Susan, Very interesting about your experience. FYI, the Florida Rosarian, John A Starnes recommends that one adds a bag of plain cat litter to a 10 X 10 bed to help keep the soil moist. I found some at WM this last year for about $2. Jerry, that is interesting, too. I have plans to build large containers for several of my roses. (I garden in a VERY shady lot that is built on limestone rock landfill and toxic rubble landfill. Hence, very little decent soil that also has sun.) I thought I would try making the first one out of pressure treated, about 4 X 6 X 2, with 4x4s for the corners and with two of those being about 8 feet high for trellising. And, to save labor and materials and because I know that roots are amazing things, I thought I would leave the bottoms open. Maybe just a little anchoring at the tall posts. So, I had been thinking of a way to keep the soil in rather then seeping through all the cracks and I had thought of stapling fiberglass window screen to the inside sides only, not the bottom. (Those roots again, don't ya know.) I am also probably going to extend a low wall that goes over our ditch culvert with several pieces of concrete chunks and natural stones. This is so that I will have sort of an in ground planter for another rose. I had planned to lay a piece of the same screen over the inside of the wall before I back fill with soil. I don't think that either of these plans will be a permanent solution, but if I get 3-5 years out of each, I will be happy. Maybe by then I will have hit the lottery and I will be able to buy some real dirt. Lol... Karen, Maybe you could take one more panel, cut it in half and use that for the ends. I know that you would need SOME form of corner bracing. That is why I will probably use 4x4s in the corners of my "box". I see you are in 9. May I ask where? I am in Thonotosassa. Now, I thinking that a thick layer of that cat litter first might help the water stay a little longer. Been working really hard and haven't been able to check in much. Also, still awaiting that fall rose flush. There are buds all over the place, though. Veronica

Gamebird, Watermelons give subtle ripeness clues, although some varieties give better clues than others. The tendral that's closest on the vine to the watermelon turns brown and dries when the melon is ripe. The color on the underside of the melon that touches the ground turns a dull, creamy yellow color and, with some melons, it gets a slightly rough texture. Also, once you've grown a particular variety and know how large it tends to get in your soil and your conditions, then the size of the melon is also a clue because a melon is not likely to be ripe if it weights 15 lbs. and the standard melon for that plant is 25-30 lbs. Finally, when you thump a ripe melon, it makes more of a hollow, dull sound whereas an unripe melon makes a sharper, ringing sound. I don't pick a watermelon until it meets all 4 criteria--the size has to be right for that variety, the underside a creamy-yellow and often roughly textured, the tendral dried and the thumping sound. If a melon only meets 1 or 2 of the criteria, it is ripening but not fully ripe. However, if it meets all 4 criteria, it never fails to be ripe. With muskmelons (generally called cantaloupes in this country although they are not true cantaloupes), you have to check daily because they can go from "not quite ripe" to "ripe" overnight. With many of them, the aroma is a dead giveaway. Also, the abscission layer at the stem will crack and you can gently tug at the melon. Once the abscission layer is about 75% separated from the vine, the melon is ripe and separates from the vine with only the gentlest tug. If you use a more forecible tug to yank a melon off the vine when the abscission layer is only about 50% cracked, the melon will not be as good as if you left it on the vine until it is at full slip (75% to almost 100% cracked). Other melons like true cantaloupes and inodorus (like canary, casaba and crenshaw melons) are harder to judge. With some of them, there is a color change that is very obvious although it is hard to know what to look for the first time you grow a particular melon. Collective Farm Woman is a very dark green as it grows, for example, but turns a deep golden yellow as it ripens. Different melons may exhibit more subtle changes as the primary color takes on a hue that changes from a gray or greenish color to one that is more brown or yellow. Melons that are in the reticulatas family and have a more netted appearance will get increasing amounts of netting as they ripen. The more coarse the netting and the more widespread it is on the melon, the better the flavor. Most netted melons get softer as they get riper too. Among the hardest to judge in terms of ripeness are the melons of the inodorus type like crenshaw, canary and casaba melons. They also tend to have a very long DTM. These melons don't have any netting to judge them by, they lack smell until after they've been cut open, they don't get softer, etc. With them, you'll have to go more by the DTM and very subtle clues like the most subtle of color changes and the appearance of tiny cracks in the rind. Hope this info helps. Dawn

