Lux, you've put a lot of work and information into this essay. Your talk will be wonderful, I'm sure. I do nearly everything that Cass tells me to do, but I'm not going to run out and plant a California wild rose into my garden. My friend Bill planted one in his garden and found it popping up all over the place. Took him years to eradicate it. I'm content to admire California wild roses in the wild or in somebody else's collection. I do, however, grow several species at home, including R. glauca, R. eglanteria (rubiginosa), and one of the double moschatas. So far, none have colonized very much. In the cemetery, R. roxburghii plena is one of the most beautiful and long-blooming roses in our garden. Worthy of mention, for its spiny sepals, beautiful flowers and interesting foliage. A rose that may be a cinnamomea has an incredibly colorful fall foliage and hip display. The species truly can be beautiful and garden-worthy, although usually one must have the space for them. Love your description of the alba leaves as shorn teal velveteen. The preferred terminology is "Scots" rose, not "Scotch," according to Peter Boyd when he came to speak a couple of years back. His wife Evelyn described the "tsunami of scent" from their collection. We've planted a couple of spins in the cemetery, including a single cream variety from Vintage, and have been pleased by how pretty its bloom was this year and how many visitors commented on it. I know that you targeted this to Jeri and Cass, but it was fun to read it - thanks. Anita

Larry, Ouch! Do you really want dead carcasses in the road by the house all the time? The other day we had a dead armadillo in the road and the vultures swarmed around it all morning. Then they came and started circling the garden where I was working. I was wondering if they were trying to tell me that my time was about up, but then I realized they likely were attracted to the bone meal and blood meal I had added to the garden a couple of hours earlier. I often do get circled by vultures after I've used those particular organic fertilizers. Carol, My summer peas hardly made anything because those plants seemed to be the preferred food of blister beetles and grasshoppers. The fall peas are doing a lot better. I am about starved-to-death for fresh cowpeas from our garden. I really don't mind shelling them. I can buy them fresh and already shelled at Central Market in Southlake, or I even could buy them fresh, shelled or unshelled, by the bushel, from the purplehull pinkeye pea farm in Thackerville. I just prefer to raise my own whenever I can. To me, they taste best when I pick them, shell them, and put them right into the pot on the stove and cook them. While they're cooking, I make homemade cornbread. I can make a meal out of purplehull peas and cornbread. Progress in my fall garden goes slowly. Parts of it are such an overgrown jungle, and I have to go slowly while clearing it because of the snakes. It never ceases to amaze me how many snakes like to come into the garden and climb the trellised plants. It is such a rude awakening to be looking at a plant and to see those beady snake eyes looking back at you. It is a wonder I haven't had a heart attack and died right there in the garden. I make a little progress every day, but it is such a big garden that I feel like I am not making progress quickly enough. It is still so danged hot that most of my cool-season plants seem stalled and not growing much. I know they'll grow more as time goes on, but these windy, warm days with temps in the 90s aren't the weather that the cool-season plants prefer. The Seminole winter squash has watermelon vines, Grandpa Ott's morning glory vines, cardinal climber and some bindweed mixed in with it. I've been trying to cut out and pull out the watermelon vines (no melons or flowers on them at this point) and the bindweed vines without destroying the Seminole winter squash, morning glory and cardinal climber vines, all whilewatching for snakes. I could save time by leaving all those bindweed vines in there, but I'm trying to get them out before they set seed. I am hoping to get out in the garden early, early tomorrow at first light and do some clean-up of the vining areas while it is so cool that the snakes shouldn't be up and moving yet. Larry, That's the reason I haven't bought a pea sheller--I don't want a bunch of mashed-up summer peas. I went through a period of really wanting one during a good summer when we had oodles and oodles of peas, but talked myself out of it after talking to someone who had one and said it mashed up the green peas a lot. It is a lot of work to shell them by hand, but if you cook them fresh, nothing's better. Some years I get a lot of them put up in the freezer but I doubt this will be one of those years since the nights are already cooling down quite a bit. I'll be happy with a few meals of fresh ones though. I do always do put up one frozen packet of southern peas for New Year's Day. It is like summer in the garden when they're cooking on the stove. When I was a kid, shelling peas was just something you did in the evenings--that and snapping green beans. We'd just sit out there on the porch with a big pile of purplehull peas or green beans and work out way through them and, before you knew it, they were done. Dawn

One sungold vine died, but I still have three really productive ones. I started some sprouts and I have some sungold seed hoping for a replacement and maybe a couple more. Trudi I was reading on the other sungold thread that the flavor might not transfer to the F2s even if they look the same. Did you observe that? Our recent rain only had the effect of slowing down the ripening a little. Some of the flowers do not look too good, but many do, so I keep seeing simultaneous ripe and green tomatoes, and lots of flowers too. I feel blessed that I can have fresh tomatoes with our salads at the end of January. I gave the producing vines a nice haircut (prune) and top dressed with some compost and powdered fertilizer. Last year we also had a cherry still alive around the same spot where we now have the 3 sungolds. It is a good spot, in a deep bed and surrounded by enough vegetation that they get some protection from the heat and the cold, but still manage just enough sunlight. We did yank out the cherry last year, just because we did not like the taste. However, I see that cherries are the thing to grow around here, even if they only make it to December! So we started other varieties. So far we got: Green grape, black cherry and one called Texas wild. I have been reading about the black cherries here (some don't like them) but I have not seen much on the green grapes or Texas wild. Any experiences, good or bad?

Well, I guess I'm thankful I didn't explode all over my kitchen after that insane dinner I ate about an hour ago. I cooked most of it--Southern fried chicken, gravy, all the Thanksgiving trimmings, lots of whipped cream...yadda, yadda etc. I had so much chicken cut up I couldn't cook it all in this century. So I contemplated aloud that I should just throw the raw stuff out. Overhearing me, my teen granddaughter admonished me about wasting perfectly good food (first world problem for sure). So I asked her if she'd like to have it raw cause I wasn't cooking anymore darn chicken. Anyway, I am most thankful for my precious granddaughters who light up my life (along with my roses). Diane