I have attempted to allow all to come and speak civily. If I have done nothing else. Yes I can send out what I recieve and I can even take from everyone else the information they give because it dose make for my benefit as well as dose my information for some. If I held every answer in the book I would not have come to this forum or to any other forum to ask questions or to simply make a statement of my experiance, be it with tomatoes or with a tree. As to those un named who simply can not see past thier own actions in conversations. I post for those who want to try and work as a community here through the true exchange of ideas not through arrogance . that hostility towards new or old ideas and methods makes any thread of knowledge mute to others. I have seen over my fifty years thousands of crops and gardens lost to blights late freezes or other factors including droughts. so Is it a gamble every year you plant? you bet ya. but as gardeners and farmers we go out every year and plant our gardens and fields. and we wait and we harvest from our toils. Is my way the only way out there as we can plainly see it is not. dose it make me a better gardener or farmer if I make no effort to allow others to give to me knowledge of some kind towards a different idea in gardening no it dose not. But to jump up and treat people the way I have been treated by some in this post may amuse some but with it comes the loss to others who really are thirsting for knowledge. to that end for those who really want a civil conversation please feel free to have one. and please do use the almanac to get if not just the basics for those new to gardening but to those here who truely have the ability to give thier views with out malice. because the only thing I learned from most of you here is you have grown too set in your ways to let in information even if it was just part of what was given in total. I was asked to introduce my self several times and did so including where i live and my experiances including in many of the areas of you here in this post. but instead I recieve a continual out pouring of arrogance from those just wanting to see just how far they can push some one. I can bark back or I can set back and listen to ideas and pick up some new methods including those that may infact make me wonder. If the way you grow your crop works for you by all means share it. it may make some one else actually have a crop or garden that has exceptional yields we as gardeners and farmers pray for three things an early spring with out a freeze, plenty of water, and a great harvest season- long and fruitful. We as a group need to stop the nonsence and try to reach for those goals instead.

Hmmmm......... I tend to buy a lot of books from garage sales and rummage sales. In Ottawa there's a once a year event called the Great Glebe Garage Sale when a whole neighborhood in the middle of the city throws a MASSIVE garage sale. Something like 5 (if not more!) city blocks of just garage sales. This year I picked up an incomplete set of something called "The Greatest Works of Literature" plus an incomplete set of a series called Great Ideas plus a massive dictionary, a total of about 20 hard bound books for Cdn$25. (The 3 foot tall plush toy of Wile Coyote for $4 was from a different seller) There's also some nice used bookstores in the Ottawa area but they can't beat a good garage sale. For paperbacks, there's a flea market out in Carp every Sunday that has a pretty good selection of half-decent paperbacks. There's also a neat used bookstore here that also has some cheaper new books. They used to have dirt cheap prices until they cleaned up the place and started charging more. They even have some out of print books that I haven't been able to find anywhere else. I do sometimes go to Chapters to splurge as well. I used to do that quite a bit in the past until I realized that, not only was I paying premium prices, but that some of the books weren't that good! I figure that if I buy a book at a garage sale, it's ok if it's not very good. At least it's cheap. I sometimes shop at Amazon.com or Amazon.ca if I need a book that's out of print or if I need a book that's a specialty book. Oh, and if you're Canadian and you need an American book, sometimes it's a lot cheaper to buy it from Amazon.com than Amazon.ca. I needed a late edition book for work and it was being sold on Amazon.ca for Cdn$400. I found it on Amazon.com for US$100. And yes. I need more bookcases.

Meant to add that I read House in the Sunflowers by Ruth Silvestre a year so so ago. I think she has written 3 books with similar titles. It is worth trying to read them in order (which I'm sure I didn't do). They are about her family finding a run-down old farmhouse in Gascony (?) doing it up and meeting and becoming friends with the 'locals'. Wonderful details of the huge meals cooked by these French women. The last book is rather sad. I didn't get any terrible presents this year; although a while ago I received a hot water bottle two year running from my DH plus those electronic scales that worked out how much stored fat was wobbling off my delicate form. You can guess how pleased I was. Mary/woodnymph, your friend may appreciate your abstemious habits by giving you wine bottle stoppers. She obviously knows you never finish a bottle at one sitting. Or is she trying to tell you something? ;-)

As you all know, I am a martial artist. Many of my books were about the martial arts. The Overlook Martial Arts Handbook by David Mitchell, (No, not THAT David Mitchell) Becoming a Complete Martial Artist by Tristan Sutrisno The Samurai and the Sacred (a history of the Samurai) by Stephen Turnbull The Shaolin Grandmasters Text: History, Philosophy and Gung Fu of Shaolin Ch'an by the Order of Shaolin Ch'an Ninjutsu: the art of the invisible warrior by Stephen B. Hayes yea, I know.. I live in the sweet little place of Chocolatetown and study all of this stuff... what an oxymoron, huh? I also received Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson, a book about sailing (my other passion),a $25 B&N gift card, a $50 Visa gift card which shall go toward books naturally, $35 in Border's gift cards, and $25 for Starbucks where I shall sip decaf tea and read. Oh, and I got an e-reader from my mom pre-loaded with 100 classics! An embarassment of riches, to be sure. PAM