Ria. for sending out promised noids, & other plants I have traded for anyway. the P.O. gives them free & deliveres them to your door. you don't have to find them. which is what I did before I had found out the give them to you for free. thanks for asking Elizabeth

I opened my lasr Fino today and so far this one was the best out of the 3 I had. The fruit I ate today was perfectly flavored. I loved the smooth consistency and the subacid I ate it down to the skin and wanted more when it was gone. Also, it didn't have the number of seeds the others did. I opened one of the Pierce and it was soft like the other Finos I opened but it was rotten! That was upsetting to see but I guess I can't complain to much. I knew it as soon as Iopened it and it smelled foul. Now I have only one cherimoya left:( one Pierce until I reorder again. Roger Meyer emailed me to tell me that he got my payment today. I told him I wanted to try my Pierce firt. I think I have one more day for that one to ripen. I just hope it isn't rotten like the other. I have to say that I wonder if I am going about this all wrong. Just because I like the fruit doesn't mean that it would be the best candidate for pot culture but this isn't the place to discuss it. I will post on the potted cherimoya post instead. I will do anything possible to get my tree to fruit short of having a greenhouse since I don't own the porperty. Andrew

Thanks for the support everyone. I truly appreciate it. If I provide a bit more backround perhaps it will answer some of the questions that have been raised. My parents built their retirement home on a lake in central Ohio 23 yrs ago. They still enjoy the home, but my Dad feels the maintenance has become too much for him and periodically tells my mother (not me) they should sell. The last couple of years she told him she wasn't ready yet - she likes being near family. For the past 12 years they have been spending 6 mos. out of the year in a mobile home in FL. They have a lot of good friends there and it's particularly good for my Dad because he has buddies he hangs out with. Buddies who will ask him to come along if they run errands. In Ohio he has friends, but not the kind who want to hang out, so he's mostly in front of the tv during his waking hours. Going into town to run errands every day was his break, his entertainment so to speak, and now he can't do that. My mother's sister lives on the opposite coast of FL from where my parents winter. She has friends in a retirement community in central FL and has wanted to move there for a few years now. Her husband passed last July, and since she has been more avid to move. Since neither of my parents want to spend winters in Ohio, they are thinking of selling the lake house and buying into the development where Mom's sister wants to live. My mom's sister is 79 and has been undergoing cancer treatments for a number of years. One thing gets cleared, then something else pops up. She is doing okay - as in she's not feeling terrible - but from what I get from my mom the treatments continue. My fear is that if my parents sell the lake house, put all the proceeds into buying new home in the FL retirement community it could be only a matter of a few years until my mom is there by herself. I HATE thinking like that, but given my father's and my aunt's health issues it is a real possibility. I don't believe my mother would want to live there without any family around, so I would probably end up moving her back to Ohio to live with me. A better plan- to me -is for them to sell the lake house, buy an Ohio home closer to town for the 6 months they spend here and keep the trailer for winters since that is where Dad is happy. I've suggested this to Mom and that's when she told me she would never buy another house in Ohio. I'm not sure why she is so adamant. Last summer during our 30 min commutes back and forth to town I would point out areas on the outskirts and say "It's pretty out here and not too far from town." Once she shot back: "Why would I want to live where there wasn't a lake?" I replied, "Um...because you'd have something nicer to look at than your neighbor's windows? Which is what you would have with a house in FL." Maybe she sees buying a house in OH without a lake as "coming down in the world"? Or she feels buying another house here means eventually having to live here during the winter? Maybe she wants to be nearer her sister while she has her? I don't know. I agree the track I need to build for myself is a way to support myself in my own small place. Let mom and dad do what they want to do and cross the bridge of taking care of one or both of them when the time comes. I suppose I'm just trying to prepare myself psychologically for that future. Thanks again Lavender and all, for letting me explore that here.

Here's what I've always been told.... say you have 2 romex going into a box (12/2) Two blacks (one for each romex) = 2 Two whites (one for each romex) = 2 All grounds count as one = 1 Devices (switches/outlets) count as two = 2 pigtails don't count so you would have 7 wires by my example. That's how I was taught and I've been doing it that way for years and never been turned down or told otherwise. Almost all plastic boxes will tell you their fill also. So you don't need to worry about the cubic inches most of the time since they've already done it for you and stamped it on the back of the box.