Re: Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades: The Complete Guide to Natural Gardening by Steve Solomon (2002, ISBN 1570612404) I tried to order this through Borders here in Oregon a few weeks ago and they have finally told me today that they can't get it because a new version is coming out and this one isn't available anymore. Has anyone heard about that? It's also not in stock at Amazon or Barnes&Noble. I was down at Powell's last week - should have checked to see if they have it there. No used copies available at Amazon. B&N has used copies of his older books on same topic. I've recently moved here and have already fallen behind, I think, on getting in some vegetable starts/seeds. I'll be growing in raised beds (once I get them made) similar to square foot gardening, as the best areas for sun in my yard are on gravel and concrete. Plus raised beds are easier on my back and knees! Any other recommended veggie gardening books? I'm just east of Portland in Troutdale. Thanks ...

I can't remember exactly how it came about, but a couple of years ago I somehow discovered blogs. Yes, I lived under a rock.....and continue, in some ways, to do so even now. Anyway, Rhoda's blog was the very first one I hit upon. It continues to be at the top of my list and the one I go to first thing every morning. There's just something about it...HER. There's a unique balance in the posts she does and I really enjoy them. I, too, was excited to hear the news of her finding a house....a new nest to feather. I marvel at her resilient spirit, and wish her all the happiness she deserves in her new home. pup

My love of reading probably came from my parents and my oldest brother who read out loud to me from my infancy. However, my other brother doesn't read books for entertainment though he received the same encouragement. Same with my sons: one reads as avidly as I do in many genres, but the other only enjoys instruction manuals, such as How to Maintain Your Airplane and A to Z Home Wiring, which he reads very, very well. I attribute my profound distaste of dystopian literature to high school reading -- my teachers seem to have all been bitten by the same dystopian bug. In three years I was assigned Nineteen Eighty-Four, Animal Farm, Brave New World, Brave New World Revisited, A Canticle for Leibowitz, Land Under England, and a couple I've mercifully forgotten. If I had read them in a more spread-out period and the teachers hadn't been such sheep, I might have enjoyed and got more out of them, but, as it was, I was soured forever. if you weren't an English Literature major, you probably weren't (or never would be) a serious reader of literature.Georgia, I ran across that sort of pickle-brained professor frequently.

Vee, I think what you're suggesting is true. Just as in Wales, there is now nothing whatsoever remaining of the old coalmines and coalfields - it's as if the whole industrial revolution had never taken place: 'Nothing beside remains: boundless and bare, The lone and level sands stretch far away' as Shelley said. Halifax for instance, a bowl set amongst hills, was once almost invisible from above for the smoke and fumes of the factories etc. which functioned there. Now the old buildings, cleaned up and turned into things like Art Galeries and Craft Centres and Boutiques, it is really rather a chic place. Dear old Bradford - Priestley's Bradford - he would hardly recognise were he to come back for the immigrant population, as you say, and the curry houses at every corner - you get some of the best curries in UK there. And then there's the tourist industry...... 'Last of the Summer Wine country (Holmfirth) and 'Emmerdale country (around Leeds). and in the early '60s, when I first visited Haworth to pay my respects to the Brontes, the Black Bull (where Branwell bought the gin for Anne......) was just like any other pub and buses ran up and down Main Street. Later, I lived there for 17 years and when I left it was almost totally overrun with tourists to such an extent that it was better known as 'Bronte Village' than as Haworth. Purists and locals threatened to deface the 'Bronte Village' signs, in fact - especially since most of the tourists were bus trippers who'd been taken for a day's outing and had never even heard of the Brontes. But they loved the cobbled streets and the quaint little pubs and probably thought us residents were pretty cute too! Stan Barstow gives us this picture of a changing Yorkshire, too, in his later books - touristy Haworth appears in A BROTHER'S TALE(1978). But in his Ella trilogy (1990s), he turns right back to WW2 to tell his story Dido