It rained here for about 20 minutes. Hope its starts again. This has been a fun project. Thanks to you all for your suggestions. I had to edit it a bit to accomodate tastes, but still ended up with 2 cds. Rain 1 I Wish It Would Rain 2:45 The Temptations Wish It Would Rain R&B/Soul Box Of Rain 5:19 Grateful Dead American Beauty Rock A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall 6:51 Bob Dylan Bob Dylan: The Collection - The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan Rock Let It Rain 5:04 Eric Clapton Eric Clapton (Deluxe Edition) Rock Raindrops 2:48 Dee Clark Looks Like Rain Pop September in the Rain 2:08 Dinah Washington 20th Century Masters - The Millennium Collection: The Best of Dinah Washington Vocal Singin' In the Rain (Version With Cue from "Good Night, Kathy") 4:53 Gene Kelly Singin' In the Rain (Soundtrack from the Motion Picture) Soundtrack Rhythm of the Rain 2:38 The Cascades Looks Like Rain Pop Mandolin Rain 6:09 Bruce Hornsby & Ricky Skaggs Ricky Skaggs & Bruce Hornsby Country April Showers 3:17 Judy Garland Great Ladies of Song: Spotlight On Judy Garland Vocal Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head 5:41 Ella Fitzgerald In Budapest (Live) Vocal Jazz Rainy Night In Georgia 3:58 Various Artists Blues Brother, Soul Sister Blues Donegal Rain 4:59 Andy M. Stewart Donegal Rain World Rainy Night In Georgia 3:58 Various Artists Blues Brother, Soul Sister Blues And It Stoned Me 4:32 Van Morrison Best Of Van Morrison Pop Rain cd2 Rain 2:10 Rudy Vallée The First Crooner Pop Naked Rain 1:04 Naked Rain Thunderbird Suite Folk Wind and Rain 5:34 Mario Olivares Wind and Rain New Age Rain (Karaoke Version) 2:57 APM Karaoke Karaoke Hits - The Beatles, Vol. 7 - EP Rock Beethoven_ Symphony #6 In F, Op. 68, _Pastoral_ - 4. Allegro 3:42 Beethoven_ Symphony #6 In F, Op. 68, _Pastoral_ - 5. Allegretto 9:57 April Showers 3:07 The Ritz Old Songs Are Just Like Old Friends Vocal That's it, but it just started raining again, to the tune of April Showers!

Thank you for enjoying my happy time with me. Rita, I have two places in mind for them. There is room in the former iris row. And I have a former herb bed that has good space in it. Jean, I am excited to get both of these. If we are lucky, they will grow well, Avedon. I certainly hope so. kay

Lol, maybe they're out there Herboil. I'm 26, not too much older than you and I've been excited about growing plants ever since I was a tot and all through highschool. Not the typical mall shopping boy-crazy teenage girl but that suited me just fine. My high school boyfriend never quite understood why I enjoyed playing in the dirt so much. Heck, now my husband still doesn't quite understand what I get out of it but at least he came with 3 acres of land and he lets me do pretty much whatever I want on it so I can overlook his flaws! Keep lookin' and I bet you'll find one. There may be a plant-crazy gardening girl hiding inside someone you meet but you just have to coax it out. Take any potential girlfriend to Calloway on a date, maybe that will tell you something!! Danielle

Game bird, This is the first year any of us have tried Candy Apple Red since it is the first year Dixondale has offered them, so I am curious to see how they do. Mine are about the same size as yours, but I haven't harvested yet, so they might get a bit larger. Of course, nothing in my garden is a good indicator this year because the 12" of rain that fell in one day at the end of April absolutely halted all apparent growth for 4 weeks or longer, so my entire garden is stunted compared to last year. Still, as long they they taste good, that's what matters. I intend to try them again next year and will hope for a more typical spring growing season so I'll know how they perform under "average" conditions. When Ruth Stout was trying to interest people in mulch gardening, she was sort of out there on her own. I sort of thought of her as "a lone voice crying in the wilderness". Now, of course, she looks positively phophetic During her time, the gardening fad was all the chemicals developed after WWII---chemical pesticides, chemical fertilizers, etc. She persevered and stuck to her guns about soil improvement and mulching, and she was right. I think Jay must have fantastic soil too, plus he works very, very hard. I cannot imagine trying to grow everything he grows in his semi-desert conditions. We are in our 11th year here and the areas that I've been improving and mulching for that time frame do not even look like the soil I started with, and that is despite repeated droughts that have baked the ground to a concrete-hard consistency over and over and over again. Except for the first 2 or 3 years when I amended heavily, all I've done is mulch, mulch, mulch. The difference in the soil is amazing. The formerly red clay that was so hard and sticky that you couldn't even break it up with a fork or mattock is now a milk chocolate brown colored sandy loam and has improved beyond my wildest dreams. Even in the pathways where I routinely mulch, the soil is so different from what we started with. Nowadays, I only improve soil by adding amendments the first year that I break up new ground. After that, it is all just stuff that's layered on top of the ground as mulch and time, Mother Nature and the earthworms do the rest. When we moved here, we had a tremendous issue with Cotton Root Rot, a soil-borne disease that affects thousands of different plants and folks who live here told me I'd never be able to overcome it and grow what I wanted to grow. After the first three years of soil amending, though, the CRR has never reared its ugly head again and I plant what I want in that soil, including many plants that you "cannot" grow if you have CRR. So, I think well-amended and well-enriched soil can overcome almost anything. Like you with the wood chips, I find that no matter how much mulch I put out, pile up and spread around, it is never enough and I always want more. We have to remember that "heat eats compost" and here in OK, it gobbles it up and breaks it down almost more quickly than we can add it. So, mulching is just a great way to keep replenishing what is being used up, and it keeps the soil so much cooler underneath the mulch which helps the plants too. Wheelbarrow time will build muscles and help give you a tan! Of course, the front end loaded was a mulch more efficient way to do it. Jay, I can relate! When the drought of 2005-2006 finally broke and we had a simply luscious summertime late afternoon thunderstorm, Tim and I sat out on the covered patio for 2 or 3 hours and watching it rain and listened to the thunder and watching the lightning. We also watched the frogs come out of "hiding" and play all over the yard and in the puddles. Later on, we spoke to several different neighbors and discovered they all were doing pretty much the same thing....watching the rain and the frogs. We all joked that it doesn't take much to entertain us here in Love County, but I'm telling you, we were so starved for rain at that point that nothing was more important than seeing that rain fall. I hope you get to enjoy every minute of the rain and hope it is falling at your mom's place too. I'm looking forward to hearing about your onion results. Except for being too dry, you've probably had the most "typical" or "average" weather of all of us. I don't know what the rain has done to everyone else's onions, but it almost killed mine. I was just looking at the garden earlier this week and marveling at how good it looks, considering that I thought the flooding rains might kill everything in it. I hope you're out playing or working in the rain, or at least spent some time sitting on the porch with a cup of coffee enjoying that strange phenomenon of liquid falling from the sky! Dawn