throw my white frost fabric over them for shade That will only trap some of the heat. You need to rig it up on some sort of support over them for it to be effective at shading so there is air circulation between it and the plants. And if you have enough double layer it to cut the sun even more. Keep in mind that temps at ground level are an average of 5 degrees cooler than at the 5-6' level of weather station readings. Dave

The poster that spoke of growing lettuce in 8 hours of light meant 8 hours of ANY light, in all likelyhood. Plants which are daylength sensitive can respond to light levels of one footcandle, which is almost absolute darkness. Commercial growers of crops like poinsettias, potted mums, kalanchoes and other short day crops have elaborate blackout systems for their greenhouses to make this possible. Where I used to work, it was an automated system of 100% shade cloth on wiring and controlled with a timer that opened and closed it at the correct time -- 6:00 pm to close, 8:00 am to open -- this was for mums and poinsettias. The rule is for every day you miss pulling the shade, the plants daylength response is delayed 3 days. With lettuce, if you wanted to do this, you would have to get a black box or thick black cloth to pull over the plants every day at the right time. Easy to do, but a lot of work. If you forget, it would no doubt get bitter and bolt.

Eden Dorothy is almost as cute as Bella:-) Deanne you and Randy have similar views on heat! Im in Dougs camp though. The heat is on but not really kicking in much as weve gone back to fairly mild temperatures yesterday and today. My de-potting exercise was a piece of cake compared to most of you. Barb and I wrestled the elephant ears out of their pots on Monday. Ditto a dark-leafed canna that never bloomed. I cut back the brugs the one with buds never got to the point of actually flowering and weve had some frost on roofs the past week. I took cuttings but Im still not sure if I want to grow them next year. The cut-back plants are in the garage and the cuttings in water on the living room windowsill. I think the test of whether to grow them will be if they survive the winter in the garage or the cuttings root and survive the winter indoors on the windowsill, I will give them a second chance and add them to the driveway pots again next year. The winter prep for the rest of the driveway pots is easy. The blueberry and strawberry pots will go into the garage near the end of November. The one remaining pot of elephant ears baby ones that have been growing on to put on size for next year - has companion acidanthera bulbs which are still blooming like mad. When they finish blooming, Ill de-pot them all for storage in the basement probably next week. The pots of petunias will get dumped in the compost bin once the frost finishes off the petunias. The pots of spiderplants from the planter bench boxes have already met their fate in the compost bin after I collected baby spiders for keeping indoors until they are needed for the bench for next year. The pot with a honeysuckle cutting growing on for planting next year will go into the garage with the blueberry and strawberry pots. And thats it for pots for me. There will be about 14 of the large (3 cubic feet soil capacity) pots in the garage. Its a good thing we have a double garage but only one car! V- congratulations on good cholesterol numbers! I struggle with that too. I made the first dent a couple of years ago when I got fanatical about eliminating trans fats. But then I couldn't seem to make any more progress. But I was reading a lot about Vit. D and how that maybe the Mediterranean diet benefit is as much about sunshine as olive oil and red wine. In combination with reading about the benefits of Omega - whatever in cold water fish, I decided to bump up my Vit. D intake to 1200 IU and take two large wild salmon oil capsules a day. My cholesterol test earlier this month showed the first good improvement since eliminating trans fats! I have a squish test coming up in December - ICK! Now that the brick project is done, I have some garden time to spare so weve been up to the longterm care facility garden a couple of times and have started beating back a summers worth of well entrenched weeds! There are a few small stretches now where there are enough perennials to provide effective competition to the weeds. That gives me some hope of eventually making progress in the rest of the garden if I can get enough plants in there. Wherever possible Ive been dropping seedheads into the sparser areas to hopefully generate free plant coverage. I did that last year as well and am starting to see seedlings in those areas that should bulk-up and flower next year. Randy doesnt often comment on what he likes in the garden but I have learned to pay attention to what he takes pictures of and thereby deduce his preferences! Last week he was taking pictures in the driveway border where there are still a few Queen Elizabeth roses in bloom with blueberry foliage in full autumn color and some old-fashioned type mums that a neighbour gave me a few years ago blooming in white and pink in the same part of the driveway border: Randy is the pumpkin carver here. Weve both been suffering from a flu or something dizziness and queasy stomach so Randy didnt make it to work on Monday. But he did manage to get this years pumpkin carved: Liam (Border Collie) is back for today. He was missing his buddy Misty and was bored and getting into trouble on his own at home last week (strewing kitchen garbage around) so he came for a play-date today. Id better go take them outside as hes woken up from his post morning walkies nap.

We walk...next door...on Christmas day...and open presents, have dinner, eat too much, have coffee and celebrate the neighbor's birthday at 8:34pm (the moment she was born). We've been doing this about 15 years now. We love our neighbors like they were family. Jodi-