You two are making me start to panic!!I can't believe it is nearly the end of February and I haven't started sowing yet. We were away for most of January, then I came home to a sick child and spent the first half of the month nursing him back to good health. On Friday I went to Walmart - no seed starter. I remembered seeing some Pro-Mix at Canadian Tire and went there - no seed-starter except some small bags by Miracle-Grow which I never buy, but at least there is no fertilizer in it. Today I brought in my containers from the garage so I should be able to do some sowing tomorrow. Of course I am still doing trades. Wish me luck!!

Ha. I received a box of daylilies in the mail today and planted them all to boot. Since my mail comes really late, at about 4 o'clock I don't have that much time to get it done. But this was my order from Diane Kendig of Perfect Perennials and only 7 plants so wasn't a big deal to get done. Gezz, since I got a daylily order in the mail Monday I am on a roll. Two orders planted the same day they arrived, a big record breaking event around here. Now its raining, which is great timing as it will water in all my new daylilies. I bought six of Dale Thomas daylilies which are all lates and very lates. I don't think he is that well known but I found his daylilies for sale at the Hardyhems site. Since I wanted later bloomers that worked out well. I have a daylily garden I am doing all late and very late bloomers so these went in there. Then I also got Stuart Kendigs fabulous WATERMELLON LUMINOSITY which I planted in the daylily garden done this spring by by driveway. Things are looking good around here. Only two more orders of daylilies to come. One is a one plant order and the other afew daylilies from Bill Maryott should come late June. My order of phlox that I mail ordered is coming this week and I have some Tropical Milkweed ordered should show up one day and thats all my mailorders. In one section of the driveway side garden I have daylilies in the front and back rows and in the middle I have some daylilies and I am putting the phlox there. Seemed like a good idea to me.

Busy1, I control aphids by releasing lady bugs. Well, I guess I should say I release lady bugs and they control the aphids. I had to release $5.00 or $6.00 worth of lady bugs three years in a row to get a self-sustaining population going. Since then, I seldom see a single aphid all year long. I have better luck with spring broccoli than fall broccoli but better luck with fall brussels sprouts than spring-planted ones. Like Dorothy, I am very careful with the timing of the planting, watching temperatures carefully to avoid the low temps that give you buttoning of the heads, and I don't expect mine to go beyond May, so I use varieties that are fast-maturing. My biggest threat, other than the weather, is the deer. We have a taller fence this year, so I am hoping that will keep the deer out of the garden. Because of the high winds and the temperatures in the 80s and 90s, I've been holding my cool season crops inside waiting for cooler weather to return. Even the few hours a day that the broc plants are outside hardening off are hard on them....they do not like these blast furnace winds. We're going to be about 85 degrees today with winds in the 20s/30s, but then I believe cooler temperatures return and we'll be back in the 30s at night by about Thursday. It's about time! As nice as the warm weather is, this kind of heat this early in the season is not good for the cool-season crops. The tomatoes, of course, are loving it. George, I have concluded there never is enough time in the spring no matter what I do. I had a very ambitious list of "things to do" today, but then the fire pagers went off several times during the night and I got almost no sleep, so I am a zombie today and my "to do" list may slide until tomorrow. I hope you'll let us know how the peas do for you. Maybe, if you like them and save some seed, the saved seed will come true (more or less) for you. You never know until you try. Dorothy, I like Early Dividend, but I tried Premium Crop this year instead. I've also had really good yields from Small Miracle, which can be planted very intensively since the plants are so small. I'm glad you're trying some other tomatoes. When I began breaking out of my rut and trying new ones, which was about the mid-1990s, I was astonished at the variety of colors, sizes, shapes, and especially flavors that existed in the tomato world. In the summer, it it not unusual for me to have a salad with pink, green, red, yellow, orange and black cherry tomtoes. Then, when we're ina restaurant and the salad arrives with "only" red tomatoes, it seems like something is wrong. Last year, I thought I dehydrated a lot of cherry, grape, and currant tomatoes and that they'd get me through the winter. It was a good plan, and it might have worked, except once I would open a zip-lock quart bag of them, I couldn't stop eating them until they were all gone. We had the last bag last week, and I hate knowing there's no more left in the freezer. This year, I need to dehydrate ten times as many so they'll last longer. Consequently, I am going to plant a ton of cherry, grape and currant types so I'll have lots for drying. I'm not even going to complain about having to water them constantly in the absence of rainfall.....because the flavor of dehydrated/rehydrated tomatoes in the winter is so good that it will be worth the higher water bills just to have them to eat all winter long. Dawn

I've heard the statement but also have heard otherwise, so who knows. Regular predators like cougars, coyotes and the like prefer to kill their own and then eat it. Cougars will cache the rest for later so I guess they'll eat food that's been dead for a while if they killed it themselves. I'd expect that they wouldn't eat a cow or calf killed by lightning because they aren't scavengers. However, I'm not sure that savengers wouldn't eat it---skunks, vultures and the like. Often those birds and animals that eat carrion are opportunists that eat whatever they find, but I don't know if they eat animals killed by lightning strikes. Next time I run into one of our ranching friends who's lost cattle to lightning strikes, I'll ask him what he does with the carcass and whether anything feeds upon it. I've heard that the ones killed by a direct strike often smell really bad, and I think we humans would extrapolate that to indicate the flavor also would be untasty....charred or something. I'm not sure if the ones killed indirectly have the same burning and charring, so don't know if it would affect how they taste. Oddly, a person in our county was struck by lightning this evening as the storms moved in. I hope that person is going to be okay. I didn't go anywhere and didn't buy anything, plant, animal or otherwise. I might go plant shopping tomorrow or Monday. It seems like all we do lately is run home from here or there to get inside before the storms arrive.