This will be the Gman's new Rhubarb bed....just below the greenhouse, this area gets lots of sun. We're toying with the idea of putting a hoophouse here as well.....
A nice healthy strip of fall rye seeded in the main veggie garden. We use this Every Year to increase soil fertility and help stop erosion....
A Christmas cactus - I got this from a friend last year during the holidays....this year it's actually blooming. I managed to not kill it!
Ree's posting about changing out her hair colour....meh.....she's gone from auburn to dark...it looks nice on her!
I even have some Bedhead happening in this pic! (See my lil Alfalfa sprout sticking up there)
Once they thawed out, we strained all the juice thru a colander, just letting it sit for a few hours to let all the juice drip thru.
I weighed out 1 1/2 pounds of sugar, and added it to the bucket, giving it a really good stir. We put it all into the crock and added 1 pkg of yeast. Covered the crock and let it work.
This is simply unbelievable to me....by the way, I am 48
(The links probably won't work, so head on over to www.cnn.com so you can see them)
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(CNN) -- A government task force says women in their 40s don't need annual mammograms, but Sara Fought would beg to differ: She says she's alive today because a routine mammogram found cancer when she was 42.
"I had to read the guidelines twice because I really couldn't believe women in the 40-49 age bracket were being discouraged from having mammograms," says Fought, who lives in Chevy Chase, Maryland. "That's foolhardy. They're playing with people's lives."
Fought is one of many breast cancer survivors and doctors who are outraged over the guidelines released Monday by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force advising against routine mammograms for women in their 40s.
The task force doesn't argue that mammograms have saved the lives of many women like Sara Fought. In fact, the task force mentions in its statement that for every 1,000 women in their 40s who receive routine mammograms, two cases of cancer are detected. However, it also notes that 98 women will have "false positives." In other words, the mammogram will pick up something that looks like cancer, but that further testing shows actually is not.
In its statement, the task force wrote that on balance, routine mammograms for women in their 40s aren't worth the downsides, such as false positives and the exposure to a small amount of radiation.
Watch Dr. Gupta answer your questions
The task force recommendations are not government policy, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius says.
Sebelius says the doctors and scientists on the task force "do not set federal policy, and they don't determine what services are covered by the federal government."
Lucy Marion, Ph.D., a nurse practitioner and member of the task force, says she chose not to get regular mammograms when she was in her 40s.
"The benefit is small," Marion says, adding that groups like the American Cancer Society have been overzealous in recommending mammograms to women in their 40s.
Watch an interview between Dr. Gupta and Lucy Marion
Marion, dean of the school of nursing at the Medical College of Georgia, says that while there are women like Fought, there are also women who had bad experiences with mammograms.
"A woman called me today and said, 'Thank goodness for the new guidelines because I've had so many unnecessary biopsies and they have been painful and they've been costly, and I have had to pay for some of them out of pocket, and every time it was benign,' " she says.
"I want to scream, 'No! No!' "
Andrea Evans says she hopes women in their 40s and their doctors will ignore the task force's recommendations.
Watch how other survivors react to the guideline changes
"I want to scream, 'No! No! Don't listen!' " says Evans, whose cancer was detected by a routine mammogram eight years ago when she was 46. "If I hadn't had that mammogram, I wouldn't be here today.
Dr. Rachel Brem, director of breast imaging and intervention at the George Washington University Medical Center, says she's already concerned that women may be canceling their mammograms because of the task force's recommendations.
"Usually we see 26 women in a morning for mammograms, but today we only saw 17. That's a significant decrease," says Brem, adding that she can't be sure the lower number was because of the new guidelines.
She added that while mammograms do sometimes cause needless worry over a false positive, she thinks women are willing to put up with that. "Every single one of my patients would trade a minimal amount of anxiety for an early breast cancer diagnosis any day," she says.
MayoClinic.com: Is it breast cancer? Procedures to evaluate breast lumps
Will insurance still pay?
