How lucky that you have a greenhouse, greenhouser. I wish I had one. I plan to look into it before long. Even a little one would do wonders. Still, we get so much hail around here that I wonder if it would be worth the effort. It has been very hot, 90's-100's here in Kansas, but suddenly we got hit by the remnants of the TX gulf hurricane and now it is overcast. We got between 4 and NINE inches of rain yesterday in a radius of six miles. So I'm thinking, now what? I've got Romaine lettuce seedlings ready to transplant. Do I dare? I think I'll give it a try and if it gets hot, I will cover them with row cover so they don't get toasted. Gardening is an adventure, isn't it? So glad I don't farm for a living. Whew, that would be scary.

My Mom always says you should never thank someone for a plant because if you do it won't grow. I have expanded my explanation to "Thank God for the plant, not me, I am only passing it on." I also do what I call "faith farming" -- plant it & pray it grows. Although I pay attention to the science aspect of "farming" it is not what I base my "farming" on. It is by faith that I grow & am blessed with a harvest. To me, the only thing more miraculous than seeds & plants are babies -- and I had 5 of those. I did try peas a few years back. I didn't get much from them, so didn't try again. In hind sight I think they were planted too late & the heat got to them. I have been working on growing asparagus. Not only do we like to eat it but I also like the idea of perennial veggies. Next year will be my 4th spring & I anticipate a big crop. The plants are doing well. Last year I only got enough for me to have a serving at lunch. This year I did get enough for the family to have some for dinner. So next year should be good. During the winter I have my houseplants to keep me busy & tide me over to spring. They tend to suffer a bit in the summer. For my birthday (last Sunday) my husband got me a small orchid & one son gave me a small, indoor rose bush. Everyone came over & helped dig up the area where I am putting a perennial flower garden. Around the edge they put the 10 lb., 1920's paving bricks that I "rescued" from the street repaving project that has been going on outside my house all summer. They also helped me with the compost piles. It's all stuff I can do by myself, but doing it alone takes so much time, energy & effort. This was a really big help to me. Then I fed them -- eggplants, tomatoes, cukes & peppers from garden. Along with sandwiches & mac & cheese, plus 3 different cakes & 3 different types of ice cream. One of the best birthdays I have ever had.

Those of us that live away from city water look at your green gardens in the pictures and only can manage BROWN with envy. I have not watered my garden all season to speak of. I am long past watering once a week, matter of fact, I never water eccept for new plantings so I guess I deserve what I get. I threw some water on a new wildflower planting but even they are dead. I surrendered a long time ago to this drought. My Salvias are stressed, sedum palmerii is stressed. The natives are all grey and burnt up. They retreat to their roots or wait for rain to re sprout seeds. The land is wild out here and drought is drought and land is grey. I am depending on the natives iron constitutions to bounce back. The yuccas that are stressed are new plantings. I put water on them last night and ... IT RAINED!!!!!!!!

skin, I think you are right. I bought a cheap infrared heater for my bedroom and flipped the whole system off (to top it off it has one of those crappy 80s mastertrol zone systems with the gold dial) used 10kwH/day, turned it back on yesterday thermostat on 64, granted it was very cold here yesterday, in the 30s, I used 130KwH!!!! The mastertrol panel is going, I have ordered a honeywell hz311 to replace it bc the thing is just pure nonsense and confusing. When I rewire that I am going to open the air handler and make sure all of the connections coming out (and going to the zone panel/thermostats) are right. Maybe I will luck out and they just screwed up and put a wire on an auxiliary heat resistor that should be on regular heat... Or maybe this confusing piece of crap from 1981 is messed up and it is calling for auxiliary heat when it should be calling for regular heat... My question is. If I am indeed constantly using the strip heat, what is missing for the "normal" heat pump heat? As I mentioned I know very little about these systems, don't they run the outside compressor in reverse for heating to pull the cold out or something? My 2017 compressor is capable of doing that, right? I mean I have all the equipment for this to work, it's just wired and slapped together piss poorly is what your'e saying? Or, am I missing some other component that they neglected to save money? If my rewiring of the zone controls and thermostats makes no difference, how expensive of a repair am I looking at to get the heat pump to actually pump heat?