Problems with DrawingArea in VBox

["jeff rob" <jeffrobins747 hotmail com>]

I am adding a DrawingArea to a VBox, so that I acan have a menubar above the 
graph I am producing.

window->draw_rectangle() and window->draw_arc() do not draw on the window 
and I cannot change the background color, it defaults to black.  I can use 
window->draw_line(), window->draw_point() and window->draw_layout() work 
sometimes.

Does anyone know why I cannot draw a rectangle or an arc and why the other 
functions work sometimes.

Here is a link to my code: www.jeffrobins.com/gtkmm_with_top_menus.tar.gz