A lot of plants actually do require sodium...even discounting C4 plants. Though the amount needed for health rarely needs supplemental amendment help, it is considered an essential micronutrient by many. If we want to be technical about it...there's a chunk of people who don't consider sodium an "essential" micronutrient...and some that do. It's one of the more debatable and debated nutrients out there. I happen to fall into the camp that it's an essential functional nutrient and here's why... I don't want to get too "heavy" into this, but long distance ion transport in plant tissues is achieved very easily via sodium and it's "negative" effects are excluded in various blocking mechanism sites in the plant's pathway (depending upon the plant). Plants have evolved to use sodium to get solutions in water and plant tissues where it needs to go in a kind of osmosis effect. Sodium is an important "transport nutrient" for many other important processes in many plants even though it is rarely involved in the makeup of many essential plant chemicals/compounds. It accomplishes this better and way more efficiently than any other cation (even potassium). You can kinda think of sodium as a "movement booster" for both water and complimentary nutrients/compounds/etc in the solution hitching a ride with the Na+ getting where it can do more good in a much faster manner. This action especially aids a lot of quick water movement through the plant and cell walls up until the Na is excluded from the process. This exclusion happens sometimes in the roots, sometimes in parts of the stem, and sometimes all the way to parts of the leaves...partially blocked and sometimes almost fully blocked. Like many things biological, these systems can be "overridden" by an excessive amount of sodium and if the plant cannot deal with excess, damage can occur. Beyond that, some non-essential benefits from sodium help form chemical pathways for some sugars in crops we enjoy...such as carrots...as well as being quite important to glucose production in sugar beets. Sodium and glucose (sugar) have a somewhat weird, yet important relationship with each other in this respect. It all comes down to energy storage allocation, but it results in sweeter carrots and beets you can make table sugar out of for us humans. In many C4 plants (especially low-water adapted C4 plants) sodium is a crucial part of the plant's water management scheme...from water movement to stoma control keeping the plants from losing water through transpiration...as well as some other metabolic things which would require a lot more explaining, mostly involving pyruvic acids and their role in glucose use in photosynthesis in C4 plants. This post was edited by nc-crn on Sun, Oct 6, 13 at 8:00

So far, what you have described is a wood burning cook stove, or utility stove. If the top is 30 to 34 inches above the floor, its a cook stove. The white finish and backsplash says it was more than a 'trash burner', although it may have been used for that purpose. I have seen heating stoves with round, removeable lids. Usually, these stoves were taller than wide, and would have only 1 or 2 lids. The lid could be removed for limited cooking such as in a cabin, but when the stove was placed in the living room, the major purpose (of the lid) was to heat water. Many families made a practice of setting a large teakettle on the stove with the removeable lids in place. The purpose was to humidify the room and to have a source of hot water for tea or coffee. The lid was left in place to prevent overheating the kettle should it boil dry.

LOL I just reread what I wrote and my grammar isn't very good. LOL I had fun opening the boxes to see what Martha had sent. I knew of some of the items like the books and the dessert set and crystal and I knew she was sending me some Christmas decorations but not as many as she sent. LOL Except for the glassware I have to hoist all this stuff up to the attic tomorrow. I still have my Christmas decorations up but I think I will take them down now because the rooms look so cluttered with all this extra stuff. I can pack away the decorations with my own decorations. I'm not sure where or if I want to hang the prints yet and may wait until Spring to decide. I also have 2 stitched pieces I inherited and I just received in December so have to decide where to hang them too. I am very sentimental. My Grandma had all kinds of Royal Doulton figurines and Royal Doulton Toby Jugs and I would sit and look at them and let my imagination take me away. I would think of stories that told tales of the Balloon Lady, Ribbon Lady and the Pot Maker and the Rug Seller selling their wares in the market. I had stories of the Robin Hood and Beefeater Toby Jugs along with many others whose faces I didn't know. Grandma also had a Royal Doulton BullDog with a Union Jack on his back which represented Winston Churchill and a little white bone china dog who stood playfully looking at the ladybug on its tail. I imagined all the pretty lady figurines dancing away and their children - Hummel kids swinging on their tree branches. I drank tea from the finest china with tiny shamrocks on them and lined up the highball and shot glasses of men in their tartan kilts. Whenever I gazed upon the 2 dimensional large plates on Grandma's kitchen wall I used my fingers to cross the drawbridge and climb the steep stone palace stairs and I would stop next to the man in armour who stood guarding the palace door. I so wanted to see his face - my knight in shining armour you know. LOL My Grandma's things are priceless to me. My cousin only visited once or twice a year so has no attachment to these things and it is her right to sell them if she wishes or give them away. I can still have my memories of the things and the stories they told. LOL I was just tickled to received some of the things she did decide to part with. Anne

Yes, definitely more Shaker than country. In addition to the Shaker elder's chair, there's a Shaker mirror - both from Shaker Workshops - and the nightstands are somewhat Shakerish, although not reproductions of anything that actually existed. Amysrq, I spent a large part of the past year driving up and down the Mass Pike, and visited Hancock Shaker Village, but only purchased cooking herbs. What I really like from their online store is the seed box puzzle. I had also been thinking about a tray made like a Shaker box, because I would typically place a tray with glasses and water in the room. (Because my kitchen is kosher, guests are sometimes afraid to take anything, even a water glass, from a kitchen cabinet.) Igloochic, I used to have a milking stool. It was eliminated during a previous downsizing. I'm not at all sure there will be much floor space once the furniture is all in place (there is no bed in the room yet), so I'm going to wait on anything that can't fit on a shelf or tabletop. Justgotabme, thank you for the link. The last room wasn't the only one that I liked, but in general the last few were better than the rest.