I grew Statice several years ago. I planted two packets of mixed colors. I got: white, off white, pink, apricot, lavender, blues and dark purples. I still have the ones I dried. I believe I have seeds tucked away somewhere in my seed boxes. Tomorrow I will dig around and see if I can find them. Wonder if they would still grow? I like to grow them for their beauty of course, but mostly to remember my dear Grannie. She died 13 years ago at the young age of 102. Her birthday is Feb. 7th and mine is the 9th. I was named for her, too. Mother says I am very much the gardening girl that she was and laughs whenever she sees me picking up broken plants from a nursery/garden floor or pinching plants and "stealing" seeds. I tell her they WANT me to take them home and love them to life. How can I tell them no? She chuckles and says, "You're just like Momma." Grannie was an honorary member of the San Pasqual Zoo in San Diego since it opening and frequented the place, going once a month, for more than twenty years. They sent her a free "ZooNews" magazine and bulletin updates on the animal births and events happening at the zoo. She always wore a big, wide-brimmed straw hat and dressed in blue jeans, a plaid flannel shirt and wore sturdy walking shoes. She carried a LARGE leather handbag on all outings. She used her cane as a pointer, to poke things with and investigate rocks she saw that she liked. Her ancestry was clear to see in her amazing resemblance to the Queen Mother. What a mug - firey red hair (still visible even at her last years), sharp, piercing blue eyes, intelligent, stern and quite serious. Her favorite thing about going to San Pasqual was pinching plants. She particular liked succulents and cacti, but not unknown to take "samples" of anything that struck her fancy, cute little Grannie. No one everquestioned her or said a word to her about it, if they indeed even saw her. She was little, ancient and heavily armed with a cane. I want some Statice seeds to grow for Grannie. ~ Annie

hello well I'm fully into getting ready to move(funny we have not evan listed the house or looked at a new one yet) but I'm going throug 10 years of accumulated stuff and getting rid of much of it. my aim is to get most unnessasary stuff packed and put in storage before we evan list the house. I still need to do some painting and lots of rilly good cleaning. wow I would love to have a house with 3 acres, but we are looking to move to Missouri, about 20 to 30 miles from here, I would like to be much closer to my in-laws farm so I can do much of my gardening there(180 acres should be enough to keep me buisy for a few years) idealy I would like to build a house at the farm but it is over a mile to the nearest house, and I'm not sure I want to be so isolated. well I can't wait to see what I get..... stay warm everyone michelle

Moni, Tim and I think the cedar trees started pollinating here about 4-6 weeks ago, which of course is so much earlier than usual, so maybe what I should have said is that they might be peaking now. There is a property next to us that has a solid couple of acres of them just about as thick as grass, and another that has probably 45 to 60 acres of them not quite as thick. While many of us try to cut them down and keep them to a minimum, many others just let them run wild and reseed all over, so we have a shocking number of cedar trees around here. I'd been trying to stay away from taking allergy medicine, but it is time to take it daily again. Amy, I know! I was so happy to be over the flu and feeling good again, and then here come the allergy symptoms after just a few days of feeling really good again. I even told Tim that it felt like cedar season had begun, but surely not....and I believe that was in late November. So, the next time we were out, we looked at the cedar trees and were stunned by have heavily laden they were with pollen. I am going to guess that the early autumn freeze followed by several periods of warm weather got the cedar trees going early again. I think this is the third year in a row cedar pollen season began early. I can't help thinking an early start to the pollen season is just another complication for anyone with allergies who also is dealing with the flu, a cold, bronchitis or pneumonia. There's also been a lot of strep throat going around. I suppose it is just that time of the year. Tim, Chris and Jana all are exposed to tons of sick people in the jobs on a daily basis, and I'm not, so usually I'll get sick once and that's it and they might get sick more often, but they also bounce back more quickly...especially Chris and Jana since they still are young and probably have more robust immune systems. This winter the kids have been perfectly healthy. Aurora had a cough for a couple of days, but it lasted no time at all, and Lillie hasn't been sick at all. Perhaps they are just old enough that they aren't bringing us every virus they encounter any more. I do remember what it is like with infants and toddlers who seem to have a runny nose more often than not at this time of the year. I did see that meme about seed buying and seed planting and it made me laugh out loud. The seed buying....that is the dream, right? The seed planting, though, that is the actual reality. Some gardeners live more in the dream and others live more in the reality, and most of us have some sort of combination of both the dream and the reality. I have really, really cut back on the seed buying, but still have a huge accumulation of tomato seeds from past years. With everything else, from