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[Tvoivozhd <tvoivozd AT infionline.net>]

After a few futile attempts to grow celery in clay soil I gave up, 
though I really, really like stuffed celery.  However, for all other 
purposes Cutting Celery is superior---soups, stews, you name it.

And this is the second year I have held over Cutting Celery in my living 
room and on my porch.  Thje growth slows down in winter but never 
stops.  It makes no difference to me---I would just as soon cut, dry and 
crumble the leaves into a shaker bottle anyway---as convenient as using 
salt and pepper. 

I just cut off all the stalks and leaves, and will invest a couple hours 
in stripping the leaves from the stalks.  After that the oven does all 
the work in drying.  I would have preferred drying the leaves in the cab 
of the pickup truck as I did last year (use the solar heat, but keep the 
leaves out of the sunlight), but lazy is as lazy does---have to dry the 
leaves in the oven now.

I will throw away the contents of last year's shaker bottle---seems 
still good, but might be slightly less so than newly dried Cutting 
Celery.  No matter, unless we were running a restaurant, this batch is 
more than can be used in a year if you lived completely on soups and stews.