The things people argue about. Where do you see some safety from poisons weÂve been dumping since before your great-great-great who ever was born. You know what was killing the coral reefs just of Hawaii? Sun tan lotion. We even make excuses to allow us to keep right on polluting. The modern lifestyle of individual houses is polluting us to death and we keep on making them. How many times do you shower a week? ThatÂs all polluted water and how much chemicals did you add to only have it last a day? Get real. Think of all the trash weÂve been piling up since when? HavenÂt you ever worked for a construction crew and see whatÂs buried right below our feet? How cities. Some they didnÂt even bother to knock down just dump dirt over. How many factories have you in your cities? How many have been abandon for how many years? You have miles and square miles of land you canÂt even use and you want to start talking about organic? Everyday 4 times a day thereÂs a raging forest fire sweeping the surface of the planet. ItÂs called driving. ThatÂs all your really doing you know, burning old trees. In your car, to the gas station, store, work and just to get away. WeÂre long past discussing "organic" and better start thinking surviving. Those long before us set this course for building a world for machines to survive in.....not people. Now to donÂt look at me for an example because IÂm caught here too. This is a problem with specialists. Their view is so narrow to them. Not their fault. That's how we got this life but specialist can't see the forest falling around them because their too busy looking at a tree.

A note about air layering, which danab mentioned. I'm very novice, but this is the most reliable and successful method I've tried. I managed to root four out of five layerings last year. The one that I lost was the first I tried. It developed nice roots but I handled it too roughly and broke off many of the roots after cutting off the stem and removing the plastic wrap and ties. I learned the hard way, but the next four were very successful, and I have them acclimating to outdoor weather now. What I would mention is that I layered several times throughout the summer, late into the season. Danab mentioned using this method in the spring. I'm not sure if late summer air layering will have a detrimental effect on the mother plant. I'll see what happens this year as my plant comes out of dormancy and develops fruit...it's in-ground and we have been above freezing at night for the past week or so. Good luck.

My method for storing beets over winterwhich was an experimentÂworked out very well this year, David. When we started getting down to freezing temps overnite, I dumped several big bags of maple leaves on top of my beets, carrots and parsnips, then I put an old sheet over the top of the leaves to keep them from blowing away and weighted it down with bricks to keep it from blowing away, and-------thatÂs all! IÂve gone out three times over winter to dig up some of each. I just rake a section of the leaves back, dig up what I want, make sure thereÂs a good blanket of leaves on top of whatÂs still left, put the sheet back on top, and the rest of them wait to be dug later. Since maple leaves donÂt pack down, they make a great blanket of air! I definitely wouldnÂt use something like cottonwood leaves that would pack together and "slime" everything. In the past IÂve tried digging them all at once, and then thereÂs always the problem of where to keep them (it wasnÂt that many, but it still filled up the fridge) and that they donÂt keep very long. This year that was no problem at all. Just last week I went out and dug the remaining beets and carrots, and still left a few of the parsnips, but theyÂre going to need to be dug soon too because all three were just barely starting to show signs of new growthÂeven under the THICK blanket of leaves. One other storage system that works really well for my brother in IllinoisÂand I was gonna do this next year if my "blanket" method didnÂt workÂis to dig them all up, cut all but about an inch of the tops off, and then slowly pack them in a BIG bucket or a tub starting with a layer of dry sand on the bottom, then placing a layer of the beets (carrots), then more dry sand, another layer of beets, etc. When finished the top layer of beets should be completely covered with the sand. Then the whole bucket/tub is stored in an out building or garage that will stay cold but not get too far below freezing for too long. When you need beets, you just dig into the top layer of sand and pull out what you want. A couple times each winter he dumps the whole thing out to pull out any that might start to rot or go bad in any way, and then he re-layers them again. What always surprised me was that they donÂt start dehydrating, and IÂm not sure if or how much difference the dry climate out here might make. If you ever decide to try it, itÂs important to start with dry sand. Then, when you get to dumping the whole thing out to redo them, youÂll find the sand is quite damp from moisture that has migrated into it from the veggies. When theyÂre re-packed, you use the same sand, which is, then, damp. The only possible drawback to storing them outside in the ground would be if theyÂre in a spot where theyÂd be too buried under snow all winter to be able to access them. This winter I suspect you wouldnÂt possibly have been able to get thru to them if they had been in the ground! Last winter I couldnÂt have dug mine if they had been outsideÂbut thatÂs REALLY unusual down here in the lowlands! I guess the other possible problem would beÂsince you guys all have such big gardensÂif itÂs just simply too big an area to cover. But with a little planning, you might be able to keep the ones you wanted to store in the ground in a more localized area. I REALLY liked the fresh-dug flavor they had when being stored in the ground, and I plan to keep doing it that way. How do you roast yours? Do you do it with the skins on and then slip them off, or do you peel them and then roast them somehow. IÂve got a bunch in my fridge since I just dug the rest of them, and IÂm always interested in possible new ways to cook them. Love beets, Skybird

