Mere, glad to read the good news. I know you have to be stressed about the whole situation, how could you not be? I doubt you are the 1st to need a cool cloth; anyone having to have a biopsy would be stressed. I would think that anyone with a family history; well all the more stress. To go in for a procedure to see if it registers the "big C" well that in itself would make anyone puke. Now that I can put off the actual surgery I probably will till after that. It depends on what all it involves and recuperation, really. It can't be much, so we'll see. Did you ever get to check out the cure magazine site? I wonder if you have other options. I remember reading about one breast cancer study where they were given a drug that worked. Might be worth the time to look into. The article would have been from the time dad was sick - July 2005 to January 2006. I seem to remember it as a fall issue - so Fall 2005. I might still have it but it's packed in a rubbermade with dad's stuff.

Reed, For me it is a choice about health. I'd rather have blemished food any day of the week than food sprayed with chemicals. And, like Helen, I have plentiful wildlife and don't want to do anything that will harm it. My dad used all kinds of chemicals in the 1960s and 1970s but by the 1990s had mostly given them up and, if anything, his garden's health was better after he almost totally eliminated pesticide usage than it was before. He still kept a bag of Sevin dust in his shed and might have used it occasionally, though I don't remember him using it in the 1990s and beyond. I kind of think he held on to it as a sort of security blanket just in case he might need it again. I have found that if I treat my garden as an ecosystem, it is chock-full of all sorts of living creatures, both good and bad, but about 75% of the time the good bugs and other creatures keep the bad bugs under control. The remainder of the time I try to ignore the pest damage as much as possible, and then use eco-friendly methods like hand-picking the bugs to gain some control over them. I'm in a wild rural area surrounded by thousands of acres of rangeland in its natural state so it would be impossible to wipe out all the garden pests even if I tried, and I don't try. I practically live in my garden, at least until the worst heat arrives, and I don't want to be in a chemical-treated garden. Different strokes for different folks, though, and I know some people are perfectly happy using synthetic pesticides in their gardens and yards. Helen, One of the great joys of being out in the garden is my enjoyment of all the little creatures out there with me. Sometimes the skinks do startle me in early spring, but I'd rather have them in the garden than have the venomous snakes. Turtles provide a surprising amount of pest control too, though turtles are less common in my garden than frogs and toads, which are simply everywhere. Every year we do have a turtle or two live in the garden and eat potato bugs. It is the easiest method of Colorado Potato Beetle control I've ever used. Susan, I haven't seen one in several years, so I am hoping that horrible summer was an aberration. Neighbors within a mile of us saw some last year, but they are significantly closer to the river so they always have more wildlife than we do. Venomous snakes also haven't been as bad in 2011 and 2012 as they were prior to that. I still see them, but mostly I've seen the water moccasins move into the lily pond after the local native creeks and ponds dry up, and haven't seen as many copperheads as usual. The timber rattler population seems unchanged, but I only encounter them maybe 4 or 5 times a year. I hate having the venomous snakes around, but suspect we'll have just as many 20 years from now as we have now. Actually, out here in the rural areas we need snakes and lots of them or we'd be totally overrun by field mice, voles, pocket gophers, etc. It is just that I don't want the venomous snakes in the yard or garden where they might bite a person or domestic pet. They can roam roughly 13 acres of our property however, whenever or wherever they please, but if the venomous snakes are found on the acre or acre and a half nearest the house, we shoot them. Dawn

Sheri, I'm sure they were packed in. When I read the book, I was amazed at how many plants he had in a small space....and he was doing it in a colder zone than ours (Colorado). Tomato mania makes people do crazy things. Caspian Pink usually makes 5 or 6 feet in height easily before the killer summer heat slows it down and it really spreads OUT a lot too. After a while, it has grown so far beyond the cage that you cannot tell it even has a cage. By contrast, Cherokee Purple gets as tall in my garden, but not as wide and bushy. I think the duckies probably did greatly enrich the soil as they decomposed, so maybe that is why the spot seems to be a prime spot for growing tomatoes. I've had lots of blooms and fruitset, but the heat did slow everything down some I think. Now that the wind has backed off some (although I think it returns here either today or tomorrow), the plants are looking a lot better, and yesterday's inch of rain helped. One thing I have noticed this year that seems peculiar (maybe it is the weather) is that a lot of my plants have had more megablooms than usual. I know megablooms are common early in the growing season, but so far they continue to pop up here and there. (I guess if I was trying to grow giant competition/exhibition tomatoes, I'd be thrilled to have all the megablooms.) I have 5 paste tomatoes that have looked bad the last few days, and I finally realized they must have been hit by some Round-up drift when I was spraying the garden fenceline near them with Round-up to kill the bermuda grass that was trying to creep through the fence and into the garden. This week I am going to lay down cardboard and cover it with mulch along that fenceline, because I have a persistent bermuda grass problem there, and don't want to use Round-up again. I think the plants will recover as only the top few inches were affected. For some reason, all my Roma tomato plants are much larger than usual this year and I can't imagine why. They are in some of the worst soil in the garden, they were shaded by a willow tree that was growing on the banks of the retention pond at the northeast edge of the garden (DH cut that tree down Sunday), and they haven't gotten any special attention. I guess they thrive on neglect. In any season, I have found that tomato plant varieties can behave completely differently from what they did the year before, and can even behave differently from another plant of the same variety planted right next to them. When I comment on that, my DH reminds me that plants are like children--each one is a unique living creature, and that each sibling in a human family is different from the others, just like the plants. He has a good point! Dawn

Stink bugs are my problem and when it was 100 cooked tomatoes which were kind of soft but not rotten. The stink bugs ruin lots of my tomatoes. I am not watering enough - gave up. My tadpole population continues to grow. Last night I counted 8 frogs in my little pond. Frogs are also croaking in my stock tanks and leaving more eggs. I have used all of my siphoning water except for the tanks that have tadpoles. If things get desperate I will consolidate them but they are already crowded.