-) If I chop up my own trees, though, then at least it won't bring in NEW bugs. @toxcrusadr, most of the trees I'm cutting back are field pine. No one uses that because they (falsely) believe that it causes excess creosote in the chimney. Which is kind of funny, really; I grew up with wood heat and my dad ALWAYS used pine because it's what we had. But now, you couldn't pay him to take it! LOL I've given away a ton of beech, birch, and oak, though. The issue with renting something is that it's going to end up costing almost as much as buying mulch, so it kinda defeats the purpose. I mean, $400 /year on a rental is still cheaper than buying mulch, but I'm not sure that saving $200 is worth the extra work (especially if the price goes up over time). So buying a used one might be the ticket :-)

Good to see you around here, DG 🙂 Fighting with critters over blackberries and the last of my tomatoes right now. Birds and (I think) rats as well 😕 I made some tomato sauce yesterday from all the damaged fruit I managed to salvage - almost a quart - and I have a couple of pints of berries I need to make into a cobbler. Waiting for a second flush of Rattlesnake pole beans - still have a few pounds in the fridge. I have pots and pots of perennials, shrubs and a pine tree that need to go in the ground, but I can't decide where, and it's getting so dang hot out there, I don't want to do anything but stay indoors in the AC. Our neighbor has a ginormous Kapok tree that recently, finally, finished dropping a couple million seeds encased in gallons of white fluff that coated our (and others') yard and I'm still picking fibers off everything and pulling the resulting seedlings whenever I come across them. They quickly form long, strong taproots and can be really hard to eradicate if you don't get them early. At least the rain helped wash a lot of it down - it was floating in the air and coating everything until the rains came. Advice for Floridians: DON'T PLANT A KAPOK TREE!