This is the response from GardenWeb regarding the problems with the SEARCH function. ********************************************** Unfortunately, this has been a problematic issue on the Roses forum. It's been fixed, but then it breaks again. Our tech team has been working on the problem and it looks like it should be resolved tomorrow. In the meantime, you can use the fix as stated below -- adding a '2' to the word forums after you've clicked on the link. We apologize for the inconvience and really do appreciate your patience. Best wishes,

I probably shouldn't tell you this...but I got so dang tired of cleaning the many bushels of lambs-quarters that I came up with a short-cut that you'll laugh at. The way I grew up doing it was get up before sunrise the morning or two after the first spring rain (in high desert Texas) and go look in ditches for the young tender lambs-quarter. Lambs-quarter later in the year is just too tough in Texas..but in Wa. State you can harvest them till hot weather if you like the lanky ones that grow up here. Take home and then pinch out each and every blasted growing tip (that's where bugs like to hide) then soak and wash...then take each and every plant and slap slap slap against your hand to dislodge the sand sticking to the underside of the leaves (lambs-quarter has a sticky tendency worse than spinach). Then soak and wash 2 more times. That is the way my Grandma and Mother taught me and I had the blistered hand every year to show for it. OR...clean your clothes washer out good...and put 2 bushels of lambs-quarter in and wash those suckers and spin them and pretend you don't know a thing about those few bugs that might have stuck to the growing points. (LOL) Protein is a good thing. The greens come out a little bruised but clean as a whistle and no sore fingers and blistered palms. My Grandmother thought I was touched in the head when she came over to can at my house for the first time. I usually helped her can whatever we happened to be picking that day...then went home and did mine the way I wanted to. LOL! Then I proceed with a hot pack for collards or mustard greens. Generally...I put whole plants (minus and roots you might have accidentally acquired) into large canner for precooking...then use a knife to "cut" tenderized greens into fairly large chunks. This takes care of the young stems. You don't want to chop them up like the stores do with frozen greens. I only pass a knife thru 5-6 times and call it good. Best part of lambs-quarter is the fact is you get more Qts per bushel as compared to other greens...or at least that is my experience. This was very helpful feeding our family because all the kids would eat lambs-quarter but not the other greens. Growing up..lambs-quarter was a necessity back when you just couldn't get much green produce in the winter due to transportation of produce back then. On good years...we would can 2 or 3 years worth...just in case the next year was a bad year for lambs-quarter. We kept it in our tornado shelter/root cellar so it was fine for years. My great grandmothers were Comanche and Cherokee so it was an event each year for 3-4 generations to gather lambs-quarter for our families. BTW...did you know that you can somewhat domesticate lambs-quarter to grow in your garden? My aunt did this and each year the greens got more and more purple tinged and they loved the extra love and produced well for us...plus they handle hail storms better than other greens.

Brenda, Hooray for the tiny tomatoes and peppers! They won't stay small for long. If your onions seem behind, try giving them a shot of nitrogen fertilizer. They are heavy feeders. You can give them dried blood/blood meal if you garden organically or any pelleted form of lawn fertilizer that contains nitrogen only. They also need a consistent amount of moisture even if no rain is falling. Otherwise they stall and just sit there and refuse to grow. You can plant garlic this year, but just not right now. In our climate we can start planting garlic in the September-October time frame for harvest next June or thereabouts. I am so glad your husband is hanging in there and making his way through all the surgeries. Hopefully he'll soon be strong enough for the third one. I am glad to hear he's making good dietary changes, and that you make it more fun and more meaningful for him by growing fresh produce yourself. Fresh is so much more nutritious because nutrients degrade as 'fresh' produce is shipped across the country, and even around the world, to reach store shelves. I also think there is something that just "feels right" about eating food you've grown yourself whenever you can. Dorothy, I know. It made me laugh out loud at first, but after a while I was tired of it. When we got married in September of that year so very long ago, it was 102 degrees. I think they thought they'd gotten on an airplane and flown to H-E-L-L. After we moved here, my brother and sister-in-law and their kids came to visit that August. They were here for 3 days and our high temps while they were here were 110-111-112. It was a drought summer, so that year the humidity was very low when they were visiting, but it still was miserably hot, even if it was a dry heat (grinning). They can't stand our heat 'cause they aren't used to it, but then I can't tolerate their cold weather either. We were there on Memorial Day weekend one year, and it was 26 degrees in the morning when we got up early to go trout fishing. Another year, it was 70 degrees and misty on the Fourth of July. I had typical Texas summer clothes with me, so all I remember about the Fourth of July was that I was freezing and that the fireworks show was cancelled because of the rainy, foggy, misty weather. Dawn

Given how much content Houzz has now, they really need to fix their search system. Even searching for their own articles (stories) is useless. I put in a search for "Heating off-grid house". The first article that showed up was "House Rule: Off With Your Shoes". Really? How exactly is that relevant? I'm sure Houzz has lots of relevant content to offer me, but if it's impossible to find, what's the point. I have much better luck searching through Google, which sometimes takes me back to Houzz, but often doesn't. Hey Houzz - you are losing your audience because of your crappy search queries.