Im in PA, not too far from NY. The rain has been awful this year. I did potatoes for the first time too and out of about 12 plants came 10 giant ones and 20 small ones. Atleast I got something though. That was a 25 foot row of potato plants. After planting I only hilled them once. If I would have hilled again maybe those little tiny ones I found around the surface would have grown into something. Tomatoes have spirals around the skin and sometimes when I looked at them, they looked orange and not ready to pick. I had to start picking them becuase the plants were full of them. When I cut into them many had white hard flesh and not meaty red flesh. Many of the tops around the navel stayed green. I never saw that before. Thank god I put in 9 plants. I never got the big toms I had in other years. Everybody is complaining about toms down here this year. The guy that owns the nursery says it was a bad year for toms. My toms are still better than a store-bought one. For the first year they stayed short, too. Usually they get like 8 feet tall. This year they are at 3.5 feet. Strange indeed. I planted them early in the season. Across town, my brother put in 6 plants. He had very few toms. He's been eating ours!! My brussels started to turn black with rot (rain?), I left them on to get bigger. Big mistake. I should have harvested them when they were smaller. I'd have had double by now. First time I've brought brocolli to the table, only to have worms in them. That happened 4 times. That's gross. I'm not exact on how temps affect each of our plants but we've had alot of 70's and 80's down here. I think we only hit 90 like 5 days max. We could hardly use our pool this year. Since two weeks our pool temp is at 70 and only gets as warm as 76. That's too cool for me. I suppose it's too cool to get red toms too. Dont give up though. You cant control the weather conditions. Some stuff works and some doesnt. Last year I put in zucchini and the worms killed the whole crop. I am learning alot here but for the most part, I just put stuff in the ground and hope for the best. P.S. This is a totally freshly dug garden with no soil added, nor anything except Osmocote during planting. I did not do a soil test this year. This whole property was farm land for years and years so I figured I had a chance. I take the good with the bad. Manure from the local farmer is on the way in autumn.........

We are south of Deptford; probably 5 minutes away from rt 42 & the AC expressway. Also in the same boat with a hubby that can't shovel; although he did try early yesterday; moved his pickup, pushed snow around and went back inside. My son & I did the driveway the night before; son did what he could before DirecTV had him work. I went out a few times during the day; son came home helped me shovel some more.. seemed like that was all we did yesterday. At one point we had the street cleaned really good; I'd dug out the sewer & hydrant; made a path for the water to drain; well last night about 9:30 the plow came & left a 3ft high wall in front of my driveway & plowed the sewer & hydrant back in. I almost ran after him I was so pissed. Son went out; told him to just dig out one car width so we could get out if need be; he shoveled the whole thing. Thankfully today they did not route him so he was here to help shovel everything again. We got the sewer & hydrant dug out again. I was shoveling around the house; trying to get snow away from where the basement is leaking; stuck my shovel in the snow and what did I see? A huge bunny sitting in there. He'd made himself a house in the 3ft high snow next to my steps. I'd heard we were getting more snow Saturday but I guess it's been changed to Monday. Lovely. The ground is so soaked we are going to have water problems :(

Ah, but look at the skylights, the range and big hood, the marble, the view. Who cares about actual practical use of the space. Don't cook, just have takeout food and breakfast cereal, throwaway containers, and all you need to put in dishwasher is your glassware. Or drink straight from the bottle.

We had expected some flurries here near St. Louis, but it ended up being enough packed snow to make the roads terrible. We saw several accidents on our way to MIL's, took us an hour to drive what usually takes about 25 minutes. SIL said they saw over 20 acccidents (they were coming from south of St. Louis) in the 50 miles they drove. The roads were clear on the way home thankfully.