Every year our town has 2 big plant sales. First it is the Friendly Garden Club. Their sale is so big, they have to rent space at the fairgrounds for the sale. Last year I bought so much stuff I couldn't get it all in my car, I had to make a 2nd trip. It is all local stuff that grows well in our area. A week later the Historical group has a plant sale and I always buy a lot from them. The most I ever paid for a plant was $5 for a curly willow tree and another $5 for a Japanese maple. Most plants are just a dollar or two. I love those sales. I have 5 acres and I have lots of room. I will just have to start another bed or 2.

Yeah I think that member was from Sweden. The photos are under orchid growing areas in the Gallery section and they are the last set on the first page, a set of four terrariums side by side. The enclosures are not very large once you know the scale although some members have huge orchidariums. I just can't believe how professional the cylinder type terrariums came out and from such simple materials anyone can get at a Home Depot! I am going to leave this project for the fall or winter but I am seriously considering building something that can be automated with misters etc. for times when I am away, mounted plants don't like vacations. :( If you build it yourself it costs much less, had a medium sized one years ago but did not keep it when I moved because it was built too heavy and bulky and was not properly sealed to be water tight. Mike

Jo, Hopefully my dreams (and yours) will return after cooler weather and lasting moisture return. Right now they're just beaten to a pulp, and I know you understand. The sad thing is that those of you who had significant rain now are going to have higher humidity and that means your heat index numbers could rise and cause a different kind of weather misery. Like you, I am focused on the foundation of the house. We have watered it relentlessly with soaker hoses all summer long, and have tried to keep the lawn area within 20' of it somewhat moist too, with less success. I have a sort of paisley patterned bermuda grass lawn right now where the green grass and brown grass are swirled together oddly. It is because of the weather, but to look at it, you wouldn't think I'd watered nearly enough....but I've certainly tried to. Lots of people we know in Texas have had massive foundation problems the last few years because they let the clay soil get too dry and their foundations cracked. After seeing the huge expenses they've incurred to fix those foundations, and cracked walls, etc., we've been determined to prevent that from happening to us. So far, so good. Never give up entirely on gardening, because if you do, then the weather 'wins'. I'll never let the weather 'win' but there are times I might let it think it is winning. On another hot, fiery summer note, going to the fires strips the life and energy right out of me. I've never gotten 'too hot' as many times as I have this summer and it has been scarey at times. I am having to be much more careful about climbing back into the air-conditioned cab of the truck to cool off, for example, if I feel I'm on the verge of passing out from the heat. You can't help the firefighters stay well-hydrated, cooled off and well-fed if you're collapsed in a heap on the ground. : ) When you've been that hot all day, coming home and going out to the garden isn't even an option because you can't let yourself be out in the heat and sunlight one more minute than is absolutely required. One day I came home from a fire and tried to go back out into the garden to pick peppers a little before sunset, and found a snake lying there right at eye level on top of the shadecloth I use to shade the pepper plants. It wasn't even a venomous snake, but I knew that if it was there, others could be also. I haven't stepped foot in the garden since then. It is too hot, too dry and apparently too snakey. This morning it started raining sometime before sunrise, and I believe we've had at least 6/10s of an inch of rain. It is cooler now than it was at 4 a.m., and that is nice as well. The rain is mostly soft and gentle although it fell hard for a few minutes when it started. We are so dry here now that the last thing we want is a whole lot of rain at once. Sometimes, once clay soil is as dry as ours is now, if you get several inches of rainfall at one time in a big downpour, the clay expands too much too quickly and cracks foundations and pipes and such. So, even though we need inches and inches of rainfall, we need for the first few inches to fall in small amounts like it is today so the soil can gradually absorb more and more moisture and expand slowly. I've lived in Texas and Oklahoma in clay soils all my life and never have had to worry obsessively about the foundation like we have this year. When we lived in Fort Worth, our neighbor's foundation cracked during a very dry year and getting it fixed and getting the flooring in the house replaced (hot water pipes busted when the foundation shifted and the hot water/steam warped her beautiful red oak flooring), etc., taught us a very important lesson about preventing those problems versus having to fix them later. As bad as it is here, it looks even worse in Texas. We went down to Fort Worth for a wedding over the weekend and even though the Fort Worth area has had slightly more rain than Love County has had, it looked a little worse. I don't know how all the flora and fauna can recover from this hot, disastrous summer. I think it will take years. Just here in the counties along the Red River, we've seen massive fish kills in creeks, ponds and even portions of lakes. How long will it take for those areas to recover from that? There are lake areas and river areas you cannot even go to right now because even though the flesh of all the fish is long gone, the skeletons and the outrageously bad odor remain. Usually hummingbirds are migrating through heavily at this time of the year and, while we are seeing them now, we probably are seeing only about 10-20% of the number we normally see, and we have feeders and blooming vines (orange trumpet creeper) for them. On the other hand, we've had the first indigo buntings we've seen here. They are coming to our bird feeding areas and to the bird baths for water. We always see painted buntings, but haven't seen the indigo ones this year, so one good thing has come from the drought. A week or two back I started putting out peanuts for the squirrels, and then I started feeding the bees. I guess if I can't nurture the plants, I'll nurture all the living wild things that share this piece of land with us. Dawn

ok, i thought i would chime in a bit. i live on a little island and very rural. we had no rats until maybe 8 years ago and before rats we all had open compost piles, and plenty of worms would come by themselves. but of course now, that is nothing but a sign to the rats saying...please come here my rat friends....SO WHAT TO DO? i came up with a system for a composter/worm bin using an old bathtub (NOT the old, heavy cast iron ones, but rather the sheet metal type---cast iron give hernias), then i screw on and make a lid out of 2 x 4's and put hardware cloth over this making them unavailable for the rats to get in. i have two tubs setup and so when one is full, i add a bit of the old stuff from the first which will have worms for the new tub and also the proper biologic processes going on that worms require, then start adding food and cardboard to that tub. the worms need the food to break down before they start eating it, and thats why i add some of the previous batch so it gives them decayed food to eat while the new food becomes decayed and available to the worms. the first tub then finishes out while the other is my active tub or rather the one i add the new compost to. . in the spring i sift the finished product and have pure gold for my use in the garden.......i never stir or turn over the compost because worms don't like heat, and if your composter heats up, THEY WILL LEAVE!!!!! GOOD LUCK TO ALL YOU WORM FARMERS, I LOVE MAKING PURE GOLD the people who use the plastic composters or those made of wood, the rats just chew holes in them and you have a rat problem, and who wants that