That's actually not true, gardengal. A huge number of herbaceous plants, including perennials, annuals, and grasses develop mycorrhizal relationships with a wide variety of fungi. I've seen them myself on tomatoes during one experiment, and an assortment of annuals during another. A healthy number of colonized roots can improve the growth vigor of most plants. The trick is to match the strain(s) of fungi with the kind of plant. One outstanding exception that I can remember are those plants within the Brassicaceae family. Their roots have or exude a substance that is toxic to mycorrhizae. Mycorrhizal inoculations for turfgrass can be a huge benefit, and I've seen dramatic results on golf courses during several experiments. Inoculated areas were greener with less water, fertilizer, and fungicide. Turfgrass roots very readily form mutually benefical relationships with the right fungi! I have no idea what's in this 'Mushroom Stuff', however. Never heard of it. ;-)

This is to some extent the thing that's driving many people, myself included, bonkers right now. And the few people articulating the argument are marginalized by the media. I may be wrong, but I'm pretty sure we've never seen quite such an unregulated environment of highly protected corporations feeding off of the taxes we pay. Ralph Nader has been warning us of this for 45 years, and here we are. Eisenhower warned of it 5 years earlier. So this isn't an issue of single party, its an issue of an abuse of a practical system but one which is, with enough money, easy to manipulate to private ends. I've seen genuinely shocking footage of conventions of military suppliers held during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq - where as you may recall we were greeted as liberators - being organized around how to get the biggest chunk of Pentagon funding as we went to war. In the US at the moment we're subject to an astonishing experiment, in which large private entities get to market inadequately tested drugs and patently dangerous products to us with no system remaining in place to keep this in check. I fail to see how this is ultimately different from the abusive actions that some governments have taken directly against their populations. Given the free market the only way to really stand against the sort of things that companies like Whirlpool are doing is to bring them down by a solid boycott. Consolidation of media in a few very greedy hands stands against the odds of this, but the internets, for the moment, can be used to support it. But as we see, whenever folks start talking about organizing smaller units to stand against the depredations of larger ones, the word socialism starts being thrown about. And when we do that we lose sight of the single most important thing in the discussion - the WE of We the People. There is a we, and some things are in everyone's interest, and some things are against everyone's interest. Its in that way that we come to define an old concept called "The Commons", those things we all share. Once upon a time in the dark ages it was understood that WE owned the airwaves, that We owned the air and the water. I'll get up in a soapbox for a moment to insist that WE also own the economy, the common space in which we all interact. A private corporation operates to its own financial benefit by the grace us all of us allowing it to. Of course, a successful boycott would mean that Whirlpool's investors would see smaller dividends and we would see higher prices. Then its up to us to still boycott and the stockholders to stand against excessive executive "compensations". Had this been done in the banking industry a lot of people would still be employed now and you and I wouldn't be paying for bonuses there. This is the business philosophy that lies behind corporate emigrations like this, cost-cutting at the bottom to keep more money at the top. It was the MBA approach to running business that eviscerated my own industry - music - leaving it so fragile that the internet could take it down finally. Instead of seeking out music a diverse audience would like, the industry was primarily focused on quarterly stock price, because that affects CEO bonuses.

Arkansas- The Natural State. The name means "south wind". Our beautiful lakes and rivers are a main draw for people. This state is very rich in minerals and has the only open-to-the-public diamond mine in the world. Lots of forest land and we grow rice better than any other state, along with other crops. I live near Eureka Springs, which is a tourist town also referred to as "a little Switzerland". It was attractive to people starting in the late 1800s because of the healing properties of all the springs. Ozarka water was first bottled here. Arkansas is home to Wal-Mart, too. We moved here from FL to get away from crowds and hot, hot weather. Now we have 4 seasons and no neighbors and the closest real traffic light is about 22 miles away, in a town that has just about everything we'll ever need. :)

I'm with you, M, what IS the deal with toasters? We've had them all, from a fancy Dualit to our current "Housesmith" model, a $16.99 POS from Target, a holiday shopping impulse purchase that is now in the back of my car, ready to be returned (2 of the 4 slots don't work, right outta the box). We never got on the no carb bandwagon in our house, so we toast all manner of bread, english muffins, bagels, even banana bread and the like often. The Dualit, which I found at TJMaxx a number of years ago, worked OK, not great, and finally died a few years ago, which has sent us on the quest for a good 4 slice toaster that isn't a fortune ($279+ for a toaster isn't in my comfort zone). I have a 25 year old Cuisinart food processor, a 30 yo KA mixer and a 20 year old KA blender which all still work perfectly, why won't toasters? Very vexing indeed. In other news, the Jenn Air dw worked well on its two first runs (I may have let the dishes stack up for a couple of days knowing DH was installing Sunday), the only thing that didn't come out spotless were the knives with peanutbutter refuse on them, put in the 3rd silverware rack, but tbh, they weren't rinsed at all, I just chucked them in there, and as I confessed previously, they were sitting in the sink for a day or two. It is absolutely silent, only the occasional gurgle from the sink, no clunking, no motor sounds, no whooshing of water. It has 4 interior LED lights, which is pretty cool, and new to me, as well as an indicator light that shows green when washing, blue when drying and white when the cycle is completed, good thing, because unless you touch the front panel, you absolutely can't tell if it's still on. Looks wise it's a bland ss with a decent sized handle that doesn't stick out enough to hip check you. It took a LOT of salt, I used pickling salt, no one in my area (including the appliance store) carries dw salt, so I googled and learned that pickling salt will work, and I used a whole box of it and it still needs more, so we will get more pickling salt today and fill 'er up. So far, so good, I'm hopeful, the Smeg didn't work well right out of the gate, and we should have sent it back, but, well, inertia is a powerful force.