veggies to herbs to flowers, I've stopped buying more than I can plant, and am trying harder to plant all the ones I buy. So, at least I'm partially reining in the seed madness. This is the first year I haven't ordered a single veggie or tomato seed, and most of the flowers I ordered were wildflower seeds. It feels odd to not have seed deliveries flooding in. Because of the landscaping projects, I suspect I'll be buying more plants than seeds this year, which is a big change. Kim, I'm glad you're getting all settled in and ready to have a big garden again. I know how much you've missed having that garden. Jennifer, Last year we bought the orange storage tubs for all the autumn, Halloween and Thanksgiving décor and I am so glad we did. It was so easy to spot them and pull them out immediately when it was time for autumn decorating and I was thrilled with not having to figure out which tub in the attic had which stuff in it. So, this year, we bit the bullet and invested in the red ones for the Christmas décor. I am so excited to have them, and they immediately made me feel more organized. We are going to recycle the previously used gray storage tubs to the garage to store Tim's junk. Did it hurt to go out and buy all these red storage tubs right after Christmas at full price? Of course it did, and the miser who lives inside my head kept telling me to wait another 2 or 3 weeks and they'd be on clearance, but I couldn't do it. I wanted the Christmas stuff taken down and put away promptly. I do consider them a worthwhile investment because they'll keep us organized and save time and frustration each year when it is time to bring out the holiday decorations. We even moved the 2 artificial Christmas trees from their old, torn, tattered and taped up original cardboard boxes to the red plastic tubs. I believe overall it will simplify our lives and decorating a lot. Rebecca, I'll see if Chris and Jana want to come to the Spring Fling. They both usually work on weekends though, so it is the luck of the draw, schedule-wise. You know, I am sure that back in the fall he sent me diagrams of his plans and I know what he intended to plant, but for the life of me I cannot think of any of it. I know they are more interested in blooming perennials than shrubs or trees, and they invested heavily in bulbs of all kinds, especially lily and daylily bulbs. What happened with those....Chris was visiting websites and making lists in May or June of all the lilies and daylilies he wanted for the yard. He'd show his lists and the photos to Jana and she'd add some others she liked. Then, at some point, he thought he read where they said that sales were closed for summer 2019 and they wouldn't ship again until fall 2019, so he ordered a ton of lilies and daylilies on sale, expecting them to ship in the fall. Well, somewhere there was a misunderstanding and tons of bulbs started arriving in the mail very soon thereafter, and they had nowhere to put them. So....molasses feed tubs to the rescue! We took him 6 or 8 of them, he filled them up with soil-less mix, packed in the bulbs close together since the tubs were just their temporary home, and the lilies and daylilies have been happily growing in them ever since. Now he is ready this month to move all those to the planting beds he created in his front yard this week. I believe that this week he planted his carefully selected mix of tulips, daffodils, hyacinths, crocus, anemone, guinea hen flower, red fritillaria, and whatever else he ordered. Back to the lilies...Once he knew he could temporarily plant them in the molasses feed tubs, he went back and ordered more lilies and more daylilies on sale all summer long, so now he has amassed an army of lily and daylily bulbs, ready to move to the garden whenever he has time to transplant them. I'm not even sure he has room for all of them, much less anything else. It is possible that Chris is a gardening maniac who wants to plant it all, and we didn't even realize that before he bought the house. They have specific rose varieties picked to plant this spring, etc. They really did their planning last spring while it was raining every day, and that carried over into summer along with all the bulb purchases, and then this week they built and planted the first two beds. He said they've been stopping traffic because everyone in their neighborhood wants to see what they are doing to replace all the lawn grass they've torn out. Moni, To label our tubs, I tape clear plastic page protectors to them. Then, we can slide a sheet of paper inside the page protector on each tub and, if the contents change, we slide out that sheet of paper and slide in the new one. I write on the sheets of paper with black permanent markers. I'm the most organized I've ever been, but it has taken me 60 years to get to this point. Now, if only we could apply all the great household organization techniques to Tim's garage/shop, where junk just piles up. When we were younger, he knew where everything was from memory. It would amaze his friends. Some friend would stop by and say "do you have a whatever..." and he could go straight to a location and get it in the blink of an eye. Now he stands there and looks around and says "it is in here somewhere". Then he has to dig and paw through everything to find it. So, just like last year, cleaning out/cleaning up/reorganizing that building is on our To Do list, and I hope we have more success with it in 2020 than we did in 2019. Larry, I hate that the mud is slowing you down. It is the same here...mud everywhere. I hope