Annpan - you asked whether I had ever seen the Mapp and Lucia TV series - no, but I have heard good things about it... Does the series stay quite close to the story? I happened to find a title the other day which I am having an extremely hard time to put down. It was published in 1955 by author Brian Moore and has the appalling title of The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne. It's the story (fiction) of a (maybe) middle-aged (definitely) unmarried woman during the 50's in Belfast. She becomes enmeshed with one of her fellow boarders at the house where she lives, and, at the same time, is fighting really hard to keep part of her life secret. Really excellent read. She's not a particularly likeable character, but she stays with you. Reminds me a bit of Stone Angel's protagonist in some ways. And it has little to do with bodice-ripping type passion. BTW, just found out that there is a sub-category of bodice-ripping romance books focused on the Amish crowd -- called "bonnet-ripping".... :-)

"While they say you can get the recipes from the show for free, their idea of free means you have to sign up and get bombarded with stuff..." That's not true. They say you can get the current season recipes online, which is accurate. The problem is many of the shows aired are from past seasons, which will of course come under the pay protocol. When I've wanted a particular recipe I do a search and haven't had trouble finding what I wanted, often there's some variations people did which can improve it. And often, even on the older items you can watch the video of the program segment so you can write down the recipe if you want it. I seldom watch a cooking show to get a recipe. I watch them for entertainment, to learn and to get an idea on improving what I make. I miss Justin Wilson, Franco Palumbo and even Jeff Smith. Franco had a couple recipes I use but they're also pretty common so I could have found them elsewhere. The one thing about ATK and Cook's Country that irritates the sriracha out of me is when they taste something it's always the grunts and mmmmmm, mmmmm, mmmmmfff, from both of them as they're wolfing it down like starved dogs. Most other programs will try to describe it but they feel content to just grunt and snort, including Julia and Bridget. I don't get it. Don't they watch what they do? Do they really think people want to see them grunt?

Here's the follow-up to "More later." I won't go into all the details, but will explain somewhat about my lack of activity here, and why I haven't been posting much. Shortly before my 90th. birthday, when I had the awesome Harley ride, I was diagnosed with breast cancer and had a lumpectomy shortly after. I had already learned of a vision problem that required a second cataract surgery. Multiple follow up appointments for those and treatments for the eye still ongoing. Recently I learned that I have skin cancer (squamous cell) as a result of an ordinary wart on my left calf that had been there for years. I had been told to just leave it alone, so I did until it started to grow a cap. Now I'm getting weekly treatments for that and it is responding really well. This past summer I gave up driving and sold my car. That is a life changing decision, and I miss my "little rambling (shopping) trips" that I used to make. I am very blessed to have my DD close by. She takes me to all my appointments, and is a retired Radiology Tech, so knows what the Docs are saying, and translates it to me. So that is my tale of woe, I haven't had the time or inclination to post a lot, but things are going okay in each case and soon Spring will be here and I'm looking forward to what my young'ns will come up with for my 92nd. End of whining!

Wavering on replying, trying to be polite and stay on topic. I think a lot of regulars here have already read about NPK and know what a soil test is. You don't really have to reinvent the wheel, there's a balance between writing your own content and simply reading/sharing what has already been explained. Regarding the 'chemical push,' in short everything is case by case devil in the details in my view. It would depend on what soil test, what is measures, who does it, what they are recommending, have they demonstrated examples of their work, are they benefiting financially from what is happening, and so on. It's not that there is a chemical side and an anti-vaxxer side, it just actually depends on what it is. The science and scientific process is extremely important, but if you are getting so mired in the details and big words that you don't even understand what all the terms numbers and graphs mean, and it's blocking your view of just looking at the dirt, crumple the paper and bin it IMO.