The garden took me to the west-side Lowe's this weekend--no, really, I had no choice. While there, I saw some good and I saw some bad. First, the good: Lowe's is carrying a composter that does pretty well in urban areas (i.e., it's not open air, so you won't bug your neighbors). Sadly, it doesn't appear that the news has made it to their website, so I can't help you buy it. But it's basically the Smith & Hawken Biostack, only branded Miracle Gro Organic. In fact! this is the kind of compost bin I have, when it was still S&H. It's a good one. Now, if only Lowe's will start stocking rain barrels.
And here's the bad: my wife and I went spent a little time imagining that we were rich and could replace all of our appliances. And, since we're saintly in our lavish imaginary spending habits, we wanted only the most efficient models available. Unfortunately, the Lowe's we were at only had Energy Guide tags (those yellow tags that give you estimated lifetime energy costs, for comparison purposes) on about half of their models. Those tags ought to be on every floor model! How else can a rational consumer weigh her options?