The wacky world of fake food As long as there have been cooks, there have been foods made to look and sometimes taste like other foods By EMILY NUNN Chicago Tribune Article Last Updated: 10/22/2008 01:46:02 AM PDT Bac-Os, Quorn Dogs, Cool Whip, near beer, sea legs, fish balls, Tang and Vienna sausage. That's a pretty vile menu. But it's great food for thought for anyone who wishes to consider the existence of food impersonators in our midst. Why must man make mock food? Especially since it tends to be eminently more mockable than the food being mocked? (Take mock lobster please  if you need a good example; one version is made from soybeans, then molded and painted lobster red, and sold at May Wah Vegetarian food in New York's Chinatown, along with a lot of other moxamples.) "Because we can," said John L. Stanton, chairman of the department of food marketing at St. Joseph's University in Philadelphia. It seems like the most obvious answer. "Man has always sought to create, whether it's an atom bomb or a cheaper piece of meat. If we can make meat that is cheaper, we will," he said. And according to Australian food historian Janet Clarkson, who is proprietor of the site, theoldfoodie.com, as long as there have been cooks there have been foods made to "look and sometimes taste like other foods," as she puts it. Mock food is one of Clarkson's favorite topics, and her period of interest falls somewhere between the time man grew bored with mere hunting and gathering and the days when he began full-throttle synthesizing, processing or preparing such food and drink as turkey bacon, soy milk, city chicken, Cremora, Cool Whip, cheese-food "singles," movie popcorn "topping," mock tuna salad made of tofu with soy mayo, and burgers made of nuts and vegetable-based bolts. She pointed out some of the reasons mock food was made in the past: · "To deceive. Often this means to impress. Of course it backfires badly if the ruse is discovered," she said, offering the Samuel Pepys diary entry for Friday 6 January 1659/60 as an example: "I went home and took my wife and went to my cosen, Thomas Pepys, and found them just sat down to dinner, which was very good; only the venison pasty was palpable beef, which was not handsome." How embarrassing. Clark also mentions: · Faux food created for religious or other ethical reasons, such as the fake meat served at Lent throughout the ages. · Faux food for fun, as in illusion foods ("in medieval times ... a meatloaf called yrchouns, meaning either urchins or hedgehogs  they were stuck all over with slivered almonds to indicate spines. No one was fooled but everyone enjoyed the artistry"). · Faux food as a substitute in times of scarcity ("During the American Civil War, particularly, the range of (coffee) substitutes was creative in the extreme," said Clarkson: e.g., acorn, chicory and okra coffees). · And faux food for reasons that are "lost to us today," she said. "There are instructions for mock cock's comb in some 17th-century cookbooks." Not to mention recipes for mock asses' milk. Eeeeek. All these reasons still exist in the world of food fakery today. And so do some of the foods: marzipan fruit, an ancient example of mock food as pure whimsy, is still around and as adorable as ever; near beer, drunk by teetotalers and certain religious groups, is a more palatable version of small beer, drunk by children and just about everybody else in early American history, because the water was risky. And today we also have fake food for health/diet/intolerance reasons (Egg Beaters, Lactaid, NutraSweet/Splenda, etc.). Not to mention replication/simulation-for-profit reasons. "For me," Clarkson said, "the interesting question for each mock food is: Was it intended to deceive?" If so, it's best to be clear about it from the get-go if you're going to be a successful food faker. "Foods that try to trick people always fail," Stanton said. One recent example is Kraft guacamole. In 2006 a woman sued the company for fraud after noticing that it didn't taste very "avocadoey." In fact, it contained less than 2 percent of the fruit. But unlike, say, peanut butter, which laws have decreed must contain 90 percent peanuts, guacamole, a relatively new staple in the American diet, had no such requirements. Kraft claimed it only intended to be selling a "flavored" dip, and the company subsequently changed the name of the stuff to Dip-Guacamole Flavor. We'll willingly accept the poser as just as good as the pose-ee, as long as the poser isn't pointedly lying to us. NutraSweet has never pretended to be sugar. So we add it to our coffee without complaint or much suspicion. But if margarine-makers made claims to butterhood, it would certainly have been more vilified than it is today. "Who's to say, by the way, that whipped cream is better than Cool Whip, just because it came along first?" Stanton added. And a lot of mock food eaters feel the same way about their mock tuna salad, soy mayonnaise, "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter!," mock turtles (the soup and the turtleneck, actually), Miracle Whip and mocktails. One of the most familiar and iconic examples of mock food, of course, is benevolent rather than malign: the Ritz Mock Apple Pie, which contains not a single apple but does contain 36 Ritz crackers, sugar, water, cinnamon, butter or margarine, cream of tartar, and lemon juice, all of which is baked in a crust. According to Jean Anderson, in her "American