I just wanted to say thanks everyone!! Very informative articles and so much knew stuff you learn each day comming here...I never understood this about bark and wood.. All I can say is thanks! I FINALLY found some! Fir bark... I remebered buying orchards from someone I met in my area over 5 years ago that was growing beautiful and citrus back then, and I remembered him saying someday he was going to sellevery good supply he could think of for orchards and tropicals, to help people be sucessful at these plants. It was a dream of his. I saved his number from then. I called him, and come to find out, he is a big supplier of YES!! "fir bark"...We were both happy to hear from each other besides. He has fine and or small and medium grade...He says it's real real good stuff. He specializes in this bark..NICE ha. Now I am excited. I get a FREE delivery of three bags within the next couple of days... I will take a pic, and you can see if it as nice as he says when I get to using it.... If it is, then I would be willing to tell you where I got it privately, since it can be VERY difficult to obtain this hard to find good stuff..:-) A secret he shared. I asked him how his plants were doing. He said better than ever before, since he waters his plants once a month with, ready? Seltzer water, sodium free.... He explained the benefits in detail, hard to remember...Hummm.. As anyone ever heard of this, watering container plants with seltzer water?

cpartist why would you want to run all the way to the garage to get a step stool Thank you, Claire. The door to the garage is right next to my kitchen so no running. And I live in FL so it's not like it's a problem with cold air. Heat yes. Cold no. There is a space right next to the steps that lead down for a hook on the wall for the step stool. It's really not an issue as I had thought it might be. cpartist does this tall cabinet actually exist in the kitchen where you are able to add a bar above cabinets and have the ladder tucked away when it’s not in use. Yes it does but as noted in the drawing that is a wall up against it. Plus there is no room. Also my kitchen is mostly finished. The cabinet peeking out on the left below is the cabinet you circled. The wall next to it juts out 24" to frame in the nook with the buffet. To the right of the buffet is the door to the garage.

On my phone I can't type. Or rather I can, but then Houzz erases EVERYTHING. When I use voice recognition, it write almost what I say, but I can't edit without gobbledegoop coming up. It repeats the word multiple times.I think with Houzz's issues we need to cut people some slack. Sometimes a laptop isn't nearby or convenient when we just HAVE to respond to a post! I'm just happy people still love to garden. : ))

I get nervous when I start running low on toasted sesame oil! Because I have problems finding it & usually when I do find it, it's a teeny bottle and crazy priced. When we were in Vegas, I picked up two 16 oz. containers at that Asian supermkt chain out west at a great 'on sale' price even. Gave one of them to my son and then started getting nervous because I didn't have a back-up btl! As luck would have it, I found another 16 oz container at my local Aldi, of all places. Last one on the shelf so I snapped it up and can relax for a while. I do keep all of them stored in the refrigerator because I've read that sesame oil isn't very shelf stable. Question...does the non-toasted sesame oil have a good flavor? How does the flavor compare to toasted? I found the non-toasted sesame oil at an Asian store in Wausau but didn't buy it....because the toasted is a critical ingredient in several dishes that I make....and that I make when I have a hankering for 'that' flavor, IYKWIM! Didn't want to chance it.