Congrats on your Savoy! I can understand why you want to keep that to yourself. I love the look of acid stains...that would be my first choice for outdoor leaves too if I could find a good green stain that could hold up to the elements. Any ideas? A bonus of casting the Tetrapanax is that the leaf peels away from the castings so easily....exact opposite of the large gunnera leaves! Steamboat Island in Olympia does have them in 1 gallon pots for $22.50. Also Steamboat sells them to Jungle Exotics in Tacoma(doesn't that sound like a great place to find wonderful leaf casting material!) I know neither of these places is exactly in the neighborhood... you might ask Laine @ Steamboat if she will bring one to Sorticulture in Everett next weekend. I know she will be at the NPA plant study weekend, but unless you're a participant I don't think you can buy plants there.Or you can wait till the end of the season and try Coldsprings, I help out there so I can keep an eye out for you...If you ever want to make another alder twig chair, I've got plenty of alder saplings on our acreage and nail guns. I would love to have someone show me the procedure!

Eric, I'm computer illiterate so I'm not sure how to do that, especially since my scanner quit working. As poppa says, the greatest pressure is at the bottom. I design and build homes and I went to my design tables for wood construction. My tables are for white woods and you should gain some 25-30% with yellow pine or doug fir. I didn't dig my books out to size the beam for those species, so 2- 2x12 is probably overkill. You would nail them together as you would a header or floor girder. Of course they'd be attached perpendicular to the sheathing.You'd run the corners past each other and one beam over, one under then bolt them. Without digging out my APA books I'd say 3/4" sheathing would more than suffice. Frankly, a round tank might make more sense because the wood framing at the exterior of the tank will eat up 12"all around your tank. You should block between the framing members at all corners and at mid-span. Top member could be a 2x8- only 9" of pressure against it. Just like building a floor vertically, really. Mark

When I was supervising the CATV restore efforts after Hurricane Ivan, I was not into palms like I am now. I loved them, but didn't think I could do much with them in Kansas. While down there my company, in addition to the extra OT I was getting , also gave us $35 a day to spend as needed. I wish I knew then what I know now cause I'de have REAL big nice palms. I do try to go to Florida every other year but don't have planned to go there until Thanksgiving next year. I have friends in Lake City, Florida which is just west of Jacksonville. The people own a big lot in town with many wild trees growing that last time I dug up but didn't know what I was doing. This time....WATCH OUT!!!! They have MANY MANY wild Southern Magnolia trees growing. I brought one of those back and thought I actually did good with that one, but it died. Any secrets on those????

Hi, I'm not a soap or candle maker, but I lurk here sometimes, you are all so creative! I saw your question and went on a mission to find an answer! I always have 3 or 4 bottles of that BBW soap on hand, and love the stuff :) I may be wrong, but from what I can find, the Triclosan isn't the beads, it's an antibacterial agent. The beads are either polymer beads or polyethylene beads. I checked the label on one of the bottles of BBW soap, and they list polyethylene as an ingredient. Now, I can't find much on polyethylene or polymer beads other than they're used in soaps (duh), and there's special suspension bases that are used to keep the beads floating rather than sinking. I did however find Jojoba spheresthat are also used as an exfolient. They also come in differnt colors and can be used in scrubs, soaps, gels, etc. Hopefully this helps :)