I was having a similar internal dialog last night while watching Geoff Lawton's We Are The Weeds - thinking about how the extraordinary damage we've presented to the ecosystem will require extraordinary means to repair it. Of course, his story seems perfectly organic - reclaiming salted land near the dead sea using OM and taking advantage of the land's structure in retaining and utilizing water, but it did make me wonder if the tremendous energy spent in forming the world into what it is isn't going to take an equal amount of energy to get it back to something stable, and what form that energy will take, if not a wiser and more judicious use of some of the same methods that screwed it up. I'm not trying to justify my original question here (and I still haven't bought the roundup. :) ), but I wonder if there is a practical solution to the places overrun with invasives that doesn't involve either chemical intervention or a million years of evolution. Or if there is a practical way to reclaim enough ruined topsoil while simultaneously still feeding the planet using only the compost and mulch that exist. It's certainly not within the forum's mandate - it wouldn't be organic gardening, and it wouldn't be sustainable or natural, but with management and forethought, it could be a reparative step used to get us to those goals. This is a slippery slope, though - everything that got us to here was done with innocent, sometimes even laudable intentions. It's the lack of proper foresight that got us into these current messes. I'm not suggesting yet another shortcut, just wondering if it's the only way left out.

we did beadboard on a ceiling and i hate it..if you have problems with really low ceiling you might try what dd2 did...she painted the actual ceiling a dark shade and the exposed wood and other stuff white..it gave it sort of an urban industrial feel. her furniture was all cushy leather in a medium grey and for a splash of color. inexpensive area rugs...she found a nice patio table, that was just big enough to play cards on.

Back in '57 ... ... when TV was about as young as YouTube now ... ... I travelled from Ithaca N Y where I was in University to Saskatchewan to visit my family for Christmas. After graduating from seminary in Saskatchewan in '53, I'd applied to do missionary and refugee resettlement work in Korea, was appointed as the Korean War was winding down and it had stopped by the time of my arrival. After 4 years (usually 5) I returned via Hong Kong, India, Palestine and Europe, where I attended an ecumenical conference near Geneva and had arrived in Toronto just before I needed to head for school in N.Y., so hadn't seen my family for four years. Drove my VW bug out through Chicago, taking a Greek student to visit friends in Minneapolis, with a rug over our knees to keep us warm. As I neared home, just after daylight, a fox was running across a field and I decided to chase him: bad idea, as I got stuck when trying to get to a different roadway through deep snow ... so I had to knock on our neighbour's door at just after daybreak to ask his help to get me out. Our small village church asked me to be guest speaker on the Sunday after Christmas and one of the nieighbours told the TV station in Regina about it, so they called me to ask whether I could appear ... but the line wasn't good, so I wasn't sure which news medium was involved ... ... until they gave me directions to their location, on a major highway on the way out of town. They asked me to come in next week ... but I was to return to N.Y. that evening, so they had me come in that afternoon. The interviewer hadn't been able to talk to me prior to my appearance and I was on after a cooking segment, so she apologized for interviewing me in the kitchen ... but I told her not to worry, that clergy people were used to talking to folks in their kitchens. I asked whether she'd like to hear about various aspects of the refugee situation ... and yes, she would ... then about what life in Korea was like ... and yes, she would ... and about other aspects of the aftermath of war, etc. ... so I pretty well took over the whole interview! That was over 50 years ago ... and I don't recall having been on, since. Not handsome enough, I guess. And now one pretty well has to be young: old, lined faces aren't in high demand, I hear. Hope you're all having a lovely week. One thing nice about retirement: every day is holiday. And if you wake up ... look out the window ... and don't like the blizzard ... you can say, "Oh, well - I didn't plan on going anywhere today, anyway!". ole joyful

I agree with all those disparaging comments about the makeover shows with the $2000 budget. Amazing how they never spend more than that. And they never actually account for how much the labor would cost. I hate how they have no qualms about intentionally deceiving prospective buyers by covering up flaws. I love how they take the window treatments down and put up sheers and other totally impractical dressing to hightlight a room's "light" while the privacy and heat loss issues are totally ignored. Most of these homeowners just need a stern talking to about clutter, repainting walls and cleaning their carpets. Yes, buyer beware. HGTV shouldn't be proud of this program.