It's always good hearing from you and thanks for the heads up..so to speak. We are having below zero temps with the wind chill and as much as I love going out and watching the night sky,I may just skip it this time around.We have a big corn field next door and I really should just haul my lawn chair out there and watch the shows in the fall and winter after the corn has been harvested...or squish some soy beans when it's a soy bean year.

I feel compelled to add my two cents to this post. Brandy, first and foremost, please realize that these forum members are hosta LOVERS, just like you and me; therefore, they really get concerned for any other member when there is even a slight chance of losing a hosta, whatever the reason, virus or no virus. I'm not going to be presumptuous and speak on their behalf, they do a good job on their own. But I have to admit that occasionally the written word doesn't come across the way it was intended. Bottom line: to curtail the spread of HVX Can you imagine how awful we'd feel if we unknowingly shared plants/divisions with our friends to find out later that those plants were diseased? We'd be responsible for spreading it. I shudder to think about it. I first found my JUNE and GOLDEN TIARA hosta at a grocery super store about 3 or 4 years ago. Both are growing very well and are lovely, healthy plants. It was the end of the season and the prices were unbelievable at $6 apiece. My HYDON SUNSET mini and BARBARA ANN were both purchased at WalMart, last and this year respectively. Both are doing just fine and I am happy with them. Two years ago (I think it was two years ago) I picked up DREAM QUEEN at WalMart. Shortly after I heard that Dream Queen was one hosta that was carrying the HVX virus. I immediately potted her up and quarantined her. I removed ONE leaf that LOOKED like it wasn't doing well, didn't look virused though, but to be safe, rather than chuck the whole plant (I don't throw anything out, ever, just can't do it) I just kept a watchful eye and babied it as I usually do with any perennial .... as I get a kick out of saving them. It is quite small still, in a pot, but very healthy. It's no longer by itself, but in some other potted company. I'll continue to monitor it just because it was on the HVX HIT LIST. The rest of my hosta were either given to me as divisions or were purchased at reputable nurseries....Some of them were purchased from home growers. I lost LOYALIST and ZOUNDS, both purchased from a grower who had infected plants, something I found out last year from another home grower. She has over 800 varieties and her business is booming. Her plants are extremely healthy, root system amazing. All of mine are doing great, no complaints! My entire hosta family (gotta be at LEAST 90 plants-76 varieties) looks healthy and is growing well. If I find a hosta ANYWHERE other than a reputable nursery, I will continue to buy....I'll buy wherever and whenever the fever hits me. The "buyer beware" phrase is always in my mind but I also use the common sense I was given. Important Note: I WILL NOT and DO NOT share divisions of any box store hosta growing in my garden until they have surpassed the monitoring years. Meanwhile, I am happy to see them grow into lovely mature hosta. So far, so good! :-) Brandy, if you re-read the last three paragraphs in Steve's post....and ..the last one should make you proud..a lovely compliment that I second. The long and short of it is that IF we (you and I) buy from a box store there is always the possibility that our good-looking-hosta-at-the-time-of-purchase may be virused.......a wait-and-see game.....common sense --keep in pot for a few years and monitor....fingers crossed. Lol Continued happy gardening! Jo

