I treasure my older gardening books too for the notes...or flower seed lists or receipts found inside. I even enjoy my own marginal notes in books I've had for 20-30 years...LOL I've an old Taylor's Encyclopedia of Gardening which was my first "serious" gardenbook purchase in about 1970...every plant I grew for the next 30 years is marked in there, plus those I wanted someday (a much longer list). Same thing with tropical plant books, cookbooks. I can trace my learning curves, successes and failures through the years. Andie, I'll bet you'd like a book by Daniel Pool, "What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew", all about 19th century England. Covers all those things you read about in old novels like Presentation at Court, rules of Precedence of Bishops, Barristers & Baronets, The Country House Visit, Vermin and Poachers and Keepers. In fact after glancing through it just now, I see lots of exclamation points, underlinings...a sure sign that I found lots I didn't know ...nust reread. josh

My favorite Canadian gardening book is Seasons of my Garden by Marjorie Harris. I also like Thomas Hobb's books (Shocking Beauty and Jewel Box) for their fabulous pictures. But I also love some non-Canadian books such as anything by Ken Druse and Time Tested Plants by Pamela Harper. I do enjoy Front Yard Gardens, but I guess I enjoy even more the in-depth personal accounts of individual gardeners, the plants they love, their stories of passionately devoting themselves to a single garden over many years and pictures which show the evolution of their own gardens.

I guess this kinda thing doesn't work for everyone. I once got into the Harvey and Marilyn Diamond food-combining book and tried it. I lowered my husband's cholesterol level 80 points. I ended up losing a ton of weight and felt pretty good. I have not read this book yet but I'll read anything. I didn't know there was food combining in there, too. A friend of mine with ulcerative colitis did have a large portion of her colon removed at the age of 23. Soooo young. She ate nothing but veggies and brown rice for a few months in hope of having her colon reattached to get rid of the bag. It worked for her. Obviously, everyone should be careful but... if nothing else, it's one more thing to know about! Thanks for the links.

dedtired, My God, how extreme can people get? I know things are organised differently here in the UK ie money for libraries etc coming from the local County/City Council using funds from both central Govt. and the 'rates' though money has been drastically cut-back in recent years . . . but no citizen of whatever political persuasion would actively seek to down-grade a town's library services, nor would they dare suggest handicapped folk be denied access, especially in these PC days. If your library is run by a Board of Trustees, there must be some legal agreement from when it was first set up. Worth reading the small print to check the wording. Look out for "to benefit the whole population of the town" or "for the education and enjoyment of future generations" etc. Then tell them to stick it in their cauldron and give it a good stir.