Here's my question: Which heaths & heathers bloom during the winter? I've heard that some heaths bloom even in January in my zone, and that sounds too good to be true. And... How long do the blooms last? And... Has anyone ever put in an all heath & heather front yard instead of a lawn? Cuz that's kinda what I want to do! Well, I have more questions than answers I guess! Hopefully that will change in a few years once I have some actual hands-on experience with these cute plants.

I feel your pain a bit, and we're in a development. We got our permit 6 weeks ago but have only had about 7 days total of working weather--for several weeks we had hard rains 4 out of 7 days, making the lot a giant muddy puddle. It's frustrating to see a house that got dug two weeks ago nearby that is already at the same point we are even though we started a month earlier than they did. We've got to remember, having a house is a very long term prospect, and these couple of weeks' delay won't seem significant in the long term :) Of course, if the mortgage rates jump before we can get the house finished, that's a different story...

I'd like to eliminate the need to change subject headings in order to avoid having messages rejected. I'd love a Delete option. A writers' forum I frequent has this, and it enables members to post their writings for critique and then remove them after a period of time. For a forum like the KT, it would be useful for other reasons. I for one dislike the idea of everything I say here floating around in cyberspace (and on Google) forevermore. I think the GardenWeb search engine is surprisingly poor. Often posts that I know are there somewhere fail to show up. We should be able to search on our screen name to find our posts, but that, too, is unreliable. I like that responses to threads we start are emailed to us. Another forum I like will notify you of additions to any thread you post on. This feature is easily turned off (on a per-thread basis), so you don't get overwhelmed with emails.

I really think the consumers would pick the organic/green choice. That has been tested ... consumers, for the most part are price sensitive more than anything. The amount of shelf space dedicated to the "organic" produce in my local grocery store has declined dramatically ... a national management decision to push organic led to 75% of the fresh produce being "organic" and 2x more expensive than the conventional. It immediately slowed sales down (this is a low income town), which meant that the organic produce turned over slowly and was going bad on the shelf, while they couldn't keep the conventional (grown closer) stuff in stock. I pointed out to the produce manager that although I could afford to buy the organic stuff, after lengthy shipping and sitting on the shelf it was flabby and slimy and I was buying conventional elsewhere. Since then, they have reversed the proportions. There is about a 25% organic for the ones who insist and 75% unspecified for the rest of us. As far as garden plants, Bonnie's stuff has the advantage of being grown for the locals. We get a bazillion kinds of chiles favored locally, and short-season or heat tolerant tomatoes.