Another thought: I'm new to veggies, but maybe the experts can chime in on this; could your tomatoes need a bit of fertilizer? I have a terrific book I bought a couple of months ago and recently read that purple foliage can mean a nitrogen deficiency (and/or yellow may mean phosphorus deficiency... or the other way around? My book is downstairs and I'm upstairs right now). Is that right, experts? So maybe a light feeding will put them back on track. Well, your use of the word 'experts' multiple times almost scared me off ;-) Certainly I do not qualify as an expert. If I did you all would be paying me $20/ounce for the produce my garden yields. :-) Bwahahahah! Anyway, sure it is true that various nutrient deficiencies can present themselves during the growing season, but when they present themselves early in the season temperatures, particularly of the soil, should be looked at before the minerals. It is quite common for a fertile soil to produce plants with nutrient deficiencies if the soil is cooler than the plant requires for good growth. Perhaps you have heard of 'bloom booster' fertilizers? Y'know the fertilizers where the NPK numbers have the second number higher than the rest? They are, without exception, a waste of money as no plant on earth can actually use phosphorous (the second number) in that high an amount. The idea behind them historically was that P is largely unavailable to plants in cool soils so using a fertilizer high in P was once thought to get at least some P to plants in cool soils. To this day you can easily find such useless fertilizers and for lawns if you look at the 'Winterizer' ferts they are usually high in P even though it is useless to the lawn. So, what am I trying to say? What I am trying to say is that our plants have many requirements. One of them is temperature both for air and soil and putting plants into too cool conditions will stress them and cause them to look like crap. Any problem the plants have we can [mis]diagnose. The real cause of the problem is the plant is forced to exist in conditions too cold for it. This is particularly true right now as many of us have spring fever and we put out plants on the nice days only to have cold days return with a vengeance and make our plants suffer.

I don't think it would be before the skins encases the bulbs, if anything it would be after. As the leaves die the paper encasing the bulbs dries, so if there is no longer any paper it was either too late or possibly as you said too much water. As the plants did not look like they were dying back, it was logical to not try to dig them out earlier. The early variety of garlic I grow in Southern California is ready to pick in April, although some needs until May. If you plan on growing the same variety you might want to try just digging around a plant earlier on to see how it looks under the ground even if the plant does not seem to be dying back yet. If you do it carefully you can put back the dirt and the bulb will continue growing. And you can still eat the garlic you have picked, it just might not store as well, or try to plant the cloves again so no total loss.

Thank you all for the encouragement. No we can not be friendly after everything he was cruel some of the things he said were unforgivable and beyond hurtful they were evil. I do not know why he turned in to what he is now but he is not the same man. His family I tried to stay with but they just accepted her with out a problem oh I am sure they told Tom they did not approve. I took care of his granm and cleaned her behind and bathed he and healed bed sores for months, his father loved me and was a good friend he died several years ago. If they needed me I was there, they had a choice to say they would not accept her. He left May 25 and wa moved in with her by July and we weren't separated (I did not know) he kept me hanging on for months. I have met a nice man he knows what I am dealing with, he is supportive and he is very good to me. My family likes him alot my mom especially, he was with me when she died. You are right women are strong stronger than men. I was strong enough to take care of my mother alot during her sickness. I am a nurse so I know what she was going thur. I kept my promise, I bathed her and made her look good as possible before she died. She was on a respirator and before my father saw her when she was going I kept that promise. Bob was with me all thur it. I am seeing a doc and am on meds changed several times. In the four years I have had to get my son off drugs, he started using when his father tip over our family. Tom knew he was using but did nothing(my son lived with them and stayed away from me because I would of known and done something) when I finally got to him he weighed 117 and 5'10. He is in school(college) now and with me doing great I am so proud. No I am not making all this up on the stress scale I win top number. I am not sure how I deal with it. Some days I don't I have pity parties. I have started knitting and giving the afghans and things to my family and nursing homes. Believe it or not Sept.22 I have to have a total r knee replacement. Bob is going to take care of me (bless his heart). Please put me in your thoughts. Deb

Thanks, all. The market here is quite hot, though I suppose it could cool in the next year. I doubt it, though-- it seems like more people want to live closer in and have shorter commutes and we are within a couple of miles of a new high-tech employment area, near the university, and not far from downtown. I talked to a neighbor recently with a very similar house. She has a realtor (lets call her Realtor #1) she's worked with for decades who only works in this area. Realtor #1 gave her very specific recommendations for what to do in advance (she plans to sell in August), and told her that her house would probably sell in 3 days. So I'm thinking we won't list until we are truly ready to go, which depends mostly on precisely when we decide to retire. I think we will probably wait a month or two and get some "known" issues taken care of, then set up something will Realtor #1. Then I suppose to be responsible, we'll have to find Realtors #2 and #3 as well. Although to be honest, I wouldn't mind skipping that... I guess I understand the criteria for selecting someone with a good track record of short times on market, etc. But when inventory is low and demand is high, what do you look for in an agent? Is it different?