Glo - Thanks for reassuring me! I hope your move is awesome! My husband has wanted to move us to Colorado for years and hasn't managed to quite convince me yet, although I think it's absolutely wonderful there. LOL So, Winter Solstice is the same everywhere? (LOL)... I guess you're seeing how little I know... Nancy - Thanks for the tip! I am gonna have to watch the lead hand myself as I way oversowed my cantaloupes this fall. The poor babies are fighting each other and giving me 2 to 5 inches fruits that don't look like they're EVER going to full ripen. I will be much more careful in the future. I'll try to not get TOO excited when I go to plant. LOL Carrie - Wow! That's some really good info. That's exactly the kind of thing I was worried about. I'm grateful for the heads up. Liz - LIZ!!! Hey, girl! Fancy meeting you here and there and now here! hee hee... The whole last paragraph of what you wrote is exactly what is concerning me. I know that I personally wear shorts through-out almost the whole winter except for those few crazy days that we see. 50's or what have you is not cold to me... We do get the occasional freeze, but then a week or two later at most you could have a 70+ degree high! All this in the same few days / weeks / months... it's SO crazy! Oh, and if they're having a plantswap around the 8th of December as well, I sure want to know as I'll be out that way. :-) Blessings, Angela

We grow a lot of cilantro and what we do with it is make Pesto....well technically it would be Pistou as we don't add the pine nuts. Yes I know pesto is made with basil but can be made from cilantro as well. You just add the cilantro to a food processor and drizzle in olive oil until it is a puree and add garlic as well and salt and pepper to taste. We dose it out on cookie sheets by the cupful and freeze it then bag it up. You can use it many different ways in cooked dishes or by itself. If you want cheese in it wait till you thaw individual portions. Try it, and you will love it. We do the same with basil in the summer.

NYGardener: I always sow my basil late to avoid having to mess with it indoors. Take a discarded empty flat that is used to house 4-pack or 6-pack bedding containers. The open mesh ones will work the best, but if you can't find one of them, just make sure the one you use has plenty of drainage holes ... if not, make some. Entrench the flat into an empty place in your garden that is not exposed to long hours of direct drying sun. You need some sun, obviously, since we are dealing with basil ... just not long long hours of intense drying sun. Mound dirt up around the tray so that it encases the tray and will help retain moisture in the potting soil. Fill the flat with potting soil that has a good measure of spagnum moss and vermiculite incorporated to retain moisture. Pack the potting medium very firmly into the flat. Saturate the potting soil. Sow the basil seeds with an inch or so of space between the seeds and cover the seeds with very little potting mixture ... say twice the diameter of a seed. Gently tamp the covering soils to hold the basil seeds where you placed them. Water your makeshift sprouter daily, adding some Miracle Grow type fertilizer at about 1/4 to 1/2 the rate recommended about once a week. While you're gone, the seedlings will send roots down through the mesh to get moisture if you happen to get a meshed container, which works best for this. When you're ready to transplant, use an old dining tablespoon to scoop out the small seedlings. I usually transplant when the seedlings are very young ... with about two or three sets of leaves (not counting the seed pedals)... since basil sends down such a long tap root so quickly. I use this method through June and would still plant seeds this way today if I weren't already the proud foster parent of dozens of orphaned basils awaiting adoption. Regards, Bill

I started to uncover things last weekend in a fit of spring fever and then just put the oak leaves back in place. Aside from some crocuses, daffodils and tulips that will grow through them, everything else at or underground seemed to be dormant so I agree with Oldroser that I'll wait until at least this weekend to start the clearing process. Based on the amount of frost heaving I'm getting this year, I'll take the chance on crown rot versus late winter kill and things just popping out of the ground.