I brought in 16 more winter squash (Seminole) yesterday and still have more to harvest today and it seemed like a lot until I read Jay harvested 50. : ) That brings my total Seminole harvest so far to about 36. We had quite a few butternuts over a longer harvest period, but Seminole is a much heavier producer for us even though they mature very, very late most years. I have had all the winter squash curing in the lovely heat and humidity of the sunporch, but with temperatures dropping down to freezing or lower the next couple of nights I plan to move them to the garage today since it stays warmer at night. I went ahead and covered up the one bed of peppers that has the jalapenos and habaneros after stripping them of every jalapeno pepper of a usable size. There's tons and tons of little ones left, so if I can get those plants through this weekend's cold spell, the little peppers will have a chance to get bigger. I don't know if I can keep them warm enough. The forecast is for 32 tonight and 33 tomorrow night and we often drop significantly lower than forecast. I also have the southern peas and bush beans covered. Yesterday's harvest was at least as big as the one the day before, and I was too tired to process them last night, so today I'll be shelling peas and snapping beans, blanching them and freezing them. If yesterday's harvest was the last one, I'd be perfectly satisfied with how well the fall beans and peas produced...but I am greedy enough that I'd love to keep them producing another week or two. I have been picking tomatoes at breaker stage every day this week, and today will look to see if there's any I missed. The pepper harvest was great. I picked about 5 gallons of peppers and didn't even pick all the habaneros. If they were orange, I picked them. If they were green, I left them. The sweet peppers are in a different area and I am not even going to try to cover them up. The only plants left with full-size peppers are the Yummy Orange. All the yummies are currently green but full-sized, so I guess I'll pull up those two plants by the roots and hang them in the garage today. I guess today I'll pick the two little watermelons that have formed in the last few weeks. They are only about the size of a baseball and won't be mature enough to be sweet, but I'll cut them in half and give them to the chickens. Even if I manage to get my warm-season stuff through this weekend's cold spell, I know its' time is limited. I think this is the last time I'll cover up the warm-season crops with row covers. The next cold spell can have them, if this one doesn't take them out despite them being covered. We are harvesting cool-season crops already, so I have plenty to keep me busy as it is. I need to harvest herbs today and harvest some catnip for the cats. We still have morning glories, nicotiana, Laura Bush petunias, periwinkles, zinnias, dahlias and four o'clocks blooming in the garden. I expect that after tonight's freeze, we'll only have nicotiana and Laura Bush petunias left. Some zinnias might survive because they are in the bed with the purple hull pink eye peas so they are covered up. The bees and butterflies will miss those flowers once they're gone. I don't know how well the containerized plants in the greenhouse will do on these cold nights, but I stripped all the usable peppers and tomatoes from them yesterday. There's a lot of green tomatoes left. Last night the greenhouse only went down to 48 degrees while our outside temperature was 44. Maybe tonight it will stay warm enough for them to live a little while longer. Chris stopped at a grocery store in Denton on his way to work this morning to pick up groceries for the fire station, and as he left the store he was greeted with light rain with a little stuff that was either sleet or snow pellets and a few snowflakes. It was 45 degrees at the time. He was a little freaked out by it. Said it only lasted about a minute before it all turned to rain. I wish we had that rain here. After harvesting most of the day for the last two days, I am totally exhausted, especially from bending over picking all those rows of beans and peas (about 220 row feet of them). I think I will hibernate inside in the kitchen today and focus on food preservation. I have more food to preserve than I can manage in one day, but I think I can get about 75% of it done today and then will do the rest tomorrow. The first veggie I will process is the cowpeas, and that is so I can cook a pot of them for lunch. I'm still watching Hurricane Sandy in a sort of horrified fascination. I cannot believe how bad it potentially could be. I hope the people in the area that will be impacted are preparing for it. We may have lots of wacky weather in OK, but at last we don't have hurricanes and nor'easters here. Of course, we had Erin a few years back but she was just a remnant low pressure system by then, and that's about as close to a hurricane as I expect we'll ever see here. Y'all stay warm today. Our wind chill is pretty cold here. It definitely feels colder than you'd expect from the temperature we have. Last time I looked, it was 44 degrees with a wind chill of 36. Dawn

