I'd think any of the dyes for icing would work well. I think they use Squid Ink on Iron Chef for their black ice cream. Realize that dying something that's basically "white" with black dye tends to give grey--so you need a LOT of dye to get true black. When I want black icing, I start with dark chocolate--so you might want to do something similar on the ice cream?

We've been industriously clearing out poorly formed trees and overgrown saplings. The "master plan" is to introduce some carefully selected shrubs to make a graceful transition from lawn and borders to the woodlands on the perimeter of our property. To that end, I've ordered the following books: "The Natural Habitat Garden" by Ken Druse "The Woodland Garden" by Rob't. Gillmore "The Woodland Garden; Planting in Harmony With Nature" by Roy Forster The Ken Druse book arrived yesterday and I've just started it... expect the others next week some time. In the mean time I've been walking the site and just looking carefully (safely under my umbrella). Today, I was able to see that the area is sunny by 8 AM... but now the clouds are back and I'm not sure I'll be able to see when the sun is obscured by surrounding trees. It's a start!

I just use notepad which is on all Windows machines. The easiest way to open notepad on Windows is to go to your Start menu, then select "run", then make sure field is totally blank and type in "notepad" and it will bring up a blank file. You can save this to any directory on your computer. You probably will want a shortcut on your desktop so it is easy to find next time. I have a text file currently that is titled jour010105.txt. I started it on January 1 of this year. I enter ".LOG" on the first line at the top of the file. This causes a time stamp to be entered every time I open the file. I enter plain simple ordinary text. I have some "keywords" I use that help searching later. For example: TODO: precedes every list of items I need to do. The good thing is I can enter these as I think of them. Then I can search back for any old ones to make sure I've done. There are many many other tricks, too numerous to enter here. Eventually, on a file, you will get a message from notepad telling you "out of memory". This is because there is a limit on the size of the journal file. When this happens, I just start a new one using the date. I start in the same directory as all my other journal text files. They go back many years. I put phone calls I need to make. People I talk to , random thoughts, whatever. It is very free form but because I can search for anything it works. I do need to kind of think sometimes when I make an entry to use language that will make it easy to search for later if that is what I think I will need to do. The really good thing about this system is that it can be used and read on any operating system whether Windows, Macintosh, Linux or IBM or even those little palm pilots. Plain ascii text is a universal language. Always has been and I would bet that it always will be. I would be lost without my electronic journal. I make a shortcut so all I have to do is click once. The only hard part is when one journal file fills and you need to transition to a new journal file but not really very hard. I highly recommend "plain text". Besides being universal, the file opens very quickly with "notepad.exe" on my Windows system. Not like Microsoft Word files which take much longer. On other systems, there will be some other text reader. Worst case is that you may need to find out the name of the text reader and define it when you transfer your journal file to the new system. I think the hardest part of this system is that you have to be comfortable with the file structure on your computer whether Dos or Windows XP or Linux. Because you will probably be copying these journal files at some point, possibly even renameing them, etc. I don't think I'm assuming too much computer knowledge. I just love having it so simple. I use notepad files for lots of other things besides my journal, such as my big shopping list I check for shopping for groceries, my list of videos to choose from when we want to rent something, list of possible menus I use when I trying to plan dinner, on and on. --Alice

I would like to make it clear that the reason I don't have a coffee table is because of lack of space! I have gone for a nest of tables in my small sitting area. I used to have a lovely glass topped one which was given to me when I lived in the UK but I had to leave it behind when I moved back to Australia. I used it for pot plants and put it where it would catch the sun,,,so still no books on it! Woodnymph, you could be right about the glue. The worst dog damage I had was when one of my deerhounds decided to tear open a couch to make a nest of the filling to give birth!