I threw in the towel a few years back after another drought year of constant watering. I am now going with it rather than against it. I ripped out just about everything the end of one horrible summer and I planted lots of cold hardy cactus, agaves, desert spoon and native plants. Its survival of the fittest out there winter and summer. You cannot believe the variety of cactus that will grow in Oklahoma and the blooms are unbelievable for two months each spring. One pad is all it takes and people trade them online. I don't have children so I am able to grow them but there's plenty of other ornamental plants that never need additional watering except maybe once a month if its a drought like this year. One example is Russian Sage. That thing is huge and will bloom all summer planted in the worst hottest full sun spot in my yard down by the street along with some other tough stuff. Another one is Artemesia. I had trouble with the native sages here from too much water in Spring so I went with the Artemesia. I got seeds of plants like Desert Marigolds and a lot other drought loving plants from Plants of the Southwest (seed catalog) and they bloom all summer without watering and have naturalized. I have stuff like snakeweed, purple winecups, fame flower, Rabbit Bush, Winterfat and lots of west Texas natives. Some bloom from Spring till Fall and lots of plants have silver leaves or very small leaves so it all starts getting "a look". It became fun. More fun than any other garden I have ever had and if its a scrubby looking plant with ornamental possibilities and it looks like it would be at home out on the range, I usually want it and try to track down seeds. I ordered lots of native seeds from the Sonoran Desert and got some interesting stuff there too. Finding these off beat kind of plants is now a major hobby and sometimes I see something growing wild that would look good and get plants that way too. Last year I started adding drought hardy native grasses. Stuff like Little Bluestem massed in, Sacaton Grass, blue grama, sideoats gramma and Deergrass. Range stuff. Its a big trend in gardening and I found I like it. So I already stopped fighting the good fight a while back and have never regretted it. Oh, I forgot, we took out the lawn too. Its all native tough stuff now. I noticed they are doing this around the Government Buildings down there on Lincoln too. Native grass gardens. They are gorgeous! No watering. And it looks like Oklahoma, kind of a state pride sort of thing. Its what got me started on the native grass craze.

john, im pretty sure its a seedling, i have a few rootstock that im waiting for to mature so i can graft some budwood from this tree its a very good avocado for here in hawaii very buttery, kind of big, slight oblong shape, and very beautiful purple color. And thanks i will become a member on tropicalfruitforum, and thats to bad your sons dont have the same interest, im glad i have this hobby, it runs through my veins my whole family have an agriculture back ground and including a green thumb. For me its a learning process and very fun hobby that i hope to become my job in the future. Aloha~Brennan

Aunt Betty(mom's sister)and Uncle Lyle Uncle Bob(mom's brother)and Aunt Carole Uncle Bob(dad's brother)and Aunts Evelyn,Fran and Ann Aunt Mary(dad's sister)and Uncle Rich Aunt Joan(dad's sister)and Uncle Windy(Wendal) Lots of great aunts and uncles on my mothers side. Not so much on my fathers, might have had something to do with the fact that my dad's father was a good 20 years older than my mother's father. So the greats on dad's side were old and gone by the time that we came along. There was such an age difference between my two grandfathers that I remember one calling the other sir.

Caroline, you are such a wonderful niece. Having someone in your life like Uncle Clay is such a blessing. Wouldn't it be great if we all had someone like him in all our lives. I will be thinking of you in the coming days.. My BIL did this for my sister. This is what she wanted.. We all stood by her bedside as she slipped away. It was so hard but also a blessing for her due to her being sick for so long. (((HUGS))))