Scott and Jay, You cannot even imagine what it was like here. I couldn't tell y'all about it last night because some combination of wind, hail and rain took out our internet service provider's Ringling and Marietta towers and we lost service. THE STATS: 70 mph wind, small hail here but up to baseball sized elsewhere in the area, 2.5" of rain in 25 minutes THE DETAILS: THE STORM BEGINS BUILDING: I had watched the clouds begin building around 7 p.m. and they kept getting taller and taller and taller until it was too dark to see them. At the time I was watching them, they might have been 40,000 to 50,000 tall. I have seen at least one storm build up as tall as last night's, and that storm caused an F-3 tornado to our southeast about 20 miles from us in Texas that night a couple of years ago. As I watched the clouds begin building, our sky took on that grayish-green cast that often accompanies hail. I secured all the lawn furniture, made sure all the animals were inside their housing and the doors were securely closed so they couldn't blow open, etc. I even got out flashlights and candles in case we lost power. BETWEEN ABOUT 7-8 PM: To our northwest, in the Lone Grove-Ardmore area, one cell reportedly had golf ball and larger sized hail, winds of at least 70 mph, and heavy rain that caused flash flooding. That storm also had a mid-level, non-rotating wall cloud. When it hit Love County, we had winds around 70 mph, non-stop lightning that gave a strobe-light effect for 2 or 3 hours (the lightning preceded the rain by a couple of hours), zero visability that caused drivers to stop in their tracks and sit there, unmoving in roadways because they couldn't see the road, trees down, hail, etc. During this storm our internet service went out because they "lost" the use of their towers in Ringling and Marietta. BETWEEN 7-9 PM: To our southwest, just over the river in Montague County, Texas, we had two separate storms about 1 hour apart with rotation that did not, as far as I know, result in a tornado touchdown. That hail was in the tennis ball to baseball size category. BETWEEN 7 PM AND MIDNIGHT: Here in the middle we had ugly skies and almost total stillness for a long, long time in between those two storm cells....the kind of stillness that scares you because you know it precedes a very violent storm. We had that strobe-light lightning (horizontal, not vertical) for a couple of hours and sporadic thunder. The air was totally still. We had storm chasers from other areas come into our county and stage themselves in various places. Some of them were feeding their own weather info to our undersherriff and he was passing it on to us on the fire/police radio channel. When the storm arrived, it was like someone flipped a switch. The wind went from almost 0 to at least 70 in just a few minutes. The wind just roared. The rain poured. We got 2.5" of rain in about 25 minutes. It was the heaviest, most rapid rainfall I've ever seen in my life. Luckily for us, the big hail had stayed on either side of us and our hail was only about pea-sized. The rain was heaviest in the northern and eastern parts of the county and I have no idea how much they received. Here at our house, though, we had that 2.5" fall in less than 1/2 hour. The good news is that it fell so fast that most of it ran off and didn't soak into the ground. (The ground is so wet I don't think it can absorb much, if any, more.) The Mesonet Station at Burneyville, which is several miles northwest of us, recorded just over an inch. I am sure that the Greenville, Overbrook, Lake Murray, and Enville areas recorded much more rainfall, and maybe the town of Marietta as well. The Oswalt Rd. area (fairly close to the Love-Carter County line) had larger hail than most of the rest of the county, and they had it earlier than everyone else. EIGHTEEN INCHES OF RAINFALL IN ELEVEN DAYS: For anyone who is counting, we have had over 18" of rain here at our house since Wednesday, April 29th. I don't think my tomato plants are going to survive this much moisture in our heavy clay soil. Even in raised beds with heavily amended soil, the moisture level is outrageously high. For a while, I thought the corn would survive, but now I am beginning to think it won't. The squash, zukes and cukes are dead. The broccoli is deliriously happy, the onions are mostly happy, the potatoes less so. Most of the herbs seem alright. And, for what it is worth, a scientist from the Ardmore-based Noble Foundation told local media that our particular soil can only hold about three weeks worth of moisture and that everything above that amount either runs off into the creeks, rivers and lakes, or soaks down into the aquifer. So, the way he phrased it was that we are always "only two to three weeks away from drought conditions" if the rain stops falling for a prolonged time. His words backed up what I have observed since moving here, but hearing it from a scientist made it sound worse than just observing it for yourself. I am happy the ponds and creeks are full and that the pastures will grow for the cattle and horses. For us veggie gardeners, though, it is shaping up to be a poor year. Most of my flowers are looking OK so far, but the poppies are yellowing and dying. They can't handle too much moisture. The zinnias aren't looking too good either. The lawn, trees, shrubs, vines and weeds all are growing like weeds. I can't even plant beans, okra, black-eyed peas, pumpkins, winter squash and melons because it is far too wet. The peppers all most likely will go into containers beginning today because it is too wet for them to go into the ground. And that's the report from southern OK where more rain is in the forecast for tonight, tomorrow and the next day. And, actually, rain is falling a few miles to our south so we may get hit by rain any minute now. Jay, I wish you were getting some of this rain (and that we were not getting so much). The ground here is starting to get that sour, yucky smell you get when slowly-draining clay is totally saturated. Once you start smelling that, you begin to see plant death. Dawn

I was at the Elizabeth NJ IKEA again today - Wednesday. They still have a supply of the 1/2 moon blind corner cabinet swingouts, as well as a large supply of the full corner turntables. The 1/2 moons were still $5/each and the full corner turntables were $10/each. I retro-fitted two of the 1/2 moons into my non-IKEA 30 year old cabinets - I swear that that's the best use of the formerly dead space and plan to use them again when I redo my kitchen- SOON - I hope. It's a pleasure to just swing out the shelves and just pick out what I need. Helene