Master Gardeners Plant Sale.

The Ozark Gateway Master Gardeners will hold their 2011 plant sale on Saturday, May 7 from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Powers Museum, 1617 Oak Street.

The sale is the only fund raising project for the group. The sale will include a wide variety of plants, trees, shrubs, annuals, perennials, ground covers, berries, house plants, hanging baskets, yard art, books and lots of gardening magazines. The magazines are free.

The Master Gardeners ongoing projects include maintaining the Carthage Library Garden, the C.A.N.D.O. Senior Center garden, the Crosslines Garden with the produce going to the food pantry, and the demonstration garden at the Wildcat Glades Conservation and Audubon Center. The organization also mans the Volunteer Information Center at the Extension Office in the Carthage Courthouse. The Center is staffed from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. daily through the fall and is a public service for a variety of information on plants.

Shoppers are reminded to come early for the best selection.

This is the time a year when the rubber hits the road as far as the Council is concerned. That’s ‘cause it when the money gets spread around to the various departments and the nondepartmental groups.

‘Course ever year there is a scramble for the dollars "granted" or in more legal terms, paid in contracts for various services.

It must be a humblin’ experience for those on the receivin’ end. Not that anyone makes a big deal about justifyin’ expenditures, but the reality is that the Council can make a major difference in the fundin’ decisions they make. The fact is that most of ‘em take the job of watchin’ the citizens money pretty serious.

‘Course that makes for some real life drama when it comes down to the final cuts.

This is some fact, but mostly,

Just Jake Talkin.’

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Weekly Column

To Your Good Health

By Paul G. Donohue, M.D.

Potassium Plays Many Roles In Body

DEAR DR. DONOHUE: A recent blood check showed that my potassium was high. I was told to stop eating bananas and drinking orange juice. I also was told to return to the doctor’s office the next week. I did. They took another blood sample. They told me nothing more.

What happens when potassium is high? -- F.H.

ANSWER: Potassium has many important jobs. It keeps the body’s electrical charges balanced. It’s involved in transmitting nerve signals. It’s needed to keep the heart beating and muscles contracting. It takes part in keeping the body neither too acid nor too alkaline.

High blood potassium raises blood sugar, weakens muscles, causes nausea and vomiting, and triggers erratic and dangerous heartbeats. When the level is very high, potassium paralysis and death occur. Your potassium must not have been all that high. You had no symptoms.

The causes of a high blood level include kidney illnesses, nonworking adrenal glands, a lack of insulin, sudden death of body cells, overuse of potassium supplements and medicines like beta blockers.

The blood level of potassium can be read erroneously as high when the patient, during blood collection, keeps clenching and unclenching arm muscles. It rises when blood cells break apart in their journey from a patient’s arm to the laboratory. It could be your reading was high because of either of these situations.

It’s hard to come up with an explanation that indicts an illness with raising potassium on one occasion and not keeping it raised for a short while.

The electrolytes -- sodium, potassium, bicarbonate and chloride -- are not well understood by most people. Yet they are responsible for many body ailments.