It's all so unnecessary.

Kmart is still selling her sheets, and we're still buying them. At the Craft Nook in Winchester, Ky., the customers sometimes bring in pictures from Martha's magazines and shop with confidence. At the Tates Creek Road Kroger, Chef Suzie Berryman cooks so you don't have to.

In one way or another, this is what Martha has really wrought: a little better us.

At the height of Martha's empire, when it was all-Martha, all the time — and never on CourtTV — when Martha Stewart Living was so successful that her Omnimedia launched a retail catalog and a second magazine, when Martha looked brilliant and bulletproof, Chef Suzie left a 20 year career in accounting and went to culinary school.

"She had so much knowledge. I wanted more, like she had."

Except for Suzie having kids, "the change of life was the most exciting thing that's ever happened to me."

Suzie is not some Martha kook. She doesn't even have a subscription to Martha Stewart Living. She may occasionally flip through the magazine, see 12 things that Martha suggests and decide on one, such as adding raspberries to her iced tea. Wouldn't that be nice for a change?

In a world set to be reMarthafied — after her term in the slammer — a little sensible retrospective may be due.

A lot of folks say she has not ruined the planet, but neither has she revolutionized homemaking. She may have thought we needed to learn the 12-step process for ironing, but we didn't notice a whole lot more people running around in ironed clothes.

No, if you want to talk about Martha's effect on us (to date, at least), you need to talk about small shifts in the nation's overall aesthetic.

"Martha might do things a little too in-depth," said Becky Hitchcock, floral designer at the Craft Nook. "She might grow her own grapevines to make her wreaths, but I think we've all taken something from what she's done. I think we have the eye now for the little things. I think we appreciate the better things. People do come here who've gained some confidence. They mix stripes and prints and florals. She put the OK on that."

Hitchcock adds that at Kmart, you don't even have to have confidence.

"She tells you what colors to put with what. The stuff might be a little expensive, if you ask me, but you can buy it all in one place and you know it will work."

Exactly, says Melanie Thomas Ladd, an accredited staging professional in Lexington, Ky. She prepares homes to be placed on the real estate market so they will sell better.

"She's all about saying the home is a shelter from the world. She tells you it's the comfortable cocoon you make."

Martha Stewart is under a kind of house arrest, to her 153-acre farm in Bedford, N.Y. She will be allowed to wander through her beloved garden only if she is working some of her allotted 48 hours each week, per her probation agreement.

The financial markets will note. The tabloids will check in. The New York Times, too.

In her yard, the tulips are coming up, just like in ours.

At the Kroger store, Suzie Berryman cooks. At the Kmart, Martha still sells.

Last month, the Cincinnati Flower Show brought a giant Valentine card to a bookstore in my neighborhood so we could all wish Martha a better day than the one she was having.

More than 150 of us, random shoppers all, signed.

SAVING MARTHA

"Dear Mr. President," the petition begins. "A terrible injustice has been done to Martha Stewart."

It goes on, detailing the dearth of evidence and the subsequent needless loss of American jobs. It hits every note in its heartfelt plea to get Martha over yet another hurdle: The presidential pardon. (Has to be the president; hers was a federal crime.)

More than 22,000 people have signed the document at www.savemartha.com. The Web site isn't playing games here.

The petition will indeed be forwarded to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

The White House did not return our calls inquiring about where President Bush's sentiments lie. This will disappoint some petition signers who gave their party affiliation to sway the president.