Hi from Anne, Actually, the cross stitch and other embroidery kits were not pieced. They were what we call wholecloth quilts. You got the size of the bed with the embroidery kits. Bucilla was one of the kit companies for those kits and I think they are still available today. They had many kits and the cross stitch and other embroidery kits were really popular. It kind of went with the 50's where the people considered all the hand work to be kits. Men often did leather work and copper work (not to say women didn't do that but the men considered those manly man crafts) and the women did tole painting, crocheted bed dolls (they were plastic dolls with crocheted big skirted dresses.), crocheted and quilted potholders and some quilts were made too, but mostly people were trying to get their lives back on track to recover from WWII, and then Korea came along on the heels of WWII. And there was the communist scare, and people were busy building bomb shelters in their back yards. I wonder today how many of those are still intact? We had men returning to work and women leaving the more industrial world, though they did still work, but more things like teaching, nursing and secretarial work. There was a focus on getting women to "act like women" whatever that meant. It meant women worrying about cooking nutritious meals, housecleaning, having their hair look just right, having frilly and basically useless aprons, and very pretty dresses with shoes and purses matching and women wore gloves and hats to church and going out. People focused on banning books. Did you know that there is a list of banned books every year. In the 1950s, I think was actually an attempt to ban Nancy Drew books as being shallow and poor literature, but in reality, Nancy Drew represented the new woman, having a nice car and able to be proactive and solve crimes (they were not mostly what we could consider crimes today). I read them all, and to this day I still could go back and read them again and enjoy them as much as then. A childhood friend and I would read the same books and then act the parts in her backyard of Nancy Drew. So much fun in those days. We did not have shopping centers or plastic (i.e. credit cards) yet, so we traveled on the bus to go downtown, visit all the five and dime stores as they were called then, try on hats and go visit Mode O'Day shops. How many remember those? How truly wonderful they were. And we had layaway. It was exciting to buy something on layaway and look forward to getting it. I guess cars and appliances were sold on time payments. Did you know that the sewing machine was the first thing to be sold on time payments, and within a year of when they came out, some 75% of households had one. It is funny to see a quilt of those times, for often they were almost totally hand sewn, but they would always use the machine to show that they had one for it was prestigious. And they often hired women to sit in the store windows and sew what are recognized as heirloom quilts with fancy quilting (I actually saw an exhibit in Los Angeles of quilts Barbara Brackman, our favorite quilt expert collected, and it had one or two of those as I recall. I always say that because some days I don't recall what I had for breakfast the other day. Chuckles. Well, that era brings back a lot of memories. Gals wore summer dresses that were full and pretty and those underskirts that made the skirts stand out and we had matching sweater sets and beautiful straight skirts with pleats in the bottoms and other beautiful styles. When women wore pants, they often were capris with men's style shirts with sleeves rolled up and the bottoms out with curves on the sides. Saddle shoes and pedal pushers were common at school. And the men and young guys looked so cool with their duck cuts and their cool pink or gray or turquoise shirts and nice pants with belts. No bums hanging out with ugly underwear, tattoos or shaved heads or beards and long hair in braids or pulled back, which comes from the prison crowd. Ask me how I know that. I am a student of criminal justice, and next year when I am almost 75, I should graduate. Whoo hooo! So I see a lot of documentaries and photos of the criminal crowd in prisons, and that is exactly what these guys wear. Pretty ugly. I love the days when men always had nice haircuts and nice shirts and pants and they were all handsome. Have a great Thanks Giving everyone who reads this. I purposely spelled it that way. We can give thanks for all we have and we can give to those who do not. Anne always