OK, y'all, this thread is so active I can hardy keep up, but I am going to try. Melissa, We are so glad you stumbled across this forum too. Containers are a great way to garden but they do require very careful attention to watering. Also, the soilless mix to fill them is expensive (often, when filling up my containers, I mix up my own soilless mix for far less than I'd spend buying a name brand soil-less mix/potting soil). The size/productivity of your plants is limited by the size of your container so for most things, the larger the container, the better. Also, during periods of hotter weather, containers may need to be watered daily and in the hottest 100-degree-plus weather, perhaps twice a day. The easiest way is to hook up a drip irrigation system and put it on a timer, especially if you are away from home a lot. Container gardening could be a whole thread in itself. I'll start a container gardening thread today or tomorrow and try to lay out some of the basics. Containers do not have to be fancy containers though....I use Tidy Cat litter buckets, which I have saved and used the whole decade-plus that we've lived here, and I spray paint them dark green using Fusion paint made especially for painting plastics. I also use Sunleaves grow bags. With clay soil, it takes years of constant amending to get it into really good shape. In the past I have only expanded my garden a little at a time....by adding an area maybe 40 to 60 feet long by 5 to 6 feet wide. Gumbo clay needs all the help it can get but it can be turned into great soil over a period of time. Our formerly red clay in the garden area is now a nice brown clayey loam because we've added organic matter to it for ten years, so I finally feel ready to start another garden spot....in three different places. However, they all will get fairly minimal improvement this winter (because I'm going to be working on 3 fairly large areas at once) and then every year I'll improve them more until they finally have pretty good soil. With clay the issue is that the particles of soil stick together and the prevents water from soaking in as well as it should, it also ensures that when the soil dries it is as hard and impenetrable as concrete so water just rolls off the surface and doesn't soak in, and it makes it hard for plant roots to grow. Technically, plant roots do not grow in soil. Rather, they grow in the air spaces between soil particles. Clay soil particles clump together so tightly that there are no air spaces for roots to grow in, and that's why we have to add tons of organic matter....to break up the particles of gumbo clay. The reason raised beds work so well with clay is that they put your plant roots in improved soil above the regular grade of the surrounding area. That allows water to drain down out of the beds to a certain extent. When 12.4 inches of rain fell here at our house in one day last year, I expected to lose my entire garden. You cannot expect ANY vegetable plant to survive that kind of flooding rainfall in clay soil. What did I lose? Only some onions and potatoes and a few corn plants that were not in a raised bed. Had I not had raised beds, I would have lost everything. George, We get more of the bermuda grass out by hand tools too, but in certain areas the ground is so clayey that we have to break it first with a tiller. When we do that, I rake out/remove by hand all the grass runners and stolons I can afterward, but it is hard to get a lot of it because it has been chopped into tiny pieces. Eventually, over several years time, I mostly win the bermuda war. Melissa, For hand tools, buy the absolute highest quality tools you can find and you'll never regret it. A high quality hand tool is a thing of beauty! Jay, I have bindweed in two places here and despite everything I do, it seems impossible to erradicate. Some years it isn't as bad, and this was one of those years....or maybe I am gradually winning the war. I hate bindweed as much as I hate bermuda grass and Johnson grass. Carol, I love containers and have found them to be lifesavers in very wet years like 2007. None of the plants I have in containers come close to approaching the size/productivity those same varieties achieve in the ground, but they do well enough to satisfy me. This year, there were several tomatoes that produced exceptionally well in feed tubs....including Chocolate Stripes, Momotaro and Scarlet Red. I wish I had 100 more feed tubs (I only have six). Y'all, I have to agree that no one looks the way I pictured them but.....I am going to stay on everybody's good side by saying that every person I met at the swap that I had not met before was younger, thinner and prettier than I had imagined. The one thing I already knew though was that every one one of them had a big heart of gold beating there in their chest and that was confirmed when I met them. Dawn

More have popped up. Here's another on the Home Decorating forum. http://ths.gardenweb.com/forums/load/decor/con0809575823285.html Here is a link that might be useful: Housewives of NJ question

Ya know, eileenlaunonen (Eileen) has been drifting towards the vicinity of Georges Bank fishing grounds for several days now. The fishing's great & I know the Feast of the Seven Fishes is coming soon...but it's gonna be a loonnnggg swim back to Long Island hauling her catch! :) Linda, I'm a thinkin' Eileen is busy & hasn't noticed how far out she's drifted & is in need of the life ring you tossed me. FYI for where to toss the ring...Georges Bank is east of Cape Cod. :) /tricia

Gray, I am interested in your interpretation to my interpretation of the thread which pertains to what Joanie said above. Let me get this straight, you want my opinion on your and Joanie's belief that rich braggarts here are given a free pass and fawned over and regular folks (non-rich people) are subject to being insulted. I believe we "fawn over" (not sure that's the best phrase but I will go with it) people with good taste, clever ideas and/or strong decorating abilities. Mythreedogs is clever and has a great eye and she gets rave reviews every time she posts a photo. Similarly Palimsest, Funcolors, Magnaverde, Les917 and ChiJim (to name a few) are revered for what they bring to this forum and how they help us all learn to be better at this craft. I don't know whether any of these people are moneyed or not. It's their ability that we admire and "fawn over." I fawn over a couple of the guys on the Paint forum too - I have learned so much from them. Braggarts with big fancy houses who post photos: I may be guilty of fawning over a picture of someone's beautiful house or kitchen - not fawning over the poster, fawning over the beautiful thing. And that brings me to where I disagree with you on the infamous toilet thread - I see a distinction between the poster and the issue: I don't care how funny the pictures are in the thread, you all were making a joke out of my topic. Yes, we were making a joke out of your the topic. It wasn't about you. It was about the subject of decorating around a toilet. YOU were not being tarred and feathered. You didn't even post a photo on that thread. And then the over-the-top ridiculous pictures from catalogs of dressed up toilets had us all rolling in the aisles. I guess it comes down to how we view ourselves. Some people deeply personalize their ideas - if you don't like my idea, you don't like me. Other people make a distinction between the person and the idea - the person can be good, but their ideas can be flawed. In your defense, however, I will say this. As a first time poster, I'm sure the responses caught you by surprise and were unexpected. But really, girl, you have been around here long enough to know we like you and those responses had nothing to do with you.