Have you heard of Garden Watchdog? If not, you need to check it out. I can't link to it, because GardenWeb considers that website as the competition and blocks their web address. You can find it easily through Google. Anyway, Stark Bro's has a so-so rating. They're not as bad as TyTy or those Direct Gardening companies, but you can certainly do much better. I would only consider buying from Starks if I couldn't find what I was looking for elsewhere. Here are some sources for almonds from my Sources for Fruit Trees and Plants list, linked below: Bay Laurel Nursery - very good G.WD. rating - http://www.baylaurelnursery.com/ Edible Landscaping - good G.WD. rating - http://www.ediblelandscaping.com/ Johnson Nursery, Inc. - excellent G.WD. rating - http://www.johnsonnursery.com/ Raintree Nursery - good G.WD. rating - http://www.raintreenursery.com/ Trees of Antiquity - excellent G.WD. rating - http://www.treesofantiquity.com/ Van Well Nursery - excellent G.WD. rating - http://www.vanwell.net/ Here is a link that might be useful: Sources for Fruit Trees and Plants

So if we were to do a 1.5 story with the master on the main level, where would you put that, behind the garage then? My thought process would be to first determine priority of room placement in the most ideal location for the use of the room and then if conflicts between room placement develop then rank by how much time is spent and how time is used for each room as well as the importance of that use compared to the importance of the uses for the other rooms. If watching the sunrise from your bed pays off with more enjoyment than having the sunrise and morning sun striking your kitchen, then plan accordingly. For instance, do you plan on using your master suite as a parental get-away from the kids, using it during the day or will your non-sleeping uses be restricted to evenings only, meaning that any views from the rooms would be lost to the darkness of the night? If the views are not important, I'd bury the master suite near the garage in the above sketch. If however, views and day time use are important, then I'd move the master to the east/south/west walls, perhaps right off the entry or in the back off of the kitchen. I'm not necessarily saying to put the master off the entry or off the kitchen, though you could, I'm just using these as examples that reference the above sketch. The way I'm designing my own home is to use a very self-reflective process which tries to understand how I actually live my life rather than trying to contort my lifestyle into architectural trends which presuppose how people SHOULD live their lives. So, to continue on the questioning, why exactly do you appreciate a main-floor master? Is it so that you can avoid stairs? Is it so that you can hear the comings and goings of the kids at night as they try to leave the house, is it because you don't want the kids too near your bedroom, is it because you don't want noise transmission from the master to be easily heard by the kids, and so on? Once you can articulate to yourself why you want something then you can find the best solution for your plan, rather than adopting a cookie-cutter approach. For instance, what I found amusing in some plans was a main floor master with a child's bedroom directly over it on the 2nd. Now, to me, if the goal was to reduce noise transmission from either the child's room to the parent's room or vice versa, the separation by floor, while having intuitive appeal, would fail to achieve the mission. The example I used in an earlier comment was to have a master suite separated by a stairway corridor AND a children's hallway which together create a 7'-8' dead zone, possibly with some walls other than the master and child's bedroom walls also added in between. There are no common walls shared, there is a huge dead zone in between and the goal of reducing noise transmission is, I believe, better served than a downstairs master with an upstairs child's bedroom directly over top, sharing common ceiling/floor as well as sound transmission paths down the walls. Of course, if sound transmission has nothing to do with the appeal of a downstairs master suite, then what I've sketched out is a solution to a problem which doesn't exist, or doesn't matter. I was thinking the master/office space on one side and then the kitchen, dining, great room on the other. That makes sense to me. Would you move the great room from the center of the house below to the front where the dining study is and move the study to where the great room is? Lots of configurations can make sense, but they must make sense in relation to how you envision yourself using the space and the particulars of your lifestyle and preferences. I'd say grab some graph paper, or even blank paper, and just block out the rooms and see how they interplay with each other, note how you foresee traffic patterns within and throughout the space, imagine daily routines taking place within the space. Once you have an idea of how you live, or how you want to live in the new space, then get the graph paper and try to get a better handle on size and furniture placement, and traffic patterns and by the end of this process you should have a very good understanding of how you want the space to be configured. I did the same for my house and this has resulted in me doing away with a formal living room from the now traditional LR/FR combo pack and reallocating the space elsewhere in the home, such as combining the entry with the LR space in order to create a larger sense of space/volume, has led me to create a larger kitchen than would be warranted in relation to the size of the informal living room, has led me to other design changes that likely violate what trained architects use as benchmarks for how homes should be designed. Thank you for the garage tip also - I thought 24x24 was rather large? We will be getting an oversize door for sure. I'd say measure your cars, block out a 24 x 24 space on your lawn, use cardboard boxes or something else to fill the space of your cars, then throw in the other junk you're likely to store alongside the walls of the garage, and see how much space you actually need. Try to get out of your car and see if the door bangs the wall or the other car. A 24 x 24 garage is actually pretty good considering that many designed give a 20 x 23 or something similarly ridiculous.

I'm busy from 3 a.m. until 9 p.m. Even though I'm retired, my whole day is filled with what I laughingly call "make work programs" which contribute to our healthy food sources (sprouting, growing wheatgrass, micro-greens, fermenting, a WindowFarm and an AeroGarden - for off-season indoor gardening), and I spend time researching food and food science on-line and working on lesson plans for classes I teach at different venues (Food Bank, Extension Office, Senior Center, 4-H Clubs, Women's Shelter). I make time each day to knit or crochet and for reading. I participate in two message boards on-line, and that's enough for me. I do bulk food preparation - cook once for many meals - so meals don't take much time to prepare, and our home food storage takes some time each day to make sure I track rotation, use, and inventory. I like to try three new recipes each week and like to try new foods and ingredients. The great outdoors takes a big chunk of time during garden season. At least an hour of exercise 5 mornings a week from 4-5 a.m. - in our basement and/or outdoors. I've finally cut back on my volunteering so I can spend more time at home doing things I enjoy. jemdandy - My last PC was a reconditioned business model and I got it inexpensively through hubby works. NO GAMES!!!! If I want to play solitaire I have to find a deck of cards now..... No more time-sucking "free cell" (LOL), but I did love it so.....

Returning to pipe in and say that I always clean the house from top to bottom before we leave on a trip. If something happens to us, no one will be thinking we were slobs (although, the house is usually pretty tidy anyway) and I love, love, love coming home to a clean house. It's like someone upthread said - it's like getting another week of vacation! Of course, by the time we bring in our luggage, groceries (always go shopping on the way home because no food in the house), mail and whatnot, it looks like a hurricane went through. Unpacking and putting everything away often takes a full day. But, we usually either do our laundry or send it out to be done before we come home. That way, we don't have to do a mountain of laundry when we get home. I always find having to do that after a lovely vacation a real downer.