It has been three years since my Dad passed. At first, it really didn't feel real. Almost as if He might come back from where he went. It is really difficult to accept that as far as this world is concerned I won't be seeing him except maybe in a dream. I don't know if the true meaning of it has reached me totally. I like what the poster above said about how our Loved ones are only resting til we are rejoined. After all, we will eventually die too. I ran across a web site for the army medical corp. which my Dad was in during WW2. I think he would have liked participating in this forum. I have some of his military items. He was in the Army Medical Corp., 4th Division. He was a Sgt. 5 Stripes (not sure what that means). A great link for anyone who is interested: http://www.med-dept.com/unit_histories/4_gen_hosp.php I find myself remembering the Movie Ghost with Swayze. The final scene when he gets to say Goodbye to Molly: "It's amazing Molly, the Love Inside, You take it with you. See Ya..." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLq_qYf4rtA Keep your chins up. Hope. We'll seem them one day. Hugs Everyone.

Thank you for the kind words, Yes, I know in the grand scheme of things this is not that big a deal. But, I have been without a kitchen for nearly seven months now- the novelty of cooking in the basement, and doing dishes by hand has worn off. Going to the party, I couldn't find the box where I packed the platters, so I used a basket I vacuumed wood shavings off of and ruined a facecloth wiping clean, then magically found a Christmas placemat to line the basket (I wasn't going to put food directly in there!), even though I pulled out tons of boxes looking for where I've packed away the cloth napkins. I can't even move much into the kitchen cupboards I do have, another long story- besides the delay in the granite countertop, several cupboards were not delivered with the original order, so part of what 'Allen' is doing is custom making the new cupboards, which means we can't install the second pantry and the other upper until those are here. (you know how the cupboards have to be installed in order...) Not that I could use the pantry anyways, as none of the pullout shelves, innards for one of the lazy susans, two banks of drawers, are not here, and I don't know how many doors don't close properly... And, as we are doing a total house reno DIY, we can't begin to demo the Master Bedroom until all the kitchen/dining room stuff comes out of the sewing room_ then the MB stuff will go in there while we work on that room. And, DD and DS are coming home for Christmas, so we can't move into their rooms temporarily... so looks like we'll be camping on an air mattress in our MB over Christmas (assuming we even have the kitchen stuff moved in...) It's not JUST the innumerable delays with the kitchen, but those delays are holding us back from so many other jobs. And you know, the holidays, are a recipe for stress anyways... Oh well, good thing I had to go out, cuz I might have really worked up a rage. And Lily, yes, part of me wanted to know what the explanation was this time, but I guess it doesn't really matter- they're not going to be here regardless... The reason for all the other delays, I really don't have the time to list them all- bottom line _ it's a new company, they are dealing with new suppliers (to them), they've had personnel problems_ our original lady was fired_ I'm now dealing with the manager and he is basically doing all the work himself on our kitchen. He is fabricating the granite himself (and part of me just cringes at the thought), and custom making all the cabinets, shelves and drawers that we still need. And, he still needs to run his business, and do all his other tasks. Anyhow, I'm so disappointed, if I could rest assured that all the delays just mean everything is going to be perfect, I think I could handle that, but that pit in my stomach is telling me that there could be serious problems with things- maybe I'm worrying needlessly, but I don't know...my spidey sense is tingling...

Hey Tiffany from Opp! To answer your question, due to my dislike of bugs, lack of storage space and a cat that will eat them, no, I don't really bring anything in to overwinter. If I had a basement, (or if I didn't have said cat!), I'd absolutely try to keep things for more than one season! Very jealous of your plantings, btw. I've been finding that, lately, I almost prefer plants known for their foliage rather than their flowers. (So, it's no surprise that I'm a big fan of caladium and coleus!) I'd love to plant hostas, but the deer just won't let me. :( Sammy in T-town, Alabama