Century Cookbook," Ritz's pie, which was introduced to the American public in 1934, smack in the middle of the Great Depression, has since become the most requested recipe at the Nabisco company. A similar formula for apple pie from large soda crackers appeared as early as 1872, and pioneers were also known to bake a mock apple pie while on the trail, when they had very little fresh food. Like the delicious-sounding fried mock oysters that early American settlers made from corn, it has served people throughout American history as a form of comforting self-deceit that always accompanies hard times; it's a means of emotional survival. On the other hand, the horrifying mock crown roast recipe we found, allegedly from a 1949 cookbook called "Interesting Recipes ... From Canada Meat Packer's Food Clinic," seems more interested in marketing than in comforting anyone. The recipe directs cooks to sew together 1-2 pounds of Maple Leaf Wieners to simulate standing crown roast, then stuff the resulting ring of wieners with sauerkraut or creamed cabbage and wrap it all in bacon. A more noble form of marketing is used by restaurateur Karyn Calabrese, Chicago's vegan priestess. The menu at one of her vegan restaurants, Karyn's Cooked, includes dishes that mimic meat using wheat gluten, textured soy protein, tempeh, seitan, tofu and other mock-meat building blocks. The "meat" dishes  such as Slab of Ribs, Home Style Meatloaf and Steak Sandwich  take their cue from ancient Buddhist cuisine, whose meat analogues are today considered the finest meat substitutes in the world. Naturally, the question many non-vegans ask her is: What is the impulse to eat meat when you object to it? It seems a little like watching pornography: just because you're not participating doesn't mean you're not guilty in your heart, right? "It's a cultural lure," said Calabrese. "I serve 'ravioli,'" she said, "but they're made of turnips and the filling is macadamia nut cheese. Who do you think would buy it if I said, 'I have a plate of turnip and macadamia nut cheese.' Who do you think would venture to eat that? But if I offer them ravioli, it's something they can relate to." "I make a raw apple pie at my restaurant," she continued, referring to her all-raw cafe, Karyn's. "What's making it mock or fake? That it doesn't contain egg and sugar? Well, I like to call it the real deal  all that other stuff is fake." Which, philosophically speaking, seems to be the attitude that most faux-food devotees  whether they consume Tofurky, Liquid Smoke, Egg Beaters, unchicken, SmartDogs, Caviar Dreams ("seaweed caviar capsules") or mock apple pie through the centuries. It's all about perception. And perceptions are changing: A recent Associated Press story pointed out that in the United States the demand for fake food  specifically fake meats  is on the rise, especially those made from soy. (The Soyfoods Association of America Web site reports that sales increased to nearly $4 billion from $300 million from 1992 to 2007.) And at a time when food prices also are on the rise, worldwide hunger is front-page news, and we have dangerously overfished the ocean, it seems unsurprising that people might have a growing desire for foods that put less stress on the food chain. (Especially the animal-rights organization PETA, which recently offered $1 million to the first person to make the first in-vitro chicken meat and sell it to the public by June 30, 2012.) A German Internet-based project called Future Food (futurefood.org) is already making plans to accommodate that desire. Project leader Kurt Schmidinger said that Future Food's focus is on the "possibilities for replacing animal products with ... vegetarian meats, non-dairy drinks and egg replacements" as well as "in-vitro meat, or cultured meat," a process that he describes as, "for the time being, still a dream." While Future Food's dream is to shorten the food chain from plants to humans by taking the animal out of it, their targets are not just vegetarian, religious and health-conscious markets but also the general public. Fake foods are a venerable part of our past, and they're growing in the present, so it seems natural to wonder: Are we headed for a future of fake and simulated food? Either way, it might not be a bad idea to learn a few mock-versions of your favorite foods right now. And remember: Philosophically speaking, if it's real to you, it's real food.

It's NMS, but I can see why you might be drawn to it. I also like the squares, but the angled lighting is too discordant for me. I've talked myself into purchases like that because of the price and regretted almost every one of them, most recently a custom sofa/chair/ottoman that I dumped for nothing on CL three years later after hating it as it came in the front door. When you describe it, I read "price" often. My husband keeps showing me classic cars that we can buy for a steal, "we could save $15k if we buy this one".......of course I ignore the message he's sending me! Okay, so now I'm assuming you decided you LOVE it. I'm guessing it has been in the showroom forever and they would love to sell it because it's not a mass appeal item. Go back and offer 15% of the retail price in cash to take it immediately. See what they say.....but maybe don't spend more than you planned to in the first place.