you and Madge recover quickly from the bug you have. I'm hoping the mud dried up before spring. We cannot rent a sod cutter and remove all the Bermuda grass until our clay dries out more. Right now it is so wet that I fear the sod cutter would bog down in the wet soil and get stuck. It is hard to have just the right conditions for cutting sod....you need the soil a bit moist, and certainly not rock hard like it is in the summer, but you don't need it wet and soupy like it is right now. I look at all the mud and puddles and just roll my eyes because I'm so tired of looking at all of it. We need to get Elvis to come spread a new load of gravel on the driveway, but it is in the same boat---probably too wet to be workable at this point, so we need it a bit drier so his equipment doesn't bog down in the mud. The good news is there is no rain in our local forecast until at least next Thursday, but the bad news is that the ground dries up so slowly in the lower temperatures and less intense sunlight in the winter. Jennifer, I have no idea what lights we have because Tim chose them while I was elsewhere in the store doing something else, but I know he bought LEDs and they are nice and bright, but the lights themselves stay cooler than the other ones we had before and don't build up a lot of heat, and you can put more strings of them together since they use less energy. It is good to see your little Brussels Sprouts. Yay! I've been working on my tomato grow list and it is an unbearable form of torture to keep chopping it down smaller and smaller. I was aiming for only 6-8 varieties since they are going to be grown in containers, but I think that when I'm done with it, it will be closer to 12 varieties. There's just no way to make it any smaller if you factor in needing a couple of cherry types, (I could do only one cherry tomato plant, but how can you choose between SunGold and Black Cherry?), some blacks/purples, some pinks, some reds, at least one orange (Tim's favorite Nebraska Wedding) and a couple of late types for production in late summer and early autumn....then 10-12 varieties is the bare minimum. I think if I can cut the list to 10-12, then I will have done really well when you consider my usual long grow lists. Rotating all the nightshades out of the front garden this year and next as a form of crop rotation means growing no potatoes this year. I don't like growing tomatoes in feed tubs, and there's nowhere else to grow them where voles won't get them. (Voles will go up through the drainage holes in the feed tubs, but only for potatoes....not for tomatoes or peppers.) I am feeling iffy about using the back garden at all with all the other stuff we have going on because, realistically speaking, there's only so many hours in the day for planting and maintenance,, so there likely won't be many other veggies. Probably onions, cucumbers, beans and southern peas, maybe all squeezed into one raised bed in the front garden, with all the surrounding beds filled with flowers. That means that onions will be the only cool-season veggie, and I am okay with that. Oh, maybe kale and lettuce. See there....cutting back is impossibly hard. Anyhow, I'm going to finish my tomato grow list and post it in the next few minutes. I've been working on it all week. I went through the seed box, pulled out all the packets of tomato seed that I wanted to plant, then began editing that big pile down to an ever-increasingly smaller pile. I piled up the seed packets in groups by color, then had to choose our favorites from each color, and while doing that, I tried to take into consideration which ones produce early, mid-season and late, as well as which ones' flavor we absolutely, positively must have this year. Ultimately I put back tons of seed packets into the seed box, and ended up with the ones that made the final cut this morning. It is odd to not plant any paste tomatoes, but not planting them is essential if I am to have the year off from canning (still gonna make pickles though) so I can focus on the landscaping projects. If I had more self-discipline and didn't love all the various types of tomato flavor so much, I probably could cut the current tomato grow list in half, but I lack that self-discipline and enjoy the wide variety of flavors too much to do another round of cutting. As it is, we'll probably have twice as many tomatoes as we need for fresh eating, but then I can just whip up tomato-basil soup or fresh pasta sauce for dinner when too many tomatoes start piling up on the counter in the summer time. Dawn

Sue, you always sound like a very busy and productive person! Painting rooms! Love it. Babs, what a cute name!! Flax! I think getting a dog is one of the best decisions for someone who is grieving. Dogs are such a comfort and good company too. Yes, COVID and working from home was the reason for the addition of the dachshund in our family too. They were going a little stir crazy at home without co workers, and decided it was a good time to get a dog. It has worked out better than I ever expected. They did virtual training classes too. And while they were doing a lot of walking any way, it's increased and the stairs up and down, in and out. They are as fit as they've ever been. [g] The dachshund puppy is called Babs, believe it or not. lol I'd love to post a photo but, they'd kill me if I did. So I found a photo online of a dog that is similar.... you can see how low to the ground he is. He gets soaked and sometimes muddy when he's walking in wet weather. I love that photo of the early morning sky!