Dawn Marie Jones, whose cancer was detected by a routine mammogram last year when she was 40, also is "horrified" by the new guidelines.
"I wept when I watched the news last night. I couldn't believe this was real," Jones says.
She says she worries that insurance companies, which pay close attention to the recommendations of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, might start refusing to pay for mammograms for women in their 40s based on the new guidelines.
What is the Preventive Services Task force?
"I worry about my little sister. This year she'll be the age that I was when I was diagnosed. It concerns me she might be denied the access I had," she says.
In 20 states, insurance companies are required to pay for mammograms for women over age 40, according to the National Women's Law Center. However, these laws don't apply to women who work for companies that self-insure their policies. Slightly more than half of all Americans who receive insurance through their employer work for a company that self-insures, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.
Susan Pisano, a spokeswoman for America's Health Insurance Plans, an insurance industry group, says insurance companies will continue to pay for mammograms for women in their 40s. "If your insurance company won't pay, I think you should go back and challenge them on that," Pisano says.
But Nancy Davenport-Ennis, co-founder of the Patient Advocate Foundation, says she thinks insurance companies will use the guidelines as an opportunity to deny coverage to women in their 40s.
Sebelious disagrees. "I would be very surprised if any private insurance company changed its mammography coverage decisions as a result of this action."
It costs "$640 and up" to get a mammogram when you don't have insurance, according to Paul Keckley, executive director of the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions.
Keckley and other observers think insurance companies will continue to cover mammograms for women in their 40s despite the new recommendations.
"It would be a PR disaster for them to pull back on coverage of breast cancer prevention screening," says Art Caplan, a bioethicist at the University of Pennsylvania. "They're not going to do it. It would be a nightmare."
"Make sure your physician raises hell"
If your insurance company starts refusing to pay for mammograms, Keckley says to get your doctor on your side.
"You should make sure your physician raises hell about it," Keckley advises.
You can also seek a free or reduced price mammogram offered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Breast and Cervical Cancer Early Detection Program. The American Cancer Society has a list of free mammogram services by ZIP code, and the American Breast Cancer Foundation provides financial assistance for mammograms.
Fought, who had a mastectomy and chemotherapy after her breast cancer diagnosis, says she hopes women will listen to the American Cancer Society and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, both of which still recommend routine annual mammograms starting at age 40.
"Discouraging women in their 40s is the wrong message to be giving women," she says.
CNN's John Bonifield, Danielle Dellorto, Miriam Falco and Sabriya Rice contributed to this report.
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My only question is.....Where? Where is this beef going to go? Where I ask? Houston, we gots a problem all right!
Winter in the 'Boo is of course not like Winter on the Coast. I Never mulched my strawberry beds there for the winter time.
We have to up here, tho....if we want these during the Summer, we need to spend a half hour and put these plants to bed properly.
See all the leaves on the strawberry bed? They blew in from the Aspen we have growing in our yard. We'll leave them there, as composting leaves make excellent food for our soils.....
There! All tucked in....I used just over one bale of straw on these 3 beds.... I've got a nice thick layer on there....come Spring, I will remove the straw, once the frosts have finished.
We managed to have a clean up fire the other day.....burned up a bunch of small pieces of wood laying around up by the Shop Site....
There was also a bunch of old firewood up there. Gman figured it would probably be getting punky by next year. Our Wood Room is already stuffed to overflowing, so we figured we'd just toss it on the fire too. There is no shortage of firewood anywhere around here, so I don't think we'll really miss it.
The Gman chained up a few old punky logs from down by the driveway and used the quad to drag them over to the fire. We're going to miss that quad when it leaves! It belongs to a friend down on the Coast, and he just wasn't able to come up and get it, so we get to use it over the Winter....I have a feeling we'll be wanting one of our own, as soon as this one goes!
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And....in other news.....I'm beginning to look more and more like my oldest